Heavy Rain

[Demetrios of Messene]

I enjoyed this game so much that I decided to write down my opinion, even though this game was release almost 2 years ago. I have never written a review before, so don't be overly critical!

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain was released in February 2010 exclusively for PS3 and has since received critical acclaim by reviewers and gamers. Quantic Dream's game does not fall under the usual categories. I would describe it as an interactive movie, rather than a game. Let’s find out why and if this good or not.

Trailer:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Plot:
Heavy Rain follows the stories of four individual characters revolving around the mysterious kidnaps and murders of young children. The player gets to control each of the four characters in turn. The plot unfolds by chapters and follows a very interesting and innovative system which allows the player’s decisions to affect the next chapters. Whatever your decisions and however you play the game, Heavy Rain will adapt and continue. This system enhances replayability since you can experiment with different decisions and watch a different storyline. The only drawback is that the game-changing decisions are not obvious, which means that you are not sure what decisions of your will change the story and to what direction.

The characters:
Mainly there are 4 playable characters: the father of a missing child, an FBI investigator, a journalist and a private eye, each with his or her own agenda, . For the most part you will be following each one of them while in pursuit of their own goals, but sooner or later their paths will cross. At the push of the button, the character’s thoughts and emotions are displayed as bubbles around their heads. This is an excellent idea that gives depth to the characters. What I consider to be a drawback is that most of these thoughts and emotions are “cosmetics”, but few of them may trigger actions and it is not obvious what is what. I would prefer to be able to distinguish a thought that will trigger an action by the character from thoughts that are just there to tell me what is in the character’s head. At the end of the day you will get accustomed to your characters and grow fond of them despite their possible shortcomings or failures (some of which are results of your decisions in previous chapters) and this says a lot for the game.

Gameplay:
Well… there is not much to say about gameplay. For the most part you will be prompted to push buttons in order to keep the story going. This is well executed and adds to the immersion since you feel you are making things happen. In reality though, there is not much skill or thought involved. My sole grudge is related to being asked to frantically press a button during some action sequences, which I find silly. Otherwise, the developer’s approach proved to be very fitting to the game.

Bugs and glitches:
In what is for the most part a very refined product, the few inconsistencies tend to stick out rather badly. Moving the characters around may sometimes seem flawed; bumping on objects and walls due to poor controls and sudden camera shifts is just un-fitting to the game’s realistic atmosphere. Game-freezes are rare but existent. The worst bug though, which has been reported by a lot (not all however) players is that the game may become unable to continue from the last saved chapter. The only solution seems to be loading from a previous chapter (could be one chapter before the crash or seven in my case). These are not game-breaking glitches, but it is rather odd that they have not been fixed after 1.5 years since the release of an otherwise well polished game.

Graphics:
The quality of the game’s graphics ranges from good to outstanding. If you take a look at the extras you will find out that a huge amount of work is based on motion capture techniques and this really shows in-game. All the game characters, including the non-playable ones, are almost life like. The facial expressions are clear and the movements fluid and natural. The environments are pretty good, too, but usually nothing outstanding nor are there many jaw-dropping visual effects. This game is focused on people and their choices, so it makes perfect sense that the developers chose to prioritise the characters over the environment.

Audio:
I am absolutely satisfied with the audio presentation. The voice acting is clear and matching to the in-game characters. The music is also a perfect fit to the storyline and the tone follows the plot consistently. As a result, the characters’ emotions and dilemmas are convincingly conveyed to the player, who gets even more deeply immersed in the game.


Summary:

Graphics: A
Very satisfactory results with life-like characters.

Gameplay: C
This is not the reason you will be playing this game.

Audio: A+
Perfect fit.

Atmosphere: A+
The general direction of the game deserves special praise for its top quality.

Enjoyment factor:
I dare say it’s more likely to be struck by thunder than not enjoy this game.

Buy or not?
At it’s current price (October 2011) the answer is definitely yes.

Conclusion:
Heavy Rain is an exquisitely directed interactive amalgam of personal conflict and action sequences wrapped in an intriguing police story. Its faults are too few and sparse to have a significant effect on the player’s immersion as he/she watches the main characters evolve and the mystery unravel.

