When comparing Valiant Hearts: The Great War vs The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, the Slant community recommends The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for most people. In the question“What are the best Puzzle games for PS4?” The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is ranked 8th while Valiant Hearts: The Great War is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is:
The puzzles require great observational skills with many clues being found only after thoroughly exploring the location in which the puzzle resides. Oftentimes, these clues are very discreet, well hidden, and integrated into the environment in creative ways. Piecing everything together can be quite a challenge at times as the puzzles provide no instructions, but also very rewarding as bits of the story are revealed after each successful solve.
Specs
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Pros
Pro A game about war where you don't kill anyone
Valiant Hearts tells a story about war, but you're not the one spreading death and misery. Your character simply journeys through battlefields, trenches, and various other locations. You meet other characters and solve puzzles along the way. This is quite refreshing because most modern titles about war always have a gun toting player character.
Pro Simple but satisfying puzzles
The puzzles in Valiant Hearts aren't exactly the most difficult, but they'll often require a little more thought than you initially believe.
One type of the puzzles you'll have to solve is fixing a pipe system. You just have to turn sections of the pipe system until it all fits together.
Even solving something so simple is very satisfying and leaves you with a feeling of achievement.
Pro Striking artistic style
The style of Valiant Hearts appeals to most aesthetics. It's simple and clean, allowing you to spot even the tiniest details in character designs and backgrounds. You'd occasionally spot interesting things like a flute attached to a soldiers backpack. Or even spot a very detailed Cathedral in the spaces between the rubble.
The colors are very dim and blend quite well, giving you the sombre feeling of war. There are no random mashups of colors or effects like in many recent games.
Pro Challenging and rewarding puzzles
The puzzles require great observational skills with many clues being found only after thoroughly exploring the location in which the puzzle resides. Oftentimes, these clues are very discreet, well hidden, and integrated into the environment in creative ways. Piecing everything together can be quite a challenge at times as the puzzles provide no instructions, but also very rewarding as bits of the story are revealed after each successful solve.
Pro Heavily exploration based
With the exception of a few storyline gated or locked areas, you have the freedom to explore the entire game world from the very beginning. From the dark forests to the run down old houses, you can wander and go wherever you please, stopping to enjoy the scenery or investigate locations at your leisure. There are no linear story paths to follow and most of the puzzles can be completed in any order. This unhindered exploration allows you to explore the world and unravel the mystery completely at your own pace.
Pro Immersive atmosphere
While wandering the landscape, it's easy to believe you are exploring an old forest and town lost to time. The buildings are run down and decrepit, the roads and railroad tracks are overgrown with grass, and save for the chirping of birds or the river babbling, it is eerily silent. Exploring around and poking into every dark corner of the vast wilderness, one can't help but feel a complete sense of awe and become fully immersed in the mystery.
Pro Very surreal and mysterious storytelling
While the game starts out with the premise of a detective trying to solve the disappearance of a young boy, the story quickly takes a sharp turn and begins mixing in some very surreal, strange themes. These themes border on the paranormal and supernatural, and it quickly becomes apparent this is not a clear cut missing persons case. During the course of the game, the story keeps you guessing and invested as you try to figure out exactly what's going on. Additionally, due to the way you explore the nonlinear world, you might be witnessing events out of order which makes it even more mysterious.
Pro Gorgeous, state-of-the-art graphics
During development, real objects were photographed, scanned, and put into the game world using a process called photogrammetry. As a result, everything in-game renders as photo realistic without jagged lines or appearing pixelated. Everything from buildings and trees down to the smallest details like rocks and blades of grass look great.
Pro Runs at 1080p and 60fps
The game runs at 1080p and 60 FPS.
Cons
Con Short
Valiant Hearts takes about 6 hours to complete and there's not much to do afterwards. While the collectibles give this game some replay value, not many players will be interested in finding them.
Con Historical facts may become annoying
There are historical fact boxes that will pop up during gameplay. They are optional, but can be annoying because they disrupt the flow of the gameplay.
Con Repetitive puzzle solving
Without revealing spoilers, almost every major puzzle in the game is solved using the exact same logic. While the puzzles themselves are thematically different, the way you approach them and the mechanics they use are the same. After you've figured out how the first one works, you'll be applying the same basic principles to every puzzle in the game thereafter.
Con Simplistic gameplay
There is very little direct interaction with the world outside of solving puzzles and reading notes. Much of the game is simply walking around and exploring. From time to time, you will stumble upon a location in which you can manipulate items to solve the various puzzles, read notes, and watch story cutscenes play out.
Con Horrible character models
They are very plain and look almost cartoonish in nature, which is a stark contrast to the photo realistic environment they inhabit. The same level of work that went into the game world didn't quite make it into the character models, and as a result, they are disappointingly bad.
Con Not much dialogue
For a game that is heavily steeped in storytelling, there is a surprisingly low amount of actual dialogue and spoken lines. While it doesn't detract much from the experience, some people might be expecting a lot more writing for a game that boasts its story as a selling point.
Con Pacing feels unbalanced
There is one notable part of the game where the player spends an uneven amount of time in that the environment is lackluster as well as holds many frustrating puzzles. This makes for what feels like unbalanced pacing and is an aggravating section of the game.
Con Framerate drops from 60fps
There are framerate drops in the game but they never go below 30fps and do not tear due to the progressive vsync.