Some new Heavy Rain info

I think all of you commenting on the technical aspects have little to worry about. This current state is pretty normal for a game that still has a few months left in the can. Even the voice acting will likely improve as this could be placeholder work. This is the time when everything gets smoothed out, so let's not get too humpty, shall we?

In any event, I cant wait for this one. I love adventure games and this looks to do a great job immersing you in the story and getting you emotionally invested. I hope there are inventory puzzles. :E
 
I've heard the NA version is going to be censored. If it is, I ain't buying this bullshit.
 
Watched the first of those preview links and i refuse to watch the other ones. I cringed so much i think my dick fell off. A trailer is supposed to give a sneak peak about the game, what genre, what the gameplay is like, and why you should buy it. That trailer showed NOTHING at all, just some guy hugging his kid n shit like that, is that what this game is all about?

Press X to hug child
*Presses X*
120 XP GAINED!!!!

oh god what a facepalm

/rant
 
Combine Hybrid said:
I've heard the NA version is going to be censored. If it is, I ain't buying this bullshit.
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That's the beauty of the PS3--no region-locking for games! Import away!!!

EDIT: HA! Now confirmed that NA version will not be censored!! Hooray!!

there will be no censoring, no content differentiation (other than, assumedly, language tracks) between the game as it will be released by its developers and Sony and Europe and the version released for PS3 gamers in North America.
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Source.
 
Balls. I just thought I'd read up on this game because I'd heard a few rumblings and shit I want it. I may buy a PS3 for this. Well... not just for this. But you know.

So tell me, if I buy a PS3, is there any way for me to play Shadow of the Colossus and Ico? They're about the only two games I'm still really hankering to play for last generation.
 
Seeing as you live in the Uk you're only option would be to get a launch 60 GB PS3 to play ps2 games. However I tried ico and SOTC on my brothers 60GB and they didnt work but do work on my ps2 :|
 
The one thing I noticed about watching the videos was that the voice-acting was a little bland/emotionless. Really not sure how well-developed all the story branches will be either, obviously I hope the quality will be high but you never know.

But, I will still keep observing this game's development, as it seems interesting enough.
 
No buzz at all for this game here? Metacritic score 90 out of 32 reviews. The review you want to read though is this one.

Heavy Rain wishes to be compared to movies, but it is very lucky to be a videogame, where poor narrative is more readily forgiven. When compared to movies, Heavy Rain not only falls short, but is almost embarrassingly sub-par. Hell, compared to some of the leading narratives in videogames, Heavy Rain is below expectations. Less demanding players may be tricked into thinking the game is telling a brilliant story simply because it's not telling the kind of story that gamers are used to seeing, but make no mistake. Its naive conclusions and impossibly weak characters would get Heavy Rain laughed out of any serious film festival.

For its ambition and the genuinely exciting moments it provides, Heavy Rain is a good game. It had enough tools to be something truly spectacular, but its developers were unfortunately not up to the task. PS3 owners should definitely play it, and many will hail it as a classic, but anybody with an eye for a good story and a desire to not have their time wasted will be exasperated by the many slow chapters and the poor writing. Everybody should be able to have fun with it, and that is the most important part. It's just that the fun is accompanied by a sour aftertaste.

Ultimately, Heavy Rain is an experiment that both succeeded and failed, when it could easily have been a total success if the brains behind it weren't trying so hard to be smart, and cared more about providing a sensible plot as opposed to a shocking one. As a game, Heavy Rain is pretty good for the most part. Heavy Rain is just damn lucky it isn't the movie that it wishes so badly to be.
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The demo will be on PSN tomorrow.
 
JASOOON
JASOOOOOOOOOOOOOON

In all seriousness though I'm totally getting it since I loved Indigo Prophecy.
 
Shakermaker said:
No buzz at all for this game here? Metacritic score 90 out of 32 reviews. The review you want to read though is this one.



The demo will be on PSN tomorrow.
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I was just about to post a thread with a bunch of review links. But yeah, the reviews for it are much more positive than I anticipated. I was already going to buy it, but the critical reception its been getting has made it a day 1 purchase now.

EDIT: That destructoid review... not sure how much I trust it. It seems like the guy didn't know many of the major themes or features of the game. Its been known for a long time that you can't fail a task in most cases, but rather it changes how things play out. The fact that you can put the controller down and just watch things unfold isn't as bad a thing as he make it out to be, and frankly, that may be why the "ending" is so bad, because he sucked at the game which gave him a suck ending that made no sense to him, since he probably "failed" a lot of the shit.

