Play it once.
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 3 | 7.50 |
| Overall | 7.50 |
|
Heavy Rain is a bold attempt at creating a drama game, one not involving space marines, tons of guns, killing, zombies, and all other usual game conventions. By now I assume most of you know what Heavy Rain is and how it plays. Just in case you don't, it's almost an interactive movie where all you do is press the indicated buttons on screen when the game tells you, depending if you do it correctly or not the story may change. Essentially it is a game of non stop quick time events. I know that sounds crappy but it actually works rather well for the kind of game Quantic Dream was going for. When the story is at it's best the game is thrilling, your palms will be sweating and you will be emotionally invested in the lives of the heroes. The game tells the tale of a father who has lost one son to a horrific accident only to have his other son kidnapped years later by the serial killer "The Origami Killer". The game plays out like a thriller flick, something like Seven, but for the love of god don't expect a story as well done as a Hollywood movie. Take it for what it is, for a game story it is exceptional and if you go with it and try not to break down all the holes you will have a very enjoyable and even powerful experience. I know some of you won't be able to go with the flow and will tear apart the story for it's massive holes like having an entire major plat point from the first half of the game get magically ignored at the end. Or how the final twist was handled which I believe was nothing short of cheating the player. So yes the story has issues but I still enjoyed it a ton. I recommend that you play this game straight through from beginning to end without ever loading a previous save, make your choices count, if you end up with something you don't like deal with it and let the story go on. This way the game is your story, the actions you performed directly changed the outcome of all the characters and the ending. I decided to play on the hardest setting (all it does is change how hard the QTE segments are) and played through without ever reloading a chapter. Lucky for me my story ended with what I believe is the best possible ending. It won't be the same with everyone, many of you will end up killing a character or two, maybe you never solve the case. Let whatever happens happen cause your first experience is the most important, the consequences need to matter. I felt the tension in some of the more thrilling scenes where a characters life hung in the balance. One wrong button input would have meant death, all of a sudden the simplistic gameplay had weight to it. Even in the calmer settings the game shined cause it is so different from everything else. In what other game do you take the time to shave and take a bath. It's extremely immersive and playable to almost anyone, in fact they should have advertised this game to a non gamer crowd cause this is something they may relate to. How many people love crime shows on TV plus all you have to do is know how to press a button that pops on the screen, anyone can do it. At times I thought about how the Wii would have been a better fit for a game like this cause all those mundane actions you do with the right stick would have felt better actually moving a wiimote around, finally a game where pointless waggle would fit. Like Indigo Prophecy before it, find the game interesting because it is so different and I really hope we get more games that aren't afraid to be different, to try to be a drama focused game. Should I tear the game apart yet... nah I'll keep on with the praise a little longer. Every good story needs good characters and this game is filled with some memorable ones. The four leads are very well done, Ethan, the father is one of the most accurate portrayal of a father that I have seen in a game. Kudos to the voice actor and the game animators cause I did feel his joy, his pain and connected with this character cause it felt real. There are some stand out secondary characters, one named Blake will be the love to hate guy to most. The voice acting is generally great, I would say it is the writing that fails the voice actors at times as they have to say some stupid things. If there is such thing as virtual acting this is one hell of a virtually acted game. There are issues when common game elements slip in and ruin the experience. For instance in cutscenes the characters move around like humans but once you get control of the character he or she moves like they are stuck in 1996 in a Resident Evil game, it's robotic and tank like. Or having a moment of despair, when Ethan loses his kid in a mall, ruined because the game uses two voice samples of Ethan shouting the boys name and replays it ad nauseum throughout the scene. It stops being a sad plea to find his son and becomes an unintentional hilarious scene cause he keeps repeating the same word the same way like a robot, "JA-SON!", if you played it you remember. I guess this is why almost everything plays out in cutscenes cause you can't pull off human like actions in real-time yet. All that I have said above was my reaction after my first playthrough, I enjoyed my experience greatly. It's not without flaws but still a game that I felt was very memorable. Then I started to replay it. I wanted to see the different endings. I wanted to see how my actions would change the story (and yes I wanted trophies). I found that the more I played the more I hated the game. With every replay the tricks the game used to create this story were revealed. It was like I was pulling back the curtain of this illusion that you had control in the