Fact: we need more games like Gone Home for the PC. Why? Because there has to be more to gaming that shooting things in the face right, right. Right? And Gone Home pays testimony to that fact.
But booting up the game for the first time might be a strange transition for those of us obsessed with first-person shooters. Your character, Kaitlin Greenbriar, has just arrived back at the new family home after a year of traveling and as you stand in front of the disconcertingly quiet house, you realise something one, the place looks deserted and two, your hands are empty.
And then you instinctively think so wheres my Uzi? Where are the demons/insurgents/zombies? And then it dawns on you as you head inside the house is empty, there is nothing lurking in the shadows apart from secrets; something far more foreboding, we reckon. Thats because Gone Home is a simple but intriguing mystery set in the 1990s where you must uncover where your family has, well, gone.
You move from room to room, opening drawers, scouring cabinets, looking under pillows, reading notes, listening to recordings and unlocking sealed rooms, slowly putting together the clues to reveal what has happened; in particular, to your teenage sister Sam (and no, she hasnt been abducted by Bowser).
And its this deliciously understated mission that makes the game so mesmerising youre investigating people here, your loved ones, not a murder, not a supernatural event, nor an alien invasion.
Lets be blunt though, the game isnt long a play-through lasts around the 100-minute mark but the brief running time makes the end reveal all the more poignant because the game doesnt overstay its welcome. And more importantly, Gone Home offers an intriguing look into one possible future of videogaming, a future which is a world apart from the current trend for triple-A blockbusters. And one that shows that games can and should be so much more than HD fragfests.