My Heavy Rain review...
First I’ll mention that I have only played this game for maybe a total of 2 hours. This is a first impression review only.
I left work around lunch yesterday to pick up Heavy Rain from Gamestop. I didn’t pick it up on opening day because I usually wait for the Gamespot review before purchasing a game from a series or studio I’m that not familiar with. Gamespot gave it an 8.5 which works for me. I rarely buy anything rated under an 8.
I ended up working the rest of the day, and rather than rush home and pop it in immediately, I took my time. Got home, worked out for a while, cooked dinner, played guitar for an hour and a half. Eventually it came time to play. Now, I’ll add that I haven’t turned on my playstation since December when I received a quite trifling game from my mom (Tony Hawk Ride - do not buy this game. It’s a piece of shit…on a stick…with a board). Before that I hadn’t turned it on since Assassins Creed II came out. I only play games I’m super excited about, and games that for the most part have exhilarating stories. Anyway, this is probably too much fluff…on to the game.
The fun starts when you first open the case. There is a little piece of paper with fold line on it. When you are loading the game on to your system it gives you instructions on how to put it together. I didn’t, but it seems like it would be pretty cool.
The next step (or maybe it was before the load?) you have to pick the difficulty settings. This part pissed me off and took me over 5 minutes. Why? Because the fucked up lettering they use sometimes is unreadable. There are three settings. One I could tell means “I am a casual gamer. I’m not familiar with the motion controller” or something, so I definitely didn’t pick that one. The others were “unreadable….controller….gamer…unreadable” and I was getting BITTER. I wanted to be in the middle and pretty much had to guess. I don’t know if I am for sure, but I think I so.
Game play begins in a really cool way. Probably the best training level, if you can call it that, since Tomb Raider 2. You lead one of the main characters around the house while you figure out the controls. They change constantly, but the main thing you use for actions is the right analog stick (definitely a change), usually making different motions and such. It’s really innovative and has not gotten old yet. The controls for walking are kind of stupid. You hold down the R2 button and push the left stick in the direction you want to go with constantly changing camera angles. Why do you need R2? Thus far the L3 stick hasn’t been used for shit else. Quantic Dream, please, if you do another game like this don’t make me hold down R2 some much. Pushing the left stick has work thus far for many many games.
Aside from the idiotic walking mechanism, the rest of the controls are sweet and unique. You really feel you’re in control, although half the time you are following prompts. If you do them too fast, too slow, or hold rather than tap a button, the consequences, I’m guessing, can be dire.
The characters are great, although the voice overs are…not. Now, I’m not talking Resident Evil (original) bad, more like maybe Silent Hill 4. It’s not good, but not bad enough to take away from the story(wait, SH4 had a horrible story…but fuck it). What really draws you into the characters is facial expressions. You see shortly into the game a situation involving a father and son after a divorce that stemmed from a traumatic event (wow, I need to work on my run-on sentences). When the father sits down at the dinner table with his son, the sadness in his eyes really grabs you. Major props to the people responsible for the animations. I’ve never felt so attached to a character before.
The story line seems intriguing, which I love. I appreciate games that your girlfriend will enjoy watching you play. This seems to definitely be one of those types of games. Hell, she may even be able to play it if she gets familiar with the button placement on the controller. Besides, it hardly plays like a game. More like an interactive CSI. I’m not going to bother getting into what the story line is, there is plenty of info out there on that. But I will say I am very interested in the outcome of the game.
So in short, Quantic Dream may have struck gold with this one, however, nothing is ever perfect in the gaming world. So minus the bad acting and fuzzy lettering it’s seems to be an all around good game. Yes, there are some things that need to be worked out, but I would recommend this game to pretty much everyone. And yes, I do think that this PS3 exclusive has the potential to move systems. Sony…lets think Heavy Rain bundles.
I guess we’ll see. Currently, I’ll give this game a score of 1 out of 5 rods. (the rod rating scale which I just invented works on a scale of 0-5. 5 being the worst it could be like Tony Hawk Ride and 0 being the best like Uncharted 2).