[Silent Assassin]

Good review, I also loved that game. It was very different and the story was great, my only complaint would be the lack of action but other then that it's a great game.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

I thought it was a average game to be honest.
The story is filled with holes and for a game that is based entirely on story this is a major fault.
The graphics followed the same thing as it did in Indigo Prophecy that only the main characters look good. I swear some characters in Heavy Rain look like they were pulled straight from that game.
Gameplay is well, there is hardly any. The investigation thing is pretty fun but the quicktime events drag the entire game down. It didn't work in Indigo Prophecy and it didn't work now either.
And the voice acting was ok but you can hear that some of these actors are clearly french trying to speak english.
Oh and the fact that the killer will always be the same person, it kills replayability and the thing is that the game almost had that premise set up that the killer would be random(related to the plot holes) and it's sad that they dropped it.

But a well-written review

[VOP2288]

I thought it was a average game to be honest.

I entirely disagree. The game has its faults no doubt but Heavy Rain, just like Indigo Prophecy, is absolutely unlike anything else that's out there on the market these days. In a world of Call of Duty, Gears of War, and Halo it's nice to see something like this and it's incredibly refreshing.

The story is filled with holes and for a game that is based entirely on story this is a major fault.

There are holes ranging from small ones to the occasional large one but I ask this: what game doesn't have holes in its plot? What films don't have holes in its plots? What works of literature don't have holes in its plot? Most of the holes in Heavy Rain's story can actually be filled by imagination so it's really not that big of a deal. The random articles I've seen online blasting the game for it's story are usually written by incredibly subjective authors that you can tell while reading their words absolutely hated the game before even playing it. Plus, these articles mostly focus in on small inconsistencies that the player would actually miss in the first place and then the author tends to embellish and blow them way out of proportion.

The graphics followed the same thing as it did in Indigo Prophecy that only the main characters look good. I swear some characters in Heavy Rain look like they were pulled straight from that game.

Well then please explain the following:

Heavy Rain (non player characters):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Indigo Prophecy:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Yeah...

I'll admit that some of the facial animations in Heavy Rain are a little awkward but other than that the game is probably one of the best looking on the PS3.

Gameplay is well, there is hardly any.

My god...really? A game that advertises itself as merely an interactive story that uses quicktime events and motion controls doesn't have gameplay controls and sections that feel like Gears of War?! Whaaaattttt!

Come on TB, someone would have to be an idiot to go into this game not knowing what to expect. Heavy Rain didn't advertise itself as a hack-n-slash or a shooter, it is what it is and it doesn't care if people don't like it. It's the style of the game.

Also the "gameplay" is incredibly more refined that Indigo Prophecy so that's a big plus.

Oh and the fact that the killer will always be the same person,

Agreed. It certainly would've been interesting if it was someone different depending on your actions but also something like that might just feel tacked on. You expect that a different killer would act...well....differently and leave behind different clues and the whole investigation would go in a totally unique direction. Yeah, could've been cool but possibly not really realistic in terms of getting that into a game like this. Yet while the killer might never change there are some other "end game" variations like one or all of your playable characters can die, the killer can get away, or the killer can get caught alive so there's that.



And yes Demetrios - good work +rep

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

I entirely disagree. The game has its faults no doubt but Heavy Rain, just like Indigo Prophecy, is absolutely unlike anything else that's out there on the market these days. In a world of Call of Duty, Gears of War, and Halo it's nice to see something like this and it's incredibly refreshing.

And it completely failed. Hell the move-edition is probably the biggest blunder that year.
Of course then Cage goes and whines about people not understanding his game or blaming lack of sales on used games. The first statement is debateable but this is the guy that on purpose left plot holes in the game for the heck of it. The second one however, no kidding. Had I known I would have bought it used as well.
Pretty sure others remembered Indigo and knew what they were in for.
I thought they had learned their lesson and lessened the QTE but sadly no.

There are holes ranging from small ones to the occasional large one but I ask this: what game doesn't have holes in its plot? What films don't have holes in its plots? What works of literature don't have holes in its plot? Most of the holes in Heavy Rain's story can actually be filled by imagination so it's really not that big of a deal. The random articles I've seen online blasting the game for it's story are usually written by incredibly subjective authors that you can tell while reading their words absolutely hated the game before even playing it. Plus, these articles mostly focus in on small inconsistencies that the player would actually miss in the first place and then the author tends to embellish and blow them way out of proportion.

