Plot:You are Paul Prospero, an occult-minded detective who receives a disturbing letter from Ethan Carter. Realizing the boy is in grave danger, Paul arrives at Ethan’s home of Red Creek Valley, where things turn out to be even worse than he imagined. Ethan has vanished in the wake of a brutal murder, which Paul quickly discerns might not be the only local murder worth looking into.
Taken from: http://store.steampowered.com/app/258520Thoughts:I went into this game hoping for something where you just solve crimes, not just by shooting people, but through investigation and evidence and the occult aspect seemed like it could be interesting as a detective so i was sold without looking into the game any further
Let me just go over my first 15 minutes of gameplay before i say anything else, ill be as vague as possible as to not spoil anything:
The game starts you out in a tunnel, the first thing i did was turn around from the direction they face you at the start and walk the wrong way down the tunnel, i thought it would just stop me with an invisible wall or something but it doesnt, i went the opposite way in that tunnel and even after finishing the game i have no idea if that effected anything in the game, i dont think it does but i dont want to spend the time replaying the entire game to find out
After that i went to explore the forest and quickly learned not to explore the forest, so i just followed the path and came upon the first puzzle, i figured it would be a simple tutorial puzzle but immediately got stuck on it, i couldnt figure out what i was missing so i decided to see if i could explore a different part of the forest
I could and so i did, i went really far off the path and stumbled into something very out of place, i realized it was a puzzle, an incredibly easy one, and solved it right away
After solving that puzzle my feelings toward my reward for solving it were:
Confusion with slight intrigue
Panic
More confusion with a lot more intrigue
More panic
Filled with amazement
Awestruck
A lot more confusion
EXTREME PANIC
Relief
Slight panic
Relief
Satisfaction
It was probably the greatest experience from a single player game ive ever had
I went back to solving the first puzzle after that
When you start the game it says it doesnt hold your hand, and it really doesnt, it doesnt even tell you that there are puzzles, you can very easily miss important bits of the story, theres no map, no objective list, nothing that tracks your progress, you just explore around and find stuff as you go to discover the story, you dont have to do the puzzles in order, it would probably be extremely confusing if you dont solve them in order though, or if you miss one, i did the first 3 out of order and was bit confused by the overall story, but the first 3 arent that important, the others are and will probably cause a ton of confusion if done out of order
The puzzles are pretty logical and enjoyable, i never felt like i couldnt solve something, the first puzzle was the only one i got stuck on completely and its because i missed something very small
Solving crimes is like the detective parts in batman arkham origins, where you had the bat computer reconstruct the crime scene as you found evidence and you could play through the events of the crime, but instead of a bat computer you have occult powers
Its a lot like gone home where you get as much of the story as your willing to look for and if you like that type of thing like i do then this game is great
by 
Subject: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 