I left work around lunch yesterday to pick up Heavy Rain from Gamestop. I didn’t pick it up on opening day because I usually wait for the Gamespot review before purchasing a game from a series or studio I’m that not familiar with. Gamespot gave it an 8.5 which works for me. I rarely buy anything rated under an 8.
I ended up working the rest of the day, and rather than rush home and pop it in immediately, I took my time. Got home, worked out for a while, cooked dinner, played guitar for an hour and a half. Eventually it came time to play. Now, I’ll add that I haven’t turned on my playstation since December when I received a quite trifling game from my mom (Tony Hawk Ride - do not buy this game. It’s a piece of shit…on a stick…with a board). Before that I hadn’t turned it on since Assassins Creed II came out. I only play games I’m super excited about, and games that for the most part have exhilarating stories. Anyway, this is probably too much fluff…on to the game.
The fun starts when you first open the case. There is a little piece of paper with fold line on it. When you are loading the game on to your system it gives you instructions on how to put it together. I didn’t, but it seems like it would be pretty cool.
The next step (or maybe it was before the load?) you have to pick the difficulty settings. This part pissed me off and took me over 5 minutes. Why? Because the fucked up lettering they use sometimes is unreadable. There are three settings. One I could tell means “I am a casual gamer. I’m not familiar with the motion controller” or something, so I definitely didn’t pick that one. The others were “unreadable….controller….gamer…unreadable” and I was getting BITTER. I wanted to be in the middle and pretty much had to guess. I don’t know if I am for sure, but I think I so.
Game play begins in a really cool way. Probably the best training level, if you can call it that, since Tomb Raider 2. You lead one of the main characters around the house while you figure out the controls. They change constantly, but the main thing you use for actions is the right analog stick (definitely a change), usually making different motions and such. It’s really innovative and has not gotten old yet. The controls for walking are kind of stupid. You hold down the R2 button and push the left stick in the direction you want to go with constantly changing camera angles. Why do you need R2? Thus far the L3 stick hasn’t been used for shit else. Quantic Dream, please, if you do another game like this don’t make me hold down R2 some much. Pushing the left stick has work thus far for many many games.
Aside from the idiotic walking mechanism, the rest of the controls are sweet and unique. You really feel you’re in control, although half the time you are following prompts. If you do them too fast, too slow, or hold rather than tap a button, the consequences, I’m guessing, can be dire.
The characters are great, although the voice overs are…not. Now, I’m not talking Resident Evil (original) bad, more like maybe Silent Hill 4. It’s not good, but not bad enough to take away from the story(wait, SH4 had a horrible story…but fuck it). What really draws you into the characters is facial expressions. You see shortly into the game a situation involving a father and son after a divorce that stemmed from a traumatic event (wow, I need to work on my run-on sentences). When the father sits down at the dinner table with his son, the sadness in his eyes really grabs you. Major props to the people responsible for the animations. I’ve never felt so attached to a character before.
The story line seems intriguing, which I love. I appreciate games that your girlfriend will enjoy watching you play. This seems to definitely be one of those types of games. Hell, she may even be able to play it if she gets familiar with the button placement on the controller. Besides, it hardly plays like a game. More like an interactive CSI. I’m not going to bother getting into what the story line is, there is plenty of info out there on that. But I will say I am very interested in the outcome of the game.
So in short, Quantic Dream may have struck gold with this one, however, nothing is ever perfect in the gaming world. So minus the bad acting and fuzzy lettering it’s seems to be an all around good game. Yes, there are some things that need to be worked out, but I would recommend this game to pretty much everyone. And yes, I do think that this PS3 exclusive has the potential to move systems. Sony…lets think Heavy Rain bundles.
I guess we’ll see. Currently, I’ll give this game a score of 1 out of 5 rods. (the rod rating scale which I just invented works on a scale of 0-5. 5 being the worst it could be like Tony Hawk Ride and 0 being the best like Uncharted 2).