Sorry but the "they do it as well" excuse doesn't fly.
If a movie/book/game has plot holes that's a bad thing, no matter what and I will point them out no matter how much I love a film/book/game and weigh that in with the rest.
Even worse when we got the people involved intentionally leaving plot holes in the game.
Silent Assassin and I discussed this before in the main thread and he had the theory that some of the plot holes would be explained through DLCs but the game didn't sell that well so only one DLC came out and that didn't explain much.
You can check out the main thread about the plot holes I spotted.

Well then please explain the following:



Yeah...

I'll admit that some of the facial animations in Heavy Rain are a little awkward but other than that the game is probably one of the best looking on the PS3.

Yeah don't trust screenshots. I remember the screenshots for Resistance 1 and 2 and thought it would look like a very good looking game and the actual games however it looked quite different.
Heavy Rain was sadly another game that hyped by the screenshots but once up on the bigger screen(in my case 32 inch LCD) I was greeted by characters who's clothes were quite low-res.

My god...really? A game that advertises itself as merely an interactive story that uses quicktime events and motion controls doesn't have gameplay controls and sections that feel like Gears of War?! Whaaaattttt!

Come on TB, someone would have to be an idiot to go into this game not knowing what to expect. Heavy Rain didn't advertise itself as a hack-n-slash or a shooter, it is what it is and it doesn't care if people don't like it. It's the style of the game.

Also the "gameplay" is incredibly more refined that Indigo Prophecy so that's a big plus.

I do not consider QTE to be a feature worthy of making an entire game based on it.
They are annoying and cheap on games that only feature them from time to time, here it was just even worse and I'm glad that companies are moving away from it.
As I said, the parts where you go around gathering clues are easily the best parts

Agreed. It certainly would've been interesting if it was someone different depending on your actions but also something like that might just feel tacked on. You expect that a different killer would act...well....differently and leave behind different clues and the whole investigation would go in a totally unique direction. Yeah, could've been cool but possibly not really realistic in terms of getting that into a game like this. Yet while the killer might never change there are some other "end game" variations like one or all of your playable characters can die, the killer can get away, or the killer can get caught alive so there's that.

Oh it's realistic all right. Hell the game "Ripper", A star-studded FMV-game did this back in 1996 where the murderer was random each game.
If they could do it back then they can do it now.
Scary that sometimes older games are far more innovating then newer games, should be the other way around.

[VOP2288]

Yeah don't trust screenshots.

Well sorry, b/c that's what Indigo Prophecy looked like on my PC and that's what Heavy Rain looked like on my PS3/TV.

Sorry but the "they do it as well" excuse doesn't fly.

Except it does. There are plenty of other stories and tales out there in other forms of media that are critically praised and earn top honors - yet everyone gives both their small, seemingly insignificant and large glaring plot holes a pass. Why is that exactly? Well for the most part, people will generally give such things a pass b/c they appreciate or understand the basic concept, emotions, and (for lack of a better word) heart of the story that that book, film, or game or holds within it. So why is it not possible to still enjoy Heavy Rain despite the fact that some things don't quite add up? The main point the game's story is trying to convey is still there regardless.

Silent Assassin and I discussed this before in the main thread and he had the theory that some of the plot holes would be explained through DLCs but the game didn't sell that well so only one DLC came out and that didn't explain much.

Ok, so the devs had the idea to fill in and expand on plot holes they intentionally put there through future DLC releases. Despite the fact that post-game DLC went nowhere you still can't entirely fault them for this. They may have been foolish to put that much trust in the game's financial success to guarantee them funds to make DLC but the fact remains that they were aware of the holes and had every intention to fill them when the time was right.

I do not consider QTE to be a feature worthy of making an entire game based on it.
They are annoying and cheap on games that only feature them from time to time, here it was just even worse and I'm glad that companies are moving away from it.

Well then why the hell did you play the game?!

That'd be like me buying/playing Arkham City and complaining about how much I don't like beat'em up games or me playing Call of Duty and whining about how I don't like shooters. If you were aware of what the gameplay was going to be like and obviously didn't like it to begin with why did you even bother?

Hell the game "Ripper", A star-studded FMV-game did this back in 1996 where the murderer was random each game.
If they could do it back then they can do it now.
Scary that sometimes older games are far more innovating then newer games, should be the other way around.

