Heavy Rain Review

Minor spoilers concerning the first half hour of game.

Hey everyone. The other day I got a lend of a game from a friend (the friend I usually mention whenever I say he gives me a lend of them). This game was "Heavy Rain". When I first heard about the concept of it being like a movie and using mainly motion controls, I gotta say I wasn't 100% on board with the idea. It seemed interesting but there could be WAY too many holes and problems. However here's my take of it, the day after I completed it once.

Heavy Rains story.... Where to begin. One of the things i'd liked the idea of is the ever changing possible story. Something that they could've done much better in Fallout and something we only got an itty bitty glimpse of in GTA IV. The tagline for the story of "Everything you do or don't do has a consequence", They weren't lying. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING has a consequence. For example at a very early bit of the game I forgot to feed my sons bird. When he came back home it was dead. Therefore the son was upset and changed the story a small bit and depending what you do, it can effect the ending in the long run. The general story is that you're in a city, children are dissapearing and are found dead, from drowning in rain water in a strectch of wasteland. A man called the "Origami Killer" is found to be behind all this and is called such as he leaves and Orchid and Origami figurine on each corpse. His method of drowning is that he leaves them in a well and water rises because of the near constant rain. When the rain hits six inches, the person dies. Another unique bit is that you take turns in playing as 4 different characters; Ethan Mars, a man whose second son (First killed in a car crash very early on) is kidnapped by the "Origami Killer", Scot Shelby, A private detective hired by the families of missing/ dead children, Norman Jayden, An F.B.I investigator from Washington trying to catch the Origami Killer and Madison Paige a woman who gets caught up in the hulaballo with Ethan. So far I've done one playthrough and just started my second. In my first playthrough I tried to be as good and as smart as possible however the games, mindfuck are mindfuck story ended making me accuse an innocent man of being the killer. Thus ruining one of my characters lives as he was fired. Another characters life was ruined by me too. However Madison and Ethan lived happily ever after as they got Shaun ,Ethans son, Back alive. Now I plan to be a dick/dumbass and ruin everything >:D.

The Music and Graphics are satisfactory. The Music has a great piano score and a few other random tunes however very little set lists are without faults in games and a lot of songs in this ruined the mood for me. The Graphics are incredibly varying. I know games can't have constantly good graphics, most of the time, But this game has a huge gap in the quality of graphics in places. While the main 4 characters were shown to me as the credits rolled talking about what happened to them afterwards. A news reporter appeared on my TV screen who looked like he hitch hiked from the PS2. It just seems to be a spot of lazyness on the developers part. The voice acting is some of the worse i've seen in years. I haven't seen voice acting this bad since Final Fantasy 10 where they sped up whatever the voice actor said in order to make it fit with the face movement in the Japanese version.

An example although the guy dosen't hammer the X button like I did to make it even funnier.^

Now as most games and products usually have this game has a great USP ( No not the pistol Snake uses in MGS (Unique Selling Point)). The thing about the controls is that they are most of the time motion controlled/ using your controller in different ways than usual. For instance if you're passing out china plates you must slide your controller slowly to the side. If you're trying to knock someone out, you swing it downwards quickly and so on. There's scenes where this works amazingly. A scene where you have to drive 5 minutes against traffic on the motorway makes for hectic swinging around of your controller and all round adrenaline fest. I haven't been interested at all with the Playstation move but this is prompting me to get the Heavy Rain edition

If you're into puzzle like detective games or just interested in something new check out what I like / dislike below and see if it appeals to you;

What I liked:

• Ingenious story line with endless possiblities
• Tense/ hectic motion control scenes
• Graphics for half the time
• Length of game (most games nowadays are ridiculously short (CALL OF DUTY HACK COUGH COUGH COUGH PHLEGM COUGH COUGH)

What I disliked

• Apparent lack of ability to maintain good graphics
• Slow scenes where very little happens

Overall I really enjoyed this game and Highly Recommended it

8/10

(The pic above is my original impression, Didn't like it at first, love it now)

Also you should watch this if you have completed it, VERY good parody and it further highlights for the first minute the shitty voice acting