noiseredux wrote:Gamerforlife wrote:Heavy Rain on PS 3
what do you think? I haven't played it yet, but I loved Indigo Prophecy, so definitely plan to get this at some point.
It's interesting. Right off the bat I noticed that this isn't your typical video game story. There are no zombies, aliens, dragons, superheroes, space marines, vampires, Indiana Jones explorers, etc. So far the story has focused squarely on things real people can relate to like parental responsibility, murder, physical abuse against women, etc.
I get the sense that this is a game where choice matters, though it may be that the game is only creating the illusion that my decisions matter. However, the game is always putting me in these situations where it's basically asking you what you want to do and making you consider the possible outcomes or consequences. That's pretty cool
The game has an odd control scheme and it seems like the point of it is to facilitate many of the subtle nuances of controlling a real human being in a way that other games don't. It's hard to explain without playing it. The game is slightly like Shenmue in that it seems to want to focus on all the little details of controlling a REAL person in a REAL world. I mean at the beginning of the game you actually make your character get dressed, shower and brush his teeth and it's all interactive. A bit later, your wife comes home and asks you to put out some dishes but warns you that they are fragile. You have to find the dishes, open the cabinet, take them out, then lay them out on the table SLOWLY. This means moving the analog stick in a very slow fashion or else she chastises you.
The game has quick time events. However, unlike other games they seem to actually matter. I'll give you an example that is a small spoiler. At one point in the game, you hear a women scream after a man enters her apartment. While this happens, I'm still in control of my character and as is often the case in Heavy Rain, the game doesn't seem to be prompting me to do anything in particular. So I decided to move my character over to the door. I made him knock twice, then I made him kick the door down. The woman is on the floor and clearly this guy has hit her. He basically tells me to leave or else. I chose to stay and the game then erupts into this big, long fight sequence and it's all done as one, long quick time event. I missed a few prompts resulting in my character getting beat up a bit, but the fight continued on and after nailing most of the remaining button prompts, crazy ass analog stick prompts and motion control prompts my guy won the fight. This popped a "White Knight" trophy for protecting the woman from this jerk. I felt like that was a quick time event that I could have lost and that doing so would have had consequences. It's probably the most exciting and involving quick time event I've ever seen in a game. I've been told by other people who have played the game that everything you do or fail to do has a consequence and that the story keeps moving forward regardless of how things play out.
There's something fascinating about a game where I'm saving a down on her luck woman who is forced to prostitute herself just to make ends meet from an abusive client that is so much more interesting than your typical save a princess or fight off alien monster sort of thing you see in other games. The fact that the guy I was controlling was an old, overweight guy with an asthma problem rather than your standard issue, good looking, young white dude, preferably with muscles or an over stylized design, that is so interesting. Heavy Rain just feels more mature and more true to life than a lot of other console games out there