Kotaku is a place I trust more than destructoid, and they had this to say.

Heavy Rain is uncomfortable, its designers skilled at putting the player in awkward situations and making them sort their way out of it. What choice would you make if you were in the back of a convenience store while a robber walks in and pulls a gun on the owner? Grab the frying pan, creep behind and whack him? Hang back and let it play out? Try to negotiate? The game is composed almost entirely of vignettes like this, behavioral laboratories that appear to have no Game Over wrong answer.

...
Rare is the game of supposedly deep branched gameplay and so much variety that you could Play It All Over Again But Differently that I want to actually play a second time, all over again but differently. But with Heavy Rain I did want to play many of its chapters again, to see how I could change events and make things happen differently. It doesn't hurt that people from the development studio let it be known that even main characters can die and stay dead.
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Even if the rest of the game is crappy, this kind of innovative gameplay is different enough from the mainstream shit we have shoved down our throats each year for me to support it. We need more big developers trying to do things differently, and at the very least, Heavy Rain sounds like its different.
 
2s6svvr.jpg
 
And Eurogamer gave it a 9 out of 10. I am not actually reading any of the reviews--just the scores. I want to be a total innocent when I jump into it. :E
 
Managed to get my hands on the demo early, a few disconnected thoughts:

  • It's sufficiently dark and moody, but more Silence of the Lambs/Se7en than Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophesy.
  • Best Quick-Time Events ever - instead of "press X to not die", the encounter ebbs and flows with your mistakes. So if pressing X means dodging a punch, then not pressing it (or pressing the wrong button) means you just get hit - and it becomes just another beat in the scene. Hopefully they keep this up in the full game.
  • Same deal with conversations - there's no wrong answer, and things ebb and flow normally. And you can't just exhaust dialog trees like in Mass Effect - characters will cut conversations short if they feel the need to, or if the game decides to move things forward based on how the conversation is going. Exciting!
  • To have your character move forward, you have to hold down R2 - feels kind of silly.
  • Despite the incredible detail, character movement outside of cutscenes still look kind of "video-gamey" and awkward. Great facial movements, though.
  • Framerate is a bit choppy, but the game looks amazing otherwise. I think Mass Effect 2 might have been spoiling me on that one.
  • Detective stuff is kind of like Arkham Asylum detective mode with a short-range "scanner" that reveals relevant clues. Nifty video-game gadgets!
  • Voice-over seems entirely optional this time around, so if you disliked that in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophesy, good for you!
  • No mythical elements or anything like the last third of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophesy in sight, but who knows what will happen!

So yeah. :) Demo's officially out on PSN tommorow, by the way.
 
After some time with the demo, I think some people are right in saying that this isn't a game--it doesn't feel like a video game. Instead it feels more like you're directing your own detective drama, that someone's given you a basic script and it's up to you to flesh out the details. Everything's going to follow a certain setup: the characters are going to arrive where they're supposed to be, but what they say and do after that is up to your direction.

What's interesting too is that, in order to tell the story the way you want it, you have to mute some of your gamer instincts. For example in the fight between Shelby and Lauren's customer, if you don't want him to win you have to suppress hitting the controls that pop up. I mean it's pretty instinctual that when a command to press a button flashes, you go for it, but maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you don't want Shelby to win.

Or maybe you decided to leave after your conversation with Lauren and never got into a fight at all.

The scene with Agent Jayden allows you the choice of being either very good at his job, or very bad at it. If you've played a lot of adventure games you're conditioned to check out every nook and cranny, and often you do this because it's necessary to advance the story. And you can do that here: Agent Jayden can use the ARI glasses to scan the body, match the blood on the victim to that of the fence, scale the hill and find out that the killer parked on the shoulder, got out, killed the victim, then got back in his car and drove off.

But it isn't necessary to play this way. You can choose to think that Agent Jayden is terrible at his job, chalk it up to ineptitude or the drug addiction. You don't have to explore everything to get the game to move along; you can take one look at the crime scene, get back in your car and leave, and the story continues. Maybe you want him to try to be good at his job, but have him pass over some vital clue.

Definitely getting this one. It felt like playing an episode of Law and Order.
 
