- Publisher: David OReilly
- Release Date: Mar 21, 2017
- Also On: PC, Switch
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Apr 6, 2017It is the rare game that may push you to want to lead a better life.
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Mar 29, 2017Really, the best way to describe Everything is that it’s a game that lets you play as everything. I don’t mean that in the sense that you can play as anything, though you can do that (at least, any of roughly 1000 different things coded into the game). Rather, I mean that it’s a game that lets you play as a conceptual Everything – that one grand, all-encompassing thing that we are all part of, that binds us together, and that exists within all of us.
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Mar 24, 2017Everything takes this strange comfort of the procedurally generated personal to a universal scale, and it is good. It’s really good. Everything is a game that knows what its core strengths are, and it does not shy away from them: everything persists, and everything is connected.
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Playstation Official Magazine UKJun 14, 2017Weird yet wonderful, baffling yet beguiling, silly yet symbolic, this is a piece of art to make you appreciate the amazing absurdity of its creation. Safe to say, it's worth 12 quid. [June 2017, p.92]
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Games Master UKJun 6, 2017Everything cares about you. And you should care about Everything. [May 2017, p.83]
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Apr 22, 2017Everything is what education should be in the 21st Century.
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Mar 22, 2017Everything strips out what typically drives us towards the types of games we play. There’s no objective, rules, or scores; there’s just Everything. It presents a toy-box that’s there to simply be fun to play with and, potentially, something that’ll get you thinking about your own life and how you fit into this bizarre universe that we’ve all found ourselves in. It’s not without faults, some parts of the tutorial segments can be unclear or a bit slow for my liking, but none of that detracts from the wild journey I went on. Everything is odd, thought provoking, and quite unlike anything else I’ve ever played.
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Mar 20, 2017This is an exceptional piece of fantasy fiction, a metamorphosis machine, a toy, a game like no other. It's a work of deep imagination, humor and thoughtfulness. Everything held me captive for many hours, and will continue to do so. It's brave, bizarre, compelling and beautiful.
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Mar 22, 2017An essay on philosophy takes the shape of a video game. It will make you think, question and see the world with different eyes, but apart from that, it will also make you explore and discover with gameplay mechanics beyond the mere interactive experience.
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Mar 30, 2017It’s a game that makes you think things and feel things that you aren’t used to thinking or feeling. And it has a good sense of humor about it all as well. Life doesn’t have to be this big serious thing that needs years and years of deep thought devoted to it. Actually maybe it does… but time is just as well spent enjoying and experiencing it. And Everything is a surprisingly pleasant way of doing just that.
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Mar 23, 2017Everything is a niche game, stubbornly and proudly so. It embraces exploration as its one and only supporting pillar, refusing to bring in any mechanics, like crafting or gunplay, to get in the way of that thematic focus. At the risk of alienating a larger audience, the systems strive to create an experience unlike any other I’ve played. Everything is not always firing on all cylinders, but conveys sheer wonder and ingenuity when it is.
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Jun 7, 2017Everything is definitely a unique experience but it does wear out its welcome at a point. When it starts to feel empty and like all you're doing is mechanically ticking things off of a "found a thing to control!" checklist and feels like it's leaving its message to the wayside, that's when it's best to cut it loose, in my opinion. It can feel unlike anything you've ever played, but eventually, like real existence, it starts to feel like a slog. But in those moments when it's firing on all cylinders, it's really something special.
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Mar 31, 2017Everything is, at once, utterly bizarre, brilliantly hilarious and incredibly profound.
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Mar 23, 2017David O’Reilly’s Everything is quite the experience and journey to undertake. It’s simple, yet deep. It asks you to think about ‘just being’, but encourages you to explore the thoughts and emotions of other beings in the game. It’s a lightly addictive game that will have you staring at your television for hours and leave you wanting to keep the experience alive for no particular reason other than to keep going, which could be a metaphor for any living creature struggling to know the how and why they exist.
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Mar 20, 2017No matter if I was playing or watching, every hour I spent with Everything was an interesting one. Much like life itself, there were moments of beauty and laughter, but also sadness. It’s undoubtedly a strange creation, but no other game can allow players to listen to Alan Watts discuss the interplay of difference while watching 10 outhouses perform a dance that results in a baby outhouse somehow being born. There’s something special about these moments, and it’s why Everything will be on my television screen for a long time to come.
