Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

[Malacite]

Review: Heavy Rain



So it sounds like it's everything it was hyped up to be. I've been waiting for a game like this for years.

[Durahansolo]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

I was watching a gameplay demo of it and it does look extremely interesting, but the action sequences remind me too much of Shenmue. The fight in the demo was done really well and looks like it could've been a epic battle that belonged in a movie lol. I might have to take it for a spin.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

Destructoid says you can put down the controller and the game can basically play itself.

And you can. You could miss most of the critical button presses and still "win."

Shadow of Destiny came out this week for PSP. Same genre, multiple endings, no shitty QTE.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth lands on DS next week. Same genre, will likely be better due to a coherent plot. No shitty QTE and FUNNY.

Heavy Rain is your $60 to waste, but I can get two better games from the same genre for the same price. If you've been waiting for years for a game of this type, clearly you've been living under a rock.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

I'm going to rent this one and see what I think before I commit to buying.

Shadow of Destiny came out this week for PSP. Same genre, multiple endings, no shitty QTE.

Wow, thats just coming out in the US now? I've been playing that off and on on the PSP for months. It is a good game, I played it on PS2 also and the port is awesome.

[Malacite]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

And you can. You could miss most of the critical button presses and still "win."

This is one of the things I love about the game; it throws the notion of winning and losing right out the window. If one of the 4 protagonists dies, you do not get a game over/continue. The game simply proceeds from that point on. To me, this is a huge refresher and is going to make for so many interesting playthroughs.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

This is one of the things I love about the game; it throws the notion of winning and losing right out the window.

You do understand how that's a turn-off to people, though. Unless we're talking something like Conway's Game of Life (which is something different entirely), a "game" is defined by win/loss conditions.

If something bad happens and you continue, that's a movie with a plot twist, at best.

[ShepardG]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

60 bucks for an interactive movie.... or rent it for a week and be done with it for 6 bucks.

I could see this being a clear cut example of the "rental" system working in favor of the game makers, I.E. if I like it, i'll probalby buy it to add to my collection

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

You know, as much as I don't like Trophies, David Cage made the right call in not implementing them for this game - there's no effort worthy of a reward here. More or less he doesn't like it because it breaks up the experience.

TGM - A rent is all Heavy Rain is at best. Sony paid up with the right people to make sure reviewers wouldn't say that.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

Well, I would probably pick a copy up when it hits about $24.99ish and keep it sealed. It could be a decent game that people don't want to spend the money on but could go up in price in 10 years like Ico. lol

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

Here was another fun tidbit about the game.

You know that whole bit in crime investigation shows where the FBI guy walks up to crime scene and they ask to see his badge?

Well, you're actually supposed to flash the badge, but the game makes no effort to suggest how you might do that. After expecting it to happen and trying everything on the controller, most people finally found it was tilting forward the right analog stick.

Hotel Dusk doesn't make any effort at tutorial either, but at the same time, things follow a logical progression, not an arbitrary one. I walk into the hotel, I want a room, so I ring the bell to call the manager out. There's no hocus-pocus to it. I wasn't watching any of that happen, though, I was performing the steps needed so it made sense.

Just flash the badge and let me in the crime scene, making me interact with a cutscene is not only counter-intuitive, its that indie crap that pretends to be clever.

[ShepardG]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

BBQ did you play braid?

[Feba]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

but I can get two better games from the same genre for the same price.

Well they're not the same bloody genre, are they? Shenmue, Heavy Rain, and the like work very differently from Phoenix Wright and Shadow of Destiny. I happen to have all of the above (in Heavy Rain's case, Indigo Prophecy), and have no problem finding things to enjoy about all of them. I also have no problem making a distinction between interactive movie (and if you didn't expect this after Indigo Prophecy, you're an idiot) and more game-like puzzle-adventures. The latter category, which you have no problem with, is the descendant of point and click adventure games; where as the former is really more closely related to movies.

I don't like sports games, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the genre. It's simply not something I enjoy.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

Shenmue lives if the tedium of point-and-click adventure, Feba, its just distinguished by having combat at certain points) and a calender to live through. But it bears the same linear flow of main story events

I mean, you can max out your time if you want, there are chance events that happen given where you show up in a certain, place on a certain day and that further helps distinguish it from most of its genre being so incredibily linear, but the solutions to each mystery and main plot are still linear. Shenmue has that nice real-life atmosphere to it, but in terms of the main plot, its just as linear as any point-and-click.

I dislike Heavy Rain and to a similar extent, visual novels because they have fully lobotomized the game element. This should not be hard to understand. If they bear no real win/loss scenario, no use of critical thinking or skill, then it is a disservice to gaming to call them games.

[Cheezeman3000]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

I dislike Heavy Rain and to a similar extent, visual novels because they have fully lobotomized the game element. This should not be hard to understand. If they bear no real win/loss scenario, no use of critical thinking or skill, then it is a disservice to gaming to call them games.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. First off, if you've played the demo, Heavy Rain does require reflexes (fight sequence) as well as critical thinking when deciding how to respond to things before your options dissappear. Second, I think that in the creative realm there should be the freedom to blur the line between a movie and a game, and that we can still call it a game when the player has an impact on what is happening on the screen. I'd call this progression a very good thing. In fact I'm just giddy thinking about how we can have games like this one and games like New Super Mario Bros Wii coexist.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Joystiq Reviews Heavy Rain: Looking Good Folks ^_^

I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. First off, if you've played the demo, Heavy Rain does require reflexes (fight sequence) as well as critical thinking when deciding how to respond to things before your options dissappear.

Reviewers have already debunked this. Your inputs mean little to nothing to progress many events in the game.