After playing the demo I totally agree. The fact there is so much that can dynamically change the story is amazing. I love seeing what they are thinking at different times too. This is definitely one of the most ambitious titles that seems to be delivering on what it has promised: a new way of approaching the idea of a game and how you interact with it. Absolute day-1 buy. Hopefully even a midnight release--would fit well with the macabre storyline. :thumbs:
 
Anyone playing this yet? I just got my preorder a few hours ago. Don't underestimate the QTE shit man. This game gets tense as ****. It's awesome.
 
Yep, I just played about 3 and a half hours, a fantastic game already. I can't believe how good it looks and how emotional it can actually be. QTEs are fine and haven't gotten annoying yet, dont think they will either. And the ARI ****ing blew my mind. I thought it was just going to be used for crime scene investigation like in the demo... but god damn that thing is cool.
 
It's great. The only people who criticize it haven't played it.
 
Just came out here today, getting my Special Edition, yay.
 
Gargantou said:
I'm a bit sad, a jerk spoiled who the killer is for me, but I'm hoping I'll be able to enjoy the game none the less.
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I'm still not sure. I've been spoiled numerous times, (my fault for going on /v/), but as I'm playing it seems to point away from who they said allegedly. If it IS him then I'll be very pissed off and it'll seem like an M. Night Shamalyan ending.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
I'm still not sure. I've been spoiled numerous times, (my fault for going on /v/), but as I'm playing it seems to point away from who they said allegedly. If it IS him then I'll be very pissed off and it'll seem like an M. Night Shamalyan ending.
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Well that seems to be the biggest complaint about the story so far, people are saying the killers identity is the biggest 'plothole'(in that it makes very little sense storywise) in the game.

But I guess you're right, hopefully this will be a very compelling game and it'll draw me in so I forget stuff like one spoiler etc.
 
Cpt Tenacious said:
Am I the only one who thinks this game doesn't even seem good?
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I played the demo and thought it was very underwhelming. This is one of those games where you really need to play all of it. It sucks you in once it starts rolling.
 
I see. I also played the demo and thought it was very boring.
 
I played for roughly 3 hours last night and it really is like nothing I have played in ages. The only thing I can even come close to comparing it to is Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy). When that came out it did things that I thought were incredible. This does too. HR tells a great story and lets you help weave the tell whichever way you like. Every scene has tons of options and I want to go back to each and every one just to see what happens to the story when seemingly subtle differences are made in my actions or words. It is also extremely emotionally engaging as you live with these characters and get to know them and like/dislike them. I seriously can't believe how much detail is in the game too.

5 friends from my buddy list were online last night all from different walks of life and all with different gaming preferences and ALL of them were playing Heavy Rain. It was brilliant to see so many people supporting this risky venture into interactive drama.
 
Anyone that supports making a separate thread for those who've completed the game for them to discuss the ending and possible motives etc or should we just keep that in here?

Reading reviews seems to suggest there's a huge hole in the plot towards the end, in a way I'm not surprised.. The plot in Fahrenheit suffered towards the end sadly.

Oh well, getting my Special Edition copy in like two hours, yay!
 
They successfully made me like Ethan just from the scene after the timeskip. I thought I was going to hate him(because of less than great voice acting and such), but you really start to feel his depression.

They used visual cues well, changing the overall palette of colors from light browns and greens and yellows of fall to dark grays of winter and the stormy season.

Shelby seems to be the underdog when it comes to investigating, working only on his charisma and speaking ability rather than things like the FBI's agent.. ADI? Some acronym. AVI or ADI.

That was another really awesome part, with the virtual 'computer'. I would love to see that in real life in the future; it'd just be amazing putting on a pair of glasses and a glove and having a full database of information just by moving your hand around.
 
jimbo118 said:
I see. I also played the demo and thought it was very boring.
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The reviews have stated that the first hours of the game is will be boring to some people. But stick with it, and you will be rewarded.
 
That was a ****ing terrible twist.

Big ****ing plot hole and a contradiction as well as a time paradox.

Overall, pretty sweet game. I believe I missed a few clues, because I had to give up on Jayden's investigation near the end.
 
Hmm...have been interested in this for awhile, too bad I lack the essential PS3 :( Ah, well, perhaps in time.
 
I'VE BEEN DEBATING WITH PEOPLE ABOUT THE STORY ALL NIGHT

IT
JUST
DOESN'T
ADD UP
 
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