Heavy Rain

[Lucid]

I got Heavy Rain yesterday and i think I've played it enough to do a review.  

Video trailer from e3:

Heavy Rain - Official E3 Trailer [HD]	DQ | by Aeva

I'm sure you've all heard about this game as its plastered all over the television but i wanted to give my impressions of it.

Graphics:
The graphics are great, really rich textures and models although the environments sometimes are a little sparse with very little in the way of background clutter.  Everyone in the city has gone for a minimalistic approach to there homes and businesses.  Oh and the female character as a fantastically animated arse, best I've ever seen.  They spent alot of time on that arse.

Game play:
Its like watching a film with quicktime events deciding the outcome of the scene.  They work really well and the action can get quite frantic when your in a fight scene or trying to escape in a hurry.  I've completed the game and seen one ending and am looking forward to seeing how the game will play out next time.  The one downside i will mention game play wise is that when a character your controlling is nervous the icon for the button you need to press shakes.  This shaking icon is similar to the flashing icon that indicates you should be tapping that button.  You really have to be on the ball when that happens as i completely screwed up a section because i couldn't see the difference.

There is also this tool called Ari that the FBI agent has.  Its a pair of sunglasses and a glove that analysis and creates virtual representations of the clues you find in the game.  Its pretty impressive and you will really need to try it out to get the full impact

Voice acting:
The adults in the game are well acted, no complaints there.  The kids though are shit.  I think theres only one voice actor for all the kids as they all sound the same.  There is no emotion in the kids voices which really destroys the atmosphere of the game.

Overall:
Its a great game and i would recommend it to anyone.  As I said I've only completed it once and that only gave me 45% ish of the trophies.  I should explain the trophies a bit.  Even the bits you fail on might reward you with a trophy because it all shapes the structure of the story.

So, play it, enjoy it and play it again.

 

[Cy]

agreed it is a good game, but it is riddled with plot holes that kinda annoy me a bit... so the plot is kinda pants in places.  other than that a really good game, i hope to see more games in this kind of genre, just maybe with a better/different writer - someone who is not the boss/lead developer behind the game maybe, and with a real murder mystery novel writer

the voice acting is hit and miss, like lucid said the kids are bad... but some of the adults are too, the voice acting on the guy driving the bulldozer/crane thing was atrocious.  it can be overlooked though, actually i found the voice acting to be better than i expected as i watched some trailers with bad voice acting... but for a game of this type, it should be 100% good.

my other complaint about it other than the plot holes, which i won't go into cuz of spoilers, is the fact the game is quite buggy.  the game froze on me twice which resulted in me having to turn off my ps3 and back on again, also the audio is a bit glitchy with sound freezing every now and again.  My house-mate played the game also, and on his play through it locked up on him a couple of times also.... if it was a PC game you could forgive that since everyone has different hardware/software installed.. but for a Console that is unforgivable since everyone has the same hardware.

the game is really good though overall, it's a different kind of experience, worth playing... i hope for more games of this type to come out "interactive movies", but maybe ones with a bit of a better written story

there's 22 different endings to the game, so it has good replay value too... if you really want to see them all

[Lucid]

I had the sound issue also, i fixed it by turning on the subtitles which really spoiled the experience for me.  The game froze on me once which was the very last scene change.

Alot of the plotholes are down to the different endings.  The plot that was being played out could completely change 3/4 of the way through so plot holes are to be expected.

One thing i forgot to mention were the loading times.  If you earned a trophy it could take awhile, if you earned 2 you might as well go make a cuppa.  Plus when its loading your looking at the next characters face.  Yes they are well detailed but does it need to take up my entire screen for anything upto 3 minutes?

But still a great game

[Hudn00ber]

I dont really know much about this game but I have only heard good things. I will probably pick it up when its cheap $$$$

[Cy]

you could rent it, thats what i do when im unsure of buying games... rent it for a week, its about 10 hours i think to playthrough once, you may want to play it again tho... i guess if u really want to play it loads of times you'd be better off buying it,