Granted, it’s nowhere near as beautiful as the Xbox One X version, but I thought that visuals like these, with excellent textures and natural lighting effects, just weren’t possible on the Switch. One thing I really need to point out is how gorgeous it looks. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other aspects worth praising in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Sure, they fed me with more information regarding the game’s plot, but the sad part is that the game’s plot isn’t that interesting, and in fact, quite predictable. While I did appreciate that you could use your (minimal) psychic powers to witness the crimes just like in Call of Cthulhu, those rewards ended up feeling disappointing. There’s enough variety in here for the game not to be called a one-trick pony, but not enough for me to consider it a true mystery game. It ranges from reenacting crime scenes to tackling small yet interesting portal-based paranormal sections. The mystery solving element of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is interesting, but a bit shallow.
You’ll also have to pray for the game not to crash in between these sections, as I’ve experienced seven crashes throughout my playthrough. All you’ll get in between them is a handful of audio logs. It’s also unevenly paced, as it takes time for you to reach actual gameplay sections. This forces you to backtrack for a long time if you near the end of the game and find out that you haven’t completed everything prior to the finale.
There aren’t many mysteries to unveil and some of them are hidden in a way that make them easy to miss at first. The overworld is not exactly big, but it’s too big for the amount of content included in this package. This is also frustrating because, truth be told, this game isn’t very well-designed when it comes to its gameplay. It encourages you to explore the environment, looking for clues, audio logs, and weird crap for you to interact with. This is interesting because the game is set on a small but open environment, meaning that you can tackle any mystery you find in any order without punishment. That is equally interesting and frustrating.
That being said, the developers are clearly not lying, the game just throws you into the setting without any explanation of where to go and what to do. Dark Souls never needed to boast itself as a challenging experience on an in-game message, nor did any game from the 90’s. In any other game, I would have rejoiced with said message, but with The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, that message came off as arrogant. “This experience does not hold your hand”. Right from the get-go, you’re greeted with a message from the developers.
You control a paranormal detective trying to find out what happened to the titular Ethan Carter, a boy who, for the lack of a better word, vanished after a series of gruesome events involving his family. The only difference being that it has brief sprinkles of gameplay scattered throughout its uneven campaign. This game is basically a four hour long, open world mystery thriller, but it’s still a walking simulator. They call it “a mystery game that is heavily focused on discovery and exploration”. The developers behind The Vanishing of Ethan Carter have tried to dismiss labeling the game as a walking simulator.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is available on Xbox One, Xbox One X|S, PS4 and PC.I’m totally expecting for a redneck with a chainsaw to come out of the church and start hunting me. The Astronauts are an independent gaming studio based in Warsaw Poland and won a 2015 BAFTA Game Innovations Award for this very title. It was developed and published by The Astronauts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2014.