The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PS4 Review)

I downloaded The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on a whim. Things have been slow for games lately and I had heard a few good things about it from friends. Most of those praises were centered around the looks - and to my understanding the game has been remade with the Unreal 4 engine specifically for the PS4. It’s described as a horror adventure game and though my experience with adventure games is limited I was compelled to play through its modest 5 hours in a handful of sittings. I was skeptical at first, feeling as if the highly realistic graphics and simplistic gameplay were going to be just another example of disproportionate priorities within game design - but each consecutive session became more and more engrossing and once arriving at the end I was left with a strong desire to seek out more of these bite-sized experiences. To that point I recommend The Vanishing of Ethan Carter highly.

Ethan Carter begins with a black screen that says, “This game is a narrative experience that does not hold your hand”. There are no fail states. There are no enemies. You explore the world for clues and items. The most involved portions of the game are environmental puzzles where items need to be positioned in order to conjure up ghostlike memories that will help you solve a series of murders. You then enter the proper chronology of events that will piece together how each one of these murders occurred. You’re not required to perform any of these puzzles - in fact, you could walk right to the end of the game without doing any of it. The reward of Ethan Carter is related to how much exploration you put into it. To that end, I find the game’s deceptively linear design effective.

What stood out most about the game were its vignettes of weirdness that punctuate the experience. There’s a fair share of spectacle to be had in the game that incentivizes you to really want to see everything. It's constantly looking to give you good reason to do everything. The hyper realistic presentation paired with these abnormal episodes that seem like hallucinations works quite well. There were definitely more than a few times that the game impressed me, both in the world itself and in its dreamlike happenings.

It’s hard to say a lot about The Vanishing of Ethan Carter because the majority of its enjoyment is found by experiencing it yourself. There’s not much to judge about it from a gameplay perspective and I can’t give away much of the story without doing it a disservice. I think that the shorter length of the experience works very well in tandem with what it offers. It’s a story and experience that I’ll speak fondly of and one that intrigues me to try some of the other recent adventure games that appear to be making a steady comeback.

Grade: A