And I'm sure "Ripper" had just as much interaction, cause and effect, etc as Heavy Rain right?

This sort of talk really annoys me.

People tend to think that the old days of games were so much better and think that today's helping is just crap. They think there's no innovation, no originality, etc etc.

You're wrong.

Perhaps there's entertainment in simplicity. I wouldn't be surprised if "Ripper" took them all of a week to make whereas modern games can take upwards of a year. Games have become a lot more complicated to develop and even a standard shooter like Halo has more innovation, detail, and interactivity than the best games of the '90s.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Well sorry, b/c that's what Indigo Prophecy looked like on my PC and that's what Heavy Rain looked like on my PS3/TV.

Or you didn't pay much attention which is easy to do.

Except it does. There are plenty of other stories and tales out there in other forms of media that are critically praised and earn top honors - yet everyone gives both their small, seemingly insignificant and large glaring plot holes a pass. Why is that exactly? Well for the most part, people will generally give such things a pass b/c they appreciate or understand the basic concept, emotions, and (for lack of a better word) heart of the story that that book, film, or game or holds within it. So why is it not possible to still enjoy Heavy Rain despite the fact that some things don't quite add up? The main point the game's story is trying to convey is still there regardless.

Depends entirely on how big the plot holes are. Small plot holes can get a pass as long as the main story is still intact, Heavy Rain however isn't intact.
Many times when playing I questioned their behaviour and where the plot went. The whole plot with the killer for example makes no sense. Maybe planned to be explained in a DLC or just lazy writing, who knows ?
Either way it detracts away from the character.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And considering you play as the bloody guy it would be nice to know why he does the way he does besides searching the perfect father, whom he will kill(yeah makes no sense). Would have made more sense to go the Se7en route and give a meaning to the character and his actions

The main hero is mess in the way he is written.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The origami that he has in his hands everytime he blacks out was the intentional plothole they left in the game. And considering it's takes over half the game with this whole point. It's a overall pathetic attempt to get the cops to get suspicious at him that made no sense at all and failed badly.

Ok, so the devs had the idea to fill in and expand on plot holes they intentionally put there through future DLC releases. Despite the fact that post-game DLC went nowhere you still can't entirely fault them for this. They may have been foolish to put that much trust in the game's financial success to guarantee them funds to make DLC but the fact remains that they were aware of the holes and had every intention to fill them when the time was right.

Again, just a theory that SA came up with, nothing confirmed.
Personally I think it was a bad move even if it was released. The main game should have the full story and DLC should be extra. It's pretty much a cheap shot that I'm glad didn't pay off for them as I would think for anyone that considers the same thing.

Well then why the hell did you play the game?!

Already explained that.

And I'm sure "Ripper" had just as much interaction, cause and effect, etc as Heavy Rain right?

This sort of talk really annoys me.

People tend to think that the old days of games were so much better and think that today's helping is just crap. They think there's no innovation, no originality, etc etc.

You're wrong.

Perhaps there's entertainment in simplicity. I wouldn't be surprised if "Ripper" took them all of a week to make whereas modern games can take upwards of a year. Games have become a lot more complicated to develop and even a standard shooter like Halo has more innovation, detail, and interactivity than the best games of the '90s.

You don't know about the Ripper do you ?
Check out who is in the game and then claim the "they probably made it in a week" nonsense. FMV games were extremely expensive to make due to the technology being brand new and ahead of it's time and most FMV games turned out to be complete crap. Ripper did overall well however. It was pretty similar to Heavy Rain, same kinda mystery where you have to talk to people and try to use the clues that you pick up to solve the mystery(which Heavy Rain doesn't do). And instead of QTE it had puzzles.
In many ways you can consider it to be the forefather for Heavy Rain except they had actual actors like Christopher Walken and more. And of course, when it comes to graphics, well it can't get more life-like then a actual video.
It's a shame I think that you never played any of these games. You would see the history of gaming in a far more different light.
And I'm not saying newer games don't have innovations, Mirror's Edge was a good innovating title for example but very few do. One comes up with it and the rest just copies it until people are sick of it, like QTE or only able to carry 2 weapons in FPS games.

[VOP2288]

Or you didn't pay much attention which is easy to do.

