Horror: The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter

[Paddy™]

The lack of a more robust save feature was an issue for me too. The game seems to be saying "don't worry about saving your game, we'll take care of that for you" like Amnesia did, but unfortunately it doesn't do a very good job of it. Manual saving should definitely be added, and a more frequent autosave wouldn't hurt either.

Knowing what to do next is also an issue, but for me this was only true for the first chunk of the game. Once I got the hang of it, and once I knew what the game typically required of me to progress, it became much easier to get a sense for what I had to do next and I felt increasingly more confident from then on.

Stick with it man, it's worth it!

[Froge]

Not for osx?

[7heDubz]

osx sucks get windows.

[Paddy™]

The patch for the GOG version is finally available. Thankfully it's a separate download; more often than not they make you re-download the entire game when it gets patched. Apparently the upcoming GOG Galaxy platform will make the patching process similar to that of Steam, which will be nice!

It's depressing reading reviews for this game, even though they're mostly very positive. On the one hand, they lament the fact that it's a "walking simulator", and on the other hand they lament the fact that the gameplay elements are too "gamey". I feel so sorry for game developers these days; they really can't win.

[MrBehemoth]

Me and the Missus played a leisurely hour or so tonight. First impressions: I love the atmosphere; the environments are truly beautiful; and I agree with Paddy (I always agree with Paddy) that the mystery solving and flashback mechanics are original, innovative and intuitive. I'm loving it and I want to play more.

Only problem, my PC can't handle the amount of loading in the open world. If I hang around in one place it runs beautifully, but if I take just... a few... steps.... over..... there....... it stutters and hangs for a literally minutes until all the new assets are loaded in. Tweaking settings and freeing up harddrive space does not avail. Sometimes I think there's nothing wrong with discreet areas and the occasional loading screen.

I won't let performane issues put me off this very intriguing game though. Going to give it a shot on Mrs Behemoth's PC, which is 64bit and has more RAM, but just onboard graphics. Might not look as pretty, but will hopefully be smoother. If not, I'll endure it on mine, that's how much I'm liking it so far!

[MrBehemoth]

Only problem, my PC can't handle the amount of loading in the open world. If I hang around in one place it runs beautifully, but if I take just... a few... steps.... over..... there....... it stutters and hangs for a literally minutes until all the new assets are loaded in.

For anyone else having this issue, I've found a way to fix it almost entirely. It's now running well with only minor stuttering in very open scenes.

1) Go to your installation folder > Engine > Config and open BaseEngine.ini in your text editor. Find the line "bSmoothFrameRate=FALSE" and editor to "TRUE".

That should lock the frame rate and reduce the length of the stutters. Now to free up some processing power at just the right time, i.e., when you are looking around:

2) Now start up the game. In the control setting turn off smooth camera, i.e., set it to zero.

3) In the graphics menu, turn off motion blur.

I found that these 3 things together made a massive difference. I even got to crank the graphics back up to 11.