10 Great Video Games You'll Never Play Again (And Why)

3. Gone Home

What It Is: An indie first-person exploration game made by Fullbright, in which a young woman returns from a yearlong trip to her family home in the 90s, uncovering clues and secrets about the events that occurred over the past year. Why It's Great: While exploration games have slowly risen to prominence in recent years, Gone Home remains the best of them. Throughout the three or so hours of the game's length, you simply wander around the house, opening drawers, switching on lights in rooms, and generally nosing around. The atmosphere is incredible, taking its cues from horror games while at the same time feeling welcoming and nostalgic. The game lets you interact with just about anything - from ketchup bottles to cassette players - making it extremely immersive for the time that you spend with it. Why You'll Never Play It Again: Despite being a touching tale told through your interactions with the environment, Gone Home relies on horror tropes to keep you gripped throughout its incredibly short story. It feels a bit like you're a kid who's been left home alone for a few hours, enjoying the freedom to fiddle with everything, but still running quickly past the entries to dark rooms, and feeling jumpy at every creak and other weird noise the house makes. Once you've played through Gone Home, you don't feel like a kid any more, because you're wise to its undeniably brilliant little tricks that keep things suspenseful. The build-up to the ending is also incredibly tense, as there are hints that you might be onto discovering something terrible. Gone Home is invested so heavily in taking the player on this single emotional journey, that it just wouldn't be the same doing it again, but that shouldn't deter you from experiencing this poignant first-person snooper.
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Contributor

Gamer, Researcher of strange things. I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.