Heavy Rain- review (no story spoilers)

User Rating: 9 | Heavy Rain PS3
By Ivory-Dynamite | Review Date:
Ok Heavy Rain is an interactive game pretty much in the style of games like Monkey Island, Runaway, Broken sword etc. You control your character by moving the left stick (directions only) as you hold the R2 button and the character will start to walk. As you move around an environment certain things will pop up like move the right stick left or half a circle or press a button you may have to hold one down or repeatedly tap it until the button icon has been removed from the screen. It does take a little while to get used to the controls e.g. pressing the right button at the right time the right way. The main thing I found annoying about this was when I had to move an character away from danger I would press the left stick (moves the character in every game) when I am meant the move the right stick (left stick = character movement only not used during interactions).

Some problems that arise while playing HR (most of them are minor and don't wreck the experience)
• Game freezing (happened once per play through there is a lot of automatic save points so you don't lose much ground)
• In some environments it is hard to control the character
• Some bad camera angles (you can change views with a button but sometimes they are not much better)
• While talking to people you may not know who they are or what you are doing there until half way through talking to them even though your character knows this information from the start (and if your character knows then you the player should know, you can press a button to see what your character is thinking but this only happen at certain times).
• Before playing the game I was meet with an hour & twenty minutes update (download) I think this was to correct you from walking through people now you bump into them.
• Sometimes when the commands come up they are hard to see or a character maybe blocking them so you have to guess what button to press.

The story is well written and has plenty twists and turns to keep you interested until the end. Heavy rains story is kind of a cross between Seven and a David Lynch film. The game starts off with you doing a lot of mundane tasks e.g. brushing your teeth taking a shower but ultimately this works very well for just when I thought to myself this game is slow then something happens that puts your character in jeopardy then I truly felt panic. These mundane tasks made me care about the character without noticing it and they also work well as a tutorial in getting to know the controls.

I would describe about 85% of this game as interaction mostly pressing button but when you do get them right you feel pretty awesome. The game has a lot of replay value and would be great in a collection I can see myself revisiting this game in the coming months/years. It is most likely different enough from the other game you are playing and will give you a break from the FPS for a while. So while not perfect it is well worth playing for the great story/experience and Quantic Dream deserves praise for the innovation and trying some thing different.

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