Good environment interaction, poor and clichéd storytelling. (SPOILERS)
Let's get this out of the way now; in my opinion, Gone Home is not a good game. The gameplay revolves around walking through the house and interacting with objects, which is admittedly very well done -- it's a very nice and well-designed house, fully of nineties nostalgia, and the interaction is handled nicely -- but the interaction isn't worth buying the game for. It's something I appreciate being in games but not something that convinces me to buy it.
So Gone Home is a game that lives or dies by its story and in my opinion, it dies. Your character, Katie, returns home after travelling around Europe to find her house empty. Her parents are nowhere to be found, her sister, Sam, has left a note on the door telling her that she's gone but she's safe and not to worry and Sam's journal entries relay bits and pieces of information as you make your way around the house.
Long story short, the story revolves around Sam slowly falling in love with a girl called Lonnie. Unfortunately, there's not much more to it than that.
The story of Gone Home made me feel depressed but not in a good way; I felt depressed after finishing it because Sam and Lonnie's relationship was completely superficial, teenage and schmaltzy but it was also completely romanticised. Given that the entire story is told through Sam's journal entries, that may have been the point, but it certainly didn't make either girl come across as a likeable character. These are two girls who bonded over ghosts, being rebellious and Lonnie becoming the lead singer of a band. Very basic and honestly quite petty occurrences for Sam to place on a pedestal in her journal. I finally threw up my hands in defeat when Katie finally makes her way to the attic and sees some clichéd "deep" black-and-white close-up pictures of two hands holding each other. To me, that summed up how the relationship portrayed in Gone Home was actually rather pretentious and viewed through rose-tinted spectacles, so I was left feeling frustrated and depressed by something that I KNEW was nonsense but more or less coaxed me into believing it was something more. Gone Home is certainly immersive enough to do that but actually left me feeling rather ... cheated.
So why the hype? At the risk of being cynical, I have to say that the presence of a lesbian relationship is likely the reason why. It was one of the few known pieces of information about the game and there was a minor controversy about the presence of LGBT themes earlier in the year (which I'm not going to go into here). The hype for the game is odd because the lesbian relationship actually has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. To the point that Lonnie wishes to join the army and Don't Ask, Don't Tell is mentioned by name ... but there's nothing more to it than that. Sure, Sam's parents disapprove of her relationship with Lonnie but, much like the sub-plot with Sam's parents, it isn't delved into all that much and is hardly more disapproving than if Sam was dating a rebellious boy than a rebellious girl. Even Sam's budding feelings for Lonnie aren't described any differently than I imagine she would for a male character, in a straight relationship.
Personally, I think this portrayal of alternate-sexuality relationships is a good thing, showing that they're no different from heterosexual relationships ... but I don't think a heterosexual relationship would receive any of the same recognition, either in hype or review scores.
Incidentally, Gone Home will probably last you two hours at the MOST and is being sold for twenty dollars. That's ten dollars an hour, so there are probably people who make less money than Gone Home costs them to play. Needless to say, it isn't worth the money. The length of the game alone can't justify that price tag, let alone a story that'll leave you either loving it or hating it.