story. What I found was that the game is extremely linear, it is in full control all the time, the player ends up choosing one of the ending branches sometimes by choice and sometimes by accident. There will be minor spoilers ahead, I must give examples. Basically every action you take in the first half of the game is meaningless to the overall story. You may see a different scene or change some dialog but nothing makes a significant impact. Any moment where you thought "well what if I did that, I bet that would really change up my story" leads to nothing. Try your best to screw up an investigation, won't matter the game will keep on going whether you did well or not. How about something as big as murder, whether or not you murder a random guy seems like something that would affect the outcome right, nope it gets ignored. You can purposely try to kill your character by say, standing in a burning building and running into the fire, nope nothing will happen. It's only until you move forward and trigger the countdown that you may be killed and only in the way the game wants you. Stuck underwater in a car, you are tied up and water is filling up the car, forever... cause it never fills up. Nope the game needs you to advance so it doesn't really care if you do the actions, even if you don't the scene advances like you did. Nothing really matters until the last third of the story and even then it is so clear to see where the different branches take place. Don't come here expecting this amazing game where your choices change the story in major ways, no, the story is set you just take a few different paths. Not only does the game lose a lot of that magic the more you play, it is also extremely boring. There is no skipping of cutscenes, how can you when the gameplay is cutscenes. You will see the same damn final chapters over and over and over (if you want you can replay the entire game from the start and spend even more time on it, but whats the point when all the choices come at the end). Nothing really changes. You will perform the same boring QTEs again and again, hear the same conversations a bunch of times. I hate rewatching cutscenes so maybe replaying this game was a really bad idea for me. There is no core gameplay to keep things fun, no real puzzles to solve, it's just a QTE game and those get boring. Also because I got the best ending on my first playthrough I felt satisfied, maybe if some of the characters had died I would have felt more excited to see the other endings. That said some of the endings were really great and the final chapter unlike the others does change up quite a bit depending on what you do. Heavy Rain is a game that prides itself in being this experience where you control the story. Well that mechanic is garbage, the more you play the more you see that your choices don't do much of anything. At best you get a new chapter but it always leads to the same path until the end. In reality Heavy Rain is meant to be played once, it's supposed to be a game of no replay value. The game's director even stated that if it were up to him you would only be allowed to play it once and he was absolutely right. Nothing will ever match the first experience with the game cause you are focused on the story and characters. After that you will be more focused on how you can change the story and I think you may be disappointed. It is still a great one time experience and I think everyone should give it a shot. It's a well made game with great production values all around. Steelattack told me it is better to play it once and then watch someone else play it, I believe that is an excellent idea because experiencing the game through fresh eyes at least makes the repeating parts bearable and will allow you to see how different choices affect the outcome without boring you to death. This is a game that will create a strong positive reaction for some and extreme hatred to others, I experienced both emotions so I end up in the middle. |
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Posted by Dvader Fri, 07 May 2010 02:30:38
Recently Spotted:
phantom_leo (10m)
Thanks for giving me something to read.
I read it all. It almost sounds like this is a game that could be a live action dvd where you used the dvd remote to select a filmed ending.
It almost sounds like this is a game that could be a live action dvd where you used the dvd remote to select a filmed ending.
Nothing farther from the truth. I'm in a rush right now, but I'll try to elaborate further ASAP.
Oh.
Weird.
This dude here has a nice writeup regarding the differences between cinema, and what HR tried to accomplish, with varying levels of success. It's a longish read, for internet standards, but it does pay off. Careful though, it has spoilers. I wholeheartedly agree with him.
Like many interactive narratives, Heavy Rain appears to adopt the practice filmic editing by allowing the player to control how sequences of narrative appear based on quick-time event (QTE) actions. In this respect, it follows in a long lineage of titles starting with Dragon's Lair.
But that similarity is a foil. Instead, the most important feature of Heavy Rain, the design choice that makes it more important than any other game in separating from rather than drawing games toward film, is its rejection of editing in favor of prolonging.
Damned steel, I can't read that.
I don't even have a PS3. It's like me showing you a massive article on a Wonderswan Colour game you'll never play.
Abridged version for the lazy bastard:
HR is not an interactive movie. It lacks the very one feature that constitutes the essence of cinema: editing.
That's still too long to read.
Heavy Rain am interactive DVD movie confirmage.