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" Dear Esther isn&amp;#039;t exactly a game, so set your expectations accordingly. There&amp;#039;s no objective, no items to pick up or interact with, no ability to jump or sprint. There is a story that unfolds around you as you explore an island, with visual and audio cues that provide insight into an ambiguous story. Who are you? Why are you here? Who is Esther and what exactly happened to her? It&amp;#039;s less about accomplishing goals and more about observing the world and trying to understand what happened - and it&amp;#039;s a breath of fresh air. Dear Esther&amp;#039;s story is delivered primarily through spoken dialogue that occurs at regular intervals as you roam around. It&amp;#039;s mostly cryptic but always passionately spoken and interesting. The island also has its own story to tell through visual clues, with strange signs painted on walls, written messages and abandoned objects acting as bizarre shadows of life from back on the mainland. The mysterious story - one that hints at a motorway crash, the island&amp;#039;s own strange traditions, lost friends, and an ominous beacon in the distance - is accompanied by a terrific score that flits between nightmarish and wonder to create contrasting moods at regular intervals. Although downtrodden, the island in Dear Esther yearns to be explored; the desolate, harsh landscape that&amp;#039;s whipped by howling winds and battered by waves is a serene and beautiful one. It takes great pleasure in opening up to stunning scenes of rusty shipwrecks and moon-soaked coves with glistening black rock, while a lengthy voyage through caves filled with bright, almost alien-looking rock formations is the adventure&amp;#039;s highlight. It&amp;#039;s wonderfully presented, and shows that the Half-Life 2 Source engine is one that keeps on giving after all these years.  However, exploration is limited; there&amp;#039;s perhaps an option to wander along a higher path, explore an abandoned building or briefly walk across an open area, but it quickly takes you back to the defined path that Dear Esther wants you to be on. It often teases areas beyond that you&amp;#039;d love to investigate, perhaps just further down a beach or over a hill, but you&amp;#039;re constantly hamstrung by invisible walls or a lack of mobility. And when you do decide to make whatever little journey there is off the beaten track, it&amp;#039;s a slow trek with little reward and no alternate outcome. Its 90-minute runtime may sound short but it&amp;#039;s dense enough to feel complete, and does offer just enough changing story elements for replayability. Dialogue (and what seems like certain visual clues) are delivered in a semi-random order, to the point that you won&amp;#039;t hear and see everything in a single play through. At the same time you can play through once and comfortably achieve a solid grasp of what it alludes to, but it leaves enough ambiguity that you&amp;#039;d like to revisit and solidify theories and suspicions. That said, with the world and direction remaining the same, the slow trek through each environment is a tedious one on a second or third visit. Dear Esther offers many strengths; a non-conventional premise - at least compared to traditional games - a genuinely interesting tale, and a lavishly crafted world to tell it in. It&amp;#039;s overall linearity is disappointing, especially in such a captivating place, but it otherwise delivers a refreshing experience that will stay with you long after it&amp;#039;s over.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/review/a365766/dear-esther-review-pc/>