How many games can you think of these days that give you that old, nostalgic feeling of wonder? I’m not just talking about wondering what’s going to happen next. I’m talking about the feeling of wonderment you get when you are faced with many discrete options to choose from and you have to stop and analyze the consequences of your actions before proceeding. And you know you have to choose carefully because you can’t go back, you don’t even know if the decision you are about to make is a drastic, life changing decision, or simply an insignificant forgettable gesture.
I haven’t gotten this exciting feeling since the days of reading choose-your-own-adventure books as a teenager. Heavy Rain offers you decisions in a seemingly random way, you walk up to objects wondering if they are going to have a quicktime event button to press over them, and are delighted when you see one. And even more so when you see two or three possible button sequence options to press near the object.
There are a few gestures they ask you to make on the controller including rotating the analog stick, tapping a button, holding a button, or shaking the controller, and all the gestures seem to vaguely match the motion you see the character doing. You can sometimes do the action (analog rotation) a little slower and the animation you see on the screen (eg. Character raising a cigarette to his face) will happen slower. Another combination of gestures the game makes you do occasionally is press and hold a button sequence, so I found myself playing a game of twister with my fingers on the controller. And sometimes I found it physically impossible to reach a certain button because I hadn’t used the right fingers to press the buttons. This adds something I’ve never seen in a quicktime event game before.
Some might say that a lot of games these days are being too linear. Even when they claim to have an open world that changes based on your decisions, the overall plot always seems to remain the same. It remains to be seen how linear or open-ended Heavy Rain’s storyline will be. I played through the demo twice, being a good boy and choosing all the nice guy options the first time. The whole thing felt like a movie scene. It was pretty easy to choose the “right” decisions and be the hero of the day, but after a while the action started to pick up and I found myself frantically trying to keep up with the increasingly fast popping up of quicktime events. I was worried that I would be focusing too hard on getting the button presses correct to focus on what was happening, but that didn’t happen. The button presses happened at perfect times so I could enjoy the action, then add some input, then see the results of my success or failure before the next button press had to occur.
The second play through, I chose all the ‘bad boy’ decisions and during the action sequence, I just purposely failed to press the right buttons at the right time. This resulted in a different sequence of animations and reactions from the characters but the plot remained the same. Clearly there was no way to end the game based on a bad decision here, but it was just the demo so I’m sure there will be much different plot lines in the full game.
I love the controls. You use the right trigger to walk slowly or normally, but there is no running. At first I felt myself wanting to run, but this game is supposed to have a movie feel to it and by not allowing running at all times, they force you to calm down, relax, and explore the environment. I also like how the left analog stick moves the characters head, and I oftn found myself turning my head before I made the character start walking which added to the realism.
The Heavy Rain demo was everything it needed to be. You get two different characters to play, two different scenes, two different examples of gameplay they are offering, and a bunch of different easter eggs to find if you explore around a bit.
I tried the demo and it was as expected; very similar to how Indigo Prophecy worked. Controls were fine, QTE actions were well implemented and the visuals were top notch.
Voice work was a little sketchy — especially Norman Jayden’s. As nice as the visuals were, there were noticeable screen tears.
Looking forward to the final product.