I really don't understand how you can sit there and tell me I'm wrong on this issue. I played both games and I'm not blind TB. There's a HUGE difference in visual detail, performance, and style between Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. I don't understand how you think such a statement as "I swear some characters in Heavy Rain look like they were pulled straight from that game." holds any merit...

Depends entirely on how big the plot holes are. Small plot holes can get a pass as long as the main story is still intact, Heavy Rain however isn't intact.
Many times when playing I questioned their behaviour and where the plot went. The whole plot with the killer for example makes no sense. Maybe planned to be explained in a DLC or just lazy writing, who knows ?
Either way it detracts away from the character.

There are plenty of highly regarded stories out there that have some glaring inconsistencies. But in relation to Heavy Rain the ones I always read about or hear about the most are small holes that people who already hate the game tend to turn into game breaking, story shattering issues when in fact even the most keen of players may have missed it entirely on the first go-round.

You took issue with finding yourself questioning the character's motives and actions? You wondered how the plot would progress? Are you kidding me TB? Are you saying Heavy Rain's story was bad b/c you couldn't totally understand it and figure it all out 10 minutes into the game? Please don't tell me this is what you mean lol

Also, the killer makes sense.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Given the fact that the Origami Killer's brother died, more-or-less, due to the negligence of a terrible father he uses this traumatic experience in his own killings. He kidnaps children from either broken families or potentially neglectful parents and puts them in the same sort of situation that his brother was. The catch however is that the killer gives the father one last chance to prove he has what it takes to save his son.

I mean really...that's about on par (and even a little better in some cases) with most other generally excepted portrayals of killers, murders, and psychopaths. In fact, There's more depth to the Oragami Killer than most real life killers who, at the core of it, simply kill for the sake of killing.

Already explained that.

Did you?

One comes up with it and the rest just copies it until people are sick of it, like QTE or only able to carry 2 weapons in FPS games.

You still suffer from some severe nostalgia though TB. It happens with everyone - we tend to look back on the past and remember the REALLY good games or the games that really made an impact on us. Yet the reality is that there were just as many uninspired, terribly made pieces of crap back then as there are today.

[Doge Domenico]

The whole story has a major plot hole

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The part where Jason gets hit by the car, Jason is wrapped in his Dads arms, and the car is going like 5 miles when it makes contact with the dad. They woulda been able to go home after that kind of car accident.

[VOP2288]

@Doge

First that's not really a "plot hole". A plot hole is when something is either intentionally or unintentionally left unexplained.

Secondly you obviously are ignorant to the fact that the human body has a nasty, if not unfair, duality to it in regards to trauma. The body is both amazingly resilient while at the same time mind bogglingly fragile. Take for instance something that happens a good deal with car accidents. Two people (a driver and passenger) might be driving, swerve off the road and hit a tree head on. The driver might be wearing a seatbelt and the air bag deploys on impact but the person themselves dies immediately. The passenger on the other hand may not be wearing a belt and go flying through the windshield, landing yards away from the accident...and live. Crap like that happens all the time and it's perplexing to say the least.

In regards to Jason's death though recall the fact that Jason himself is no more than a little kid. Generally speaking little kids (I believe Jason is something like 10 or 11 in the game, maybe 12) are a bit more fragile than fully grown and healthy adults. It's entirely plausible that the force of the impact, despite Ethan's body being in the way, could've been enough to cause either severe trauma to Jason or, in Heavy Rain's case, death.

Also, the car itself is certainly going faster than 5 mph. It appears slower due to dramatization but if you go back to the cutscene and watch it is in fact probably traveling at a good 20 - 40 mph.

Either way, getting hit by a big chunk of steel and plastic still hurts like all hell regardless what speed it's doing.

[Demetrios of Messene]

Thanks for the replies.

I thought it was a average game to be honest.
...

I believe that "average" does not make the game justice. Of course, you are entitled of your opinion and I understand that your own experience with the game may have been average no matter what others say. However, after reading through your discussion with VOP, it seems to me that your expectations of the game were too high and then you were let down. In other words, your points may be valid, but you way overemphasize them in order to justify your opinion that the game was average.

For the record, according to IGN: the press score (135 ratings) is 8.5, the reader's score (2567 ratings) is 8.8 and the game rankes #75 out of 2639 PlayStation 3 rated games.