A great story line and a unique playing style is what Heavy Rain is all about. However, a few areas could have been improved to put the game in a class of its own. SEAN BACHER does a little role playing and delves into the Heavy Rain world.
Getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, taking a shower and then getting dressed. This is something we all do every morning and it becomes something of a routine. This is also how Heavy Rain begins. Heavy Rain is a Playstation 3 game, developed by Quantic Dream and is directed by Quantic Dream’s CEO ‚ David Cage.
The game does not follow standard stages that get more difficult with each stage but instead adopts a movie type theme. It revolves around the Origami Killer, a father looking for his lost son, a private detective, FBI profiler and a reporter all trying to bring the killer to justice and at the same time trying to find the missing boy. As each scene unfolds, you ‚ the player – navigate the various characters around the scene, searching for clues or engaging in conversation to see if you can learn anything more about the whereabouts of the boy or who the killer is. However, each scene is unique in that your actions through-out it change how the scene will end and ultimately alter the sequence of events up until the end of the game.
The game employs the use of quick time events during fight sequences and such. So, instead of punching the attacker like in most games, you are presented with a series of buttons that you must push before the time runs out. For instance to dodge a blow to the face, the game will bring up the square symbol with a timer behind it. Should you hit the square button on time ‚ well you dodge it. If not, you get hit and the fight gets a bit harder. This may seem easy enough: in fact I am sure many of you are thinking that it is easier than the norm. However, when you have to push the square, triangle, right 1 trigger and then left 2 trigger in quick succession, things do get a little hectic.
Furthermore, when climbing out of windows, or up ladders, the game requires you to push and hold buttons in the sequence it presents. Sounds easy enough, but try and push six buttons at the same time. The end result is a cramped hand and a huge sigh of relief as you make it through the window or up the ladder without falling to your death. Whilst on the topic of control, Heavy Rain employs the use of the right trigger and left analogue stick to control the character’s movements, the further down you pull the trigger, the faster the character moves. Opening things such as door are done by moving the right analogue stick in the direction shown on the screen, whilst opening up fridges and drawers require you to rotate the analogue stick 180 degrees either to the left or right.
Playing the game
When I first began the game I thought it would be tediously boring and even aggravating at times. However, the good story line soon gets you glued to your screen, controller in hand playing out each scene. Unlike many other games where I would reset to the last saved game should I mess something up, I carried on regardless of what the scene’s outcome was. Most of the time it worked in my favour, however I did get the FBI profiler killed and the father ended up hanging himself in the prison cell ‚ after I failed to push the correct buttons to evade the cops.
In terms of actual game play, I did find controlling the characters movement’s somewhat cumbersome. The continually changing camera angle annoyed me no end as I would never knew which way the character was facing or in which direction he or she was moving. Furthermore, the objects that you need to interact with are easily missed and I often found myself wondering around rooms for a good few minutes before I found the object. However, to help you out with this, the L1 button reveals what each character is thinking at that point of the game ‚ and this at times gives you a clue as to what you should be looking for or what you should be doing in order to complete the sequence.
In closing
I was a little disappointed with the graphics. The actor’s facial expressions could have been a lot better and many scenes looked very unrealistic and rushed. For example, you often see someone sitting on the bed or taking of his jacket. When this happens, there are no crinkles in the bed-sheet, no indentation where the character sits, it looks like he or she is sitting on a linear rock-hard platform. The same goes with the jackets ‚ it looks like they are donning clothes made out of concrete.
All in all, the game was really entertaining. Although I didn’t time myself, it took me around six hours of solid playing to finish the game. My ending was not the greatest though ‚ the farther died, the son died and the killer went free. I do however now have the option of starting a new game or restarting the game from any sequence I want.
Game: Heavy Rain
Platform reviewed on: Playstation 3
Availability: Immediately
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Thanks so much for the feedback. Yes, I agree with you, I fail at the game ‚ in fact a more fitting word would be ‚suck.’ I also agree with you on the SIMS aspect of the game ‚ grooming the characters and ultimately bonding with them. It really does make you feel more involved in the game. To be perfectly honest, I was rather devastated when my FBI profiler met his demise and the ending was not really what I had in mind. But, I do have the option of going back and replaying the scenes, so hopefully my next ending will see the son being saved and the Origami Killer being brought to justice.
Regards
Sean
Wow you fail at this game, no wonder you didn’t like it. I love the SIMS aspect of the game and “being”” the character, therefore doing random every day things with the characters was interesting. The game starts off “”slow”” to build up the characters so you can actually care about them, this is a grown up game (not running around shoot aliens all day). Controls could have been better I agree. In comparison with some of the graphic advances of other games, it could have been a bit better.””,””body-href””:””””}]”