The Vanishing of Ethan Carter redux [PC Game]

Click to expand these images so you can see how gorgeous they are.

Welcome to the fourth installment of 'Games I recently bought on a Steam Sale.'
I've reviewed a Surival game, an RTS game, and a ... I can't even define it FP-S game? What would you call The Stanley Parable? I want to say it is an exploration game, but that may not be right either because this review's game is a true exploration game.

I call this the House of Nope.

This game is both beautiful, horrifying, and at the same time something of a let down.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Because this game really freaked me out in the first hour, I'm going on the more positive side.

Lets starts with a few of the real positives of this game.
It looks amazing. 

Just where I always wanted to go.
An abandoned church & graveyard in the hills
of some dilapidated midwest town.

No, not just amazing. Gorgeous. This game has some of the most amazing imagery I've seen in a game. It might be worth the sale price for the imagery alone.

Yes, that is a field of corpses... have fun.

And the game uses that imagery against you. Those old dilapidated houses that you have to walk through really freaked me out. They hit perfectly on this concept called the 'Uncanny.' [Yes, related to the Uncanny Valley.] They are broken down and wrong in just the right way to set your mind off. Creepy.

The story I've experienced so far has been pretty good too. It has the feel of a good H.P. Lovecraft story. I'm enjoying. The voice acting really helps on this. The narrator, you, is an amazing voice to listen to in this game.

However the game is marred by one really glaring flaw.

It is too damn big. The details can be too damn small.

Because of this I actually missed the first major plot point until I solved the second one. Once I had done that, I understood what I needed to do. Because, oh yeah... this game will not give you any instructions or hints. This is an exploration game in near raw format. You will not helped along. You miss that clue, you miss it. I had to backtrack across miles of terrain to fix what I missed... and I'm not exaggerating that much. The game world is big. And super detailed. You can get caught up in simply wandering around and looking at the scenery. Sometimes side paths lead to new discoveries... sometimes they are just there. And that is the problem. The world is huge, but sparsely populated. This game could have held a story 2 to 3 times larger easily.

I do recommend this game the next time it goes on sale.
This experience of the 'uncanny' is absolutely worth it.