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Mar 20, 2017Everything is not for everyone, and thus it's a hard game to score. This existential experience is not quite as pretentious as it appears to be, but it will still leave you mindful of your worth to the world – and the universe as a whole. Honestly, if you've ever found yourself enchanted by the sheer scale of space itself, then this game does an incredible job of communicating that through rudimentary interactivity alone.
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May 1, 2017The few hours I spent with Everything were far from wasted. It is a one-of-a-kind interactive experience that will lead most players to think long and hard about the universe and their place in it. Any game that can do that – and especially one that does it with such panache and fearless ambition – earns my stamp of approval.
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games(TM)Jun 23, 2017Willfully weird and captivating. [Issue#188, p.83]
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Edge MagazineApr 27, 2017If nothing else, the wide-eyed manner in which Everything explores the interconnectedness of, well, everything feels faintly radical in these divided times - even when that means you somehow find yourself relating to a spiral of sentient poop. [June 2017, p.106]
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Mar 28, 2017Everything is a unique and experimental simulation of the universe, supported by philosophical thoughts and interaction outside the box.
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Mar 24, 2017Everything really isn’t for everyone. If it clicks with you, you’ll love experiencing it even if you don’t actually love playing it. As quirky, nerdy and pretentious as it gets but charming too, we’re really glad we gave Everything a chance.
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Mar 22, 2017The sheer scope of Everything is an incredible achievement, and it does offer at least a few hours of entertainment, before it inevitably becomes a bit stale.
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Mar 21, 2017Everything provides a mellow environment to explore, with the perfect auditory compliments for your journey. The experience may be lost on some, but that's okay. Others will thoroughly enjoy getting lost in the experience, despite minor frustrations like the needle-in-a-haystack search.
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Mar 20, 2017In its way, Everything feels to me like a mellow, less aggressive take on Katamari Damacy or Noby Noby Boy, a curious, reflective novelty that, for players in the right kind of mindset, can spark something profound.
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Apr 24, 2017As much as I wanted to enjoy Everything, it’s an empty experience trying to be deeper than it really is. It’s even more frustrating when it becomes clear that Everything is nothing more that streamer fodder to get views from an audience that will probably never actually buy the game anyway. Still, as a one time playthrough, Everything can be interesting, even good for a chuckle or two, but once it’s over, there’s no need to ever get back to it.
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Mar 21, 2017There is no unifying theory of Everything. If the point is to invoke a sense of existentialist zen, it accomplishes that, but it subsequently undercuts the accomplishment with a sense of lame, abstract humor. If the point is to invent a wild playground where everything that exists has a self-centered consciousness all its own, it’s that as well--in which case, it's almost taking Alan Watts' ideas to Looney Tunes levels of ridiculousness. When those two elements are at odds, the game seems to lose all meaning.
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Apr 19, 2017A nice, weird walk and a philosophical lecture, both unfortunately ruined by how hard the game drives its point home. Everything would be cleverer if it wasn't seemingly trying to be so clever.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Mar 31, 2017Everything is not a puzzle to be completed or a solution to be deciphered, but an invitation to think about and commune with the universe of things that has been piling up alongside you all along. What other video game would have dared to dream such a thought?
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Mar 22, 2017There’s another lesson in Everything, too. Even in the face of unimaginable grimness—of the hell that is difference, actual or perceived—there’s still room for wonderment at the miraculous gazillion-piece jigsaw puzzle that is the universe. It’s OK to believe that we’re all part of something, that no matter how fragmented things can become, there are still innumerable connections.
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Mar 27, 2017What you get out of Everything will depend entirely on you. You may get bored within minutes just as easily as you could spend hours wandering around alien continents as a slice of pizza. I’m not sure it can be described as fun in a traditional sense, and it sometimes feels like you are being forced to sit through through a complex lecture mixed with a dash of group therapy, but other times it can be utterly hilarious as you make baby tractors by dancing.
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Mar 29, 2017O’Reilly told me that Everything is designed to run forever. He described it to me as an “organism that keeps going.” Left its own devices, it will, in fact, play itself, running in an autoplay mode based on settings that you can calibrate to your own whims. Strangely, this might be the most remarkable showcase of Everything‘s power: watching the perspective tumble through O’Reilly’s pocket dimension like a sort of high-tech nature documentary, moving from thing to thing until you discover something you’ve never seen, an object whose life you need to learn more about, and you’re moved to pick up the controller all over again and take it for a spin.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 33 out of 52
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Mixed: 7 out of 52
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Negative: 12 out of 52
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Mar 21, 2017
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May 5, 2017This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
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Mar 23, 2017