Heavy Rain - 3/10

There is a very big difference between films and video games, films are a more simple mechanism for getting across entertainment or messages where as video games provide you an interactive story, something that requires your brain to manuvere through a lengthy storyline. Heavy Rain attempts to bridge the gap by providing an interactive narrative whilst not allowing you to stray from the storyline or even fail at the game.

This is the games biggest downfall. How can a game be a game when there is no possible way to fail? Whilst the game contains many different outcomes and results, you are never stopped or hinded from making it to the finale. Even the gameplay that is present isn't challenging enough to warrent really being a game. Whilst you do decide how characters are preceived, simply pressing a button to proceed isn't gameplay. No skill is required in pressing a button.

Whilst the story is good and it has mulitple endings, the game isn't rewarding enough to warrent a return to the game. At a very tiny 8 hours, you'll be left wondering why the game took 4 years to make and cost you $100 to play. Clearly the developers want you to return to the game once you've finished it to achieve different finales, however to get the different finales you have still have sit through the really unchallenging and underwhelming first 75%.

Don't even get me started on the first few hours of the game. I've played through some truly awful beginnings in my time. Some fail to establish character, some take time to work out which way they want to go, but Heavy Rain is just plain boring. Walking around a house for 30 minutes doing nothing and talking to your kid is boring. It is bland and pointless. They want us to care about these characters but in the process they stopped me caring about the game.

This isn't all that sucks about Heavy Rain. The control system blows. Having to hold down two buttons to walk and move is annoying. Why can't I just move the stick? It tries to be new and creative, but when something isn't broke why try to fix it? Then there is the button mashing "fight scenes" in which you just to have to "quickly" push the button that comes on screen. Most last for a few minutes and whilst the first fight might seem novel, they quickly become frustrating, with many having 10 minutes of building before getting to the actual action.

Usually when all else fails you still have a good looking game to watch whilst you move through bad gameplay, however Heavy Rain has rather average graphics when compared to the current day standard. The faces and character models look great, but the buildings and environments almost look like they belong in a PS2 game. The only time I can commend the graphics is during the crime scene of the first murder.

Heavy Rain is a very frustrating experience. It has a great story but it is dragged down by how slowly it moves, the first few hours are horrendiously slow. The rest of game fairs just as bad, if not worse. I am truly disappointed by this game, I really want to love it, but the developers went the wrong way with the game. They clearly wanted to create a movie-game instead of a tradionational video game. I guess we can commend them for trying something new, just sucks they had to waste a good story on their experiment.

Spend your money elsewhere... 1.5 out of 5

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Milky 16/03/2010

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