The LV. Cap: Heavy Rain Review
Heavy Rain was made to blur the line between movies and video games. The player will take control of 4 different characters and the choices made will decide who lives and who dies. The developers coined the phrase “Interactive Drama.” Read on to see whether the games lives up to the hype and treads into cinematic territory.
Heavy Rain
Playstation 3
1 Player Story Mode
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
ESRB Rating: Rated M for Mature
Price $59.99
Pros:
Effort: This game tries what many other games do not and I have to respect that. It does a lot of things very well but it also does a lot of things sub-par. Certain decisions can affect the life of each of the 4 characters but some decisions really don’t matter that much. I give Quantic Dream credit for trying new things in terms of video games.
Dark Story: Normally video games stories never tread into these waters. The story does shock at certain points with the choices given to the player and the twists of the plot itself. That being said, movies have done it before, and they have executed it much better.
Cons:
Controls: You don’t physically control the character very much in the game but when you do get to take control, it’s atrocious. I have never played a game with worse character control than this. Moving the character from point A to point B was either underdeveloped because the developers didn’t care or they didn’t realize how important good controls are even for “Interactive Drama.” Navigating through a crowd of people is one of the most frustrating things I have ever experienced. You only get 2 camera angles and most of the time neither one was very good. Also some of the time the character would walk in the exact opposite direction I was moving the analog stick.
Voice Acting: It’s bad. It’s really bad. This is one of the major detractors from the story. It’s really hard as an audience member to buy the emotion of this story with no emotion coming from the characters in the story.
Graphics: Some of the time the graphics really please me, but most of the time I was noticing the lackluster. Most evident were the corded phones with cords and the corded power tools with cords. I can not see how those things got past by the developers. Also during the cutscenes the character movement is very awkward.
Verdict: This game tries to succeed as a game and a movie and it’s really disappointing as both. It’s plagued by horrible voice acting and terrible gameplay mechanics. I think most people who found this game favorable either got caught up in the hype or just have very low expectations for a story and a game. That being said perhaps someone can build on what the game ATTEMPTED to do. The attempts to set video game precedent and that is it’s only saving grace. I suggest renting the game if you have to play it but most of you will not find it enjoyable.
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