I beat Heavy Rain. All in all it was fuckin awesome but the game has almost been out a year now so I'm not gonna blabber on about it