Heavy Rain - Review

[Kenzomatic]

Heavy Rain pushing game narrative to the next level, or not. If you have play Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) then you know what you are in for because this game definitely feels like a spiritual sequel. The entire game revolves around you the gamer trying to find a kidnapped child from all the major characters view points. The game has a strong story up till the end and over all is very polished. That said there are some bizarre game play choices that need to be removed.



If you play Mass Effect you might notice your decision can effect the story in Heavy Rain they claim that to be the case but the reality is your mistakes effect the story. Instead of giving you CLEAR dialog options they float and jitter over top of each other and only for a limited time, making most conversations feel rushed. The idea is solid make it more like reality where people don't just wait for ever until you answer but reality doesn't not transfer well to video games some times. Then if you die the game just goes on and auto save right after. I literally had to unplug the console as exiting out to the PS3 menu does not even pause the game. So again for the most part your mistakes not decisions shape the story.



The overall story however is very good outside some major logic oversights but nothing worse then a blockbuster movie like Batman Begins. The developer also seems quite impressed with one of the character models they made as you continually get to see her naked or not far from it, and since they don't want to make her a tease you also have the ability to sleep with her. Actually most of it is fairly tasteful however just make a cut scene. Why does the character have to do every move with quicktime events. I guess we need to teach children how to properly take off a bra. Anyways all this adds up into a very interesting story made all the better because you are not shooting something every 2 seconds. On the down side the voice acting can be very weak and the lip syncs just awful.



The game play is good, and fun but some parts feel gimmicky. Instead of having action buttons like every other game on earth they chose action movements with the joystick. I hope they have an update that allows using the new Wii control for the PS3 as that would work out better. Either way though at the end of the day you are substituting a movement for a button and it feels dumb. Now the FBI agent has some very cool toys that allow you scan a crime scene and immediately look up fact right then and there on the spot. It feels like a batman toy and works well in the game mostly because they give you time to read and chose. I do believe the pacing in the game in done extremely well.



The graphics are all over the place on minute they look phenomenal the next your playing the N64, and I'm not exaggerating. I believe it would have been better to back off the quality in favor of consistency.




At the end of the day you have a very good story with great pacing interesting characters and a appropriate amount of action. Unfortunately they combined that with some poor design decisions and bad actors, both you can get over both those pretty quickly.

8.6



ANGRY NOTE: A child would not survive that many days in sewer water they would die from hypothermia for sure.