I should start by saying that I really didn't want to even like Heavy Rain. The concept of doing nothing but a bunch of quick time events over the course of a many hour game, to me is pathetic. My problems with Heavy Rain turned out to be quite different. I also have to give the story a demerit for being wholly a SAW movie rip-off. But before I go and spoil everything for you; let me tell you that this review WILL contain SPOILERS! Sorry, if you haven't all ready played Heavy Rain or seen a bunch of reviews. then maybe you shouldn't read any more.
The biggest thing that might strike you upon first playing Heavy Rain are the graphics. They are incredibly uneven. The main character models are pretty good, which are what Heavy Rain has tried to tout from the beginning. Although some of the animations can be clunky and mechanical. Also, the kissing looks like two plastic dolls smacking on each other. It's like Barbie on Ken. I found that most of the environments, objects, and most of the non-main characters look awful. Also, the characters seem like they are all ways snatching things out of the air, out of space, or off surfaces. Close-ups on all most anything reveal some pretty muddy textures and of course there are moments of complete pop-in. Besides that the first 3-4 hours of the game are plagued by screen tearing. As far as raw graphical power, both Uncharted 2 and Bioshock 2, blow Heavy Rain away.
The actual gameplay consists of a combination of quicktime events that work pretty well. They are by and large done very well, although in some instances where there are many in a row; the events don't all ways register. Which for the most part doesn't matter. Now this could be considered a brilliant move on the part of the developers but if one were to be playing the game on a harder setting perhaps these events would become more important. But the biggest problem with Heavy Rain, surprisingly, are not the quicktime events but the lack of them in some places. The whole game could have been SO MUCH better had it not been for all the mechanical and annoying gesture movements you must do. These book ended by clunky. horrible walking and moving controls and you have a rather annoying game about 45% of the time. What is even worse, is when the gesture you must perform are hidden by the character themselves and you can't change the camera angle to see it. If only Quantic Dream had seen fit to simply use the quicktime events and nothing else. We might be looking at an incredible achievement. But the clunky controls are the most pronounced when the player takes more control. These take the player completely out of the experience and smack them in the face with the fact that they are playing a game and not an "interactive movie" or "interactive entertainment experience." It seems that Quantic Dream found the limits of what they could do and went there anyway.
There are plenty of experiences in the game that are exciting and satisfying but most of them take place in the 2nd half of the game. The beginning of the game goes from boring to unbelievable to boring and then right back to unbelievable again. If I hadn't been playing this game for review, I would have quit LONG before the Heavy Rain; "got good." It seems this was done in the name of length, which is why most movies do this type of thing. But the heavy handed dramatic structure of the beginning of the game; just rubs in the fact that this is SO FAR removed from realism that it stops becoming realistic and ventures deeply into the territory of the cinema style art house flick. Without the art house underpinnings in this case. Rather with thriller underpinnings which is about as shallow as the average episode of CSI, which aren't going to win any awards for original storytelling.
Heavy Rain is a storytelling achievement and for that, it should be played for the experience. But the rest of the entire game is not even close to being worth it. Certainly not worth $60 for what amounts to a cross between SAW and some b-rated thriller that you see the end coming a mile away. Not that the end is predictable, more that it seems manufactured. As if there was no way that the evidence would point to that conclusion unless made to do so. Which in a game where you are actually made to collect evidence; kind of urks you in the end. Even when the game tries to convince you that it's ending is correct. The player still has that annoying certainty that their initial impression was correct and not the one the game wants you to believe.
So Heavy Rain is great, and it's an important piece in the industry and probably in the history of video games. But rent it first, and don't buy it until you are sure your OK with playing this clunky art house piece more than once.
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