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IGN: Heavy Rain

Started playing this about 3 hours ago. This is the first "interactive drama" type game I've played/even heard of, and so far it's definitely sucking me right in.

The first half hour is completely WTF. :lol: You get out of bed, shave, take a shower walk around, take a piss, fart around in the yard, lounge around on your lawn. You literally open up the story just doing basic, boring, daily stuff. Every one of those things is an action too, you actually have to slowly move the gamepad up and down to shave. :lol:

After a while I thought the game might suck, but as soon as the story gets going the "plot" (so far anyway) is pretty interesting. You flip back and forth between characters, kind of like a Koontz novel.

Haven't played enough of it yet to really say if it's good one way or another - the "combat" system (if you can call it that) is sort of like GoW, with button prompts but way more involved - every action on the gamepad is a combat (or environment interaction) option.

So far though, pretty damn engrossing game. :yesway:

 

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Spoiler-free review:

Heavy Rain Review - PlayStation 3 Review at IGN

 

[Lucky Seven]

This game has me wanting a PS3 SOOOO bad. I'm a big fan of adventure games and this sorta bridges the gap between old adventure games and a truly cinematic experience. I'm very intrigued.

 

[1]

I'm going to crack open some scotch and play it some more tonight. Vince will definitely dig it.

So far I'm 2/2 on PS3 games being great. GOW3 is awesome.

 

[Kagami]

nice! old-school adventure games kicked all sorts of ass

 

[Vince]

Funny you should say that Chris. I was actually putting off getting heavy rain because I thought it might be a bit of a snoozefest. I never really played indigo prophecy which I hear is a really similiar game. Maybe I'll pick heavy rain up sometime.

 

[Naren]

Been wanting to buy this game for a while. I have Red Dead: Redemption ordered right now, but I'll probably get Heavy Rain after that.

 

[1]

Been wanting to buy this game for a while. I have Red Dead: Redemption ordered right now, but I'll probably get Heavy Rain after that.

Dude, this is the game your grumpy ass has been waiting for all your life. :wub: :lol:

 

[1]

Funny you should say that Chris. I was actually putting off getting heavy rain because I thought it might be a bit of a snoozefest. I never really played indigo prophecy which I hear is a really similiar game. Maybe I'll pick heavy rain up sometime.

The first two hours or so you will think it's a total waste of money. Then you'll spend the next 5 unable to peel away. It's great.

 

[Aleksi]

I'll probably pick this up after Alan Wake. I enjoyed Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) although the story got a bit shit toward the end, what with all the aliens and necrophilia. The voice acting in the Heavy Rain demo sounded really weird and unnatural, though. It's the sort of thing that could ruin the experience for me, so I hope it's not like that during the whole game.

 

[1]

The voice acting (imo, of course) is awesome, especially for the private eye.

 

[Naren]

Dude, this is the game your grumpy ass has been waiting for all your life. :wub: :lol:

A guy I work with had been exclusively an Xbox 360 guy for the longest time and bought a PS3 just for Heavy Rain. That's when it caught my attention and thought, "I need to get this."

It's definitely next on my list of games to get. :agreed:

 

[MFB]

I just couldn't dig the demo of this :shrug:

It felt like it was trying too hard to make interactive with "Reach into his pocket" Good! "Now pull OUT the inhaler" Nice work! "Make him USE the inhaler" You're a natural! "Now put it back in his pocket!" Good job!

 

[1]

I just couldn't dig the demo of this :shrug:

It felt like it was trying too hard to make interactive with "Reach into his pocket" Good! "Now pull OUT the inhaler" Nice work! "Make him USE the inhaler" You're a natural! "Now put it back in his pocket!" Good job!

I don't know what the demo level is, but that's the vibe I got from the first hour of the game, which made me think it was going to suck. Once you get into it, all of the training things they show you make sense, and the fact that shit like which pocket your wallet is in matter to the story makes this a damn unique game.

 

[22]

"Reach into his pocket" Good! "Now pull OUT the inhaler" Nice work! "Make him USE the inhaler" You're a natural! "Now put it back in his pocket!" Good job!

This made me laugh my ass off :lol:

 

[1]

This made me laugh my ass off :lol:

He's not really exaggerating either. :lol: I don't think you could really play a demo of this game and get the feel for it, because the story really drives the game.

 

[MFB]

He's not really exaggerating either. :lol: I don't think you could really play a demo of this game and get the feel for it, because the story really drives the game.

Maybe I'll rent it down the line but as long as the demo isn't a full taste of the game (and the whole wallet thing is impressive) then I might be able to get into it

 

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Quantic Dream Raises The Bar For Video Game Storytelling - Heavy Rain - PlayStation 3 - GameInformer.com

This sums it up pretty well.

A video game can encompass a multitude of experiences, transforming gamers into the heroes of intergalactic wars or the saviors of underwater civilizations. While the settings and scenarios may be different, most titles use similar gameplay vocabularies to immerse and entertain us. Concepts like shooting the bad guys, leveling up your character, and acquiring new items are so pervasive that they have been inextricably woven into most players' definition of what it means to be a video game. Heavy Rain forces you to reconsider that definition. It is barely a game in the popular sense of the word, but Quantic Dream's masterpiece makes groundbreaking strides in storytelling and character development, demonstrating that interactive entertainment still has a deep well of untapped potential.

Heavy Rain is a game about choice - but not the kind of black-and-white moral decisions upon which games typically rely. It's about choices that send ripples through the entire experience, changing what you see and coloring your perception of the characters. On a basic level, you watch the mystery of the Origami Killer unfold. Beyond that, how the plot and characters develop is up to you. Fight or flee? Surrender or suffer? Kill or be killed? Your decisions aren't just brief forks in the road before the paths re-converge. Two players could follow unique arcs through the story, see different characters live and die, and come away with an entirely different idea of what happened and why.

Playing out like the chapters of a book, your control alternates between four protagonists, each gathering clues and driven by their own agenda. The order you play the characters and the direction of their stories vary depending on how you interact with the world during freeform exploration and context-sensitive button presses and motions, which comprise the entirety of what Heavy Rain offers in terms of traditional gameplay. Simply pressing a button may not sound compelling at first, but when your character's finger in on the trigger, or when a child's life rests in your hands, that single motion is just as intense as any boss fight. When you can read the conflict and pain right on the characters' expressions (thanks to the game's amazing facial models), the choices are even more powerful. During one particularly rough sequence, I was literally cringing as I pressed down, forced to decide between two equally reprehensible options.

While these harrowing decisions give the story its edge, the quiet and subtle moments are just as integral to shaping your vision of the characters. Allowing the dad to lose a toy sword fight with his son, deciding what the insomniac journalist does at two in the morning, or making the gruff private investigator close his desk drawer without taking a swig of whiskey - these are the incidental events that slowly uncover complex emotions like trust, grief, and love. The characters are defined through these casual choices, building a foundation to work from when you're faced with dictating their actions in the high-stakes scenarios.

 

[1]

Just finished it. Holy shit what a fucking FANTASTIC game. Seriously. Buy this. Get through the WTF stage the first hour that you play. It's incredible.

 

[MFB]

Good now buy Killzone 2 so you can kick ass in multiplayer like I've been