Good story, so-so control scheme.
posted by pavakah (ROELAND PARK, KS) Mar 16, 2010
Member since Mar 2010
18
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gamers (69%) found this review helpful
The story in Heavy Rain is a mixture of crime drama and mystery thriller that is feature film quality. The plot is interesting, and the writing is solid. There are a handful of unpolished areas, but those mostly stand out because everything else is so well done.
The control scheme is... different. I will not to attempt to describe it in detail here because there is a demo available for download. The unique system of analog stick movements and timed button presses was what attracted me to the game initially, but I soon grew to hate it. The biggest complaint I have is that the control scheme never became natural feeling -- by its very design, interacting with the game never becomes unconscious. Consequently, every time the story starts sucking you in, the next round of control prompts pull you back into your living room where you will either have to frantically (not fun-frantic - this is more like avoiding-a-car-wreck-in-the-intersection-frantic) press buttons to keep one of the characters from dieing, or go through a mind numbing series of inputs to prepare a meal, etc.
I started off playing on normal difficulty, but eventually switched to the easiest setting in the hope of minimizing how much I would have to deal with the controls (the easiest setting does not appear to lessen the amount of prompts, nor does it seem give you more time to press the correct button when prompted). The most unfortunate aspect of the controls is not that they aren't fun, but that they are constantly pulling the player's focus away from the story, and thus end up making the experience less engaging.
In conclusion, Heavy Rain's serious and intense drama will make you want to play it to the end, but I can't promise you won't feel like throwing your controller at the wall before you get there.
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