There is not a lot of gameplay in this game. You walk around and do puzzles, and hear exposition about the story. And that's OK. A game doesn't have to be for everyone, but if you're a fan of this sort of stuff it is one of the essentials to try! Not to mention it is absolutely beautiful to look at!

Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a game that promoted the genre of a walking simulator, and only for that should be praised. The game offers great audiovisual presentation but sadly it lacks in terms of a gameplay. It's a walking simulator after all. The game is rather short but after all its small flaws I'd say it must be experienced. Once because it is a one shot experience.

This game had potential to be good. Graphics and soundtrack are simply breathtaking, especially he redux version based on Unreal Engine 4, but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. While there are couple of puzzles to be solved, those are only puzzles, because the game doesn't actually explain its own basics. I get it they didn't want handholding to be here, but they failed hard to be edgy with not explaining what is what in this game and the beginning can be truly confusing. But when you get it, you find out that for a game and designers bragging about no handholding, the puzzles are incredibly simple. What is also bad in this game is identity crisis - it is obvious they wanted to be other Dear Esther or whatever this game is called, but they also wanted to do Amnesia, but they didn't have the idea how to design the whole game around it, so they made only one laughably bad stage around it. The game is a one off and incredibly short, around 3 to 4 hours, with story so wretched it's mindblowing. Don't get me wrong, the beginning and solving the crime are awesome, but the ending makes it all worthless and leaves bad taste in the mouth. Overall, if you really have to, grab it on sale, but I can't recommend this game. Grab Myst or any other game instead.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is not much of a game at all. It's a gorgeous open world primed for exploration with a few not-very-difficult puzzles thrown in. Nominally the narrative is to solve the mystery of what happened to Ethan Carter, and the player moves from area to area to piece together that narrative. This largely works, with the narrative fitting the feel of the environment as well as creating a visual experience. Where the game is somewhat limited is in how contrived interaction with the world is. The puzzles feel like they exist to put at least some semblance of a game, rather than adding to the narrative itself. The simplistic nature of the puzzles prevented the game from getting bogged down, but it felt like a missed opportunity. More than anything, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter feels like an attempt at a direction games should be exploring - to use the medium as an immersive narrative vehicle. It's not perfect, but is rich enough to demand some attention be paid to it.

I played this game with zero expectations. The Graphics are wonderful and detailed. The Story is wonderful and I love the mystery stuff in this Game. The Game takes a huge factor in exploration and discovery. It contains no combat or explosions of any kind. Red Creek Valley looks perfect and even when the Game is "only" 8 Hours long it was a nice little journey. The only Question of the Story is: "What happened to Ethan Carter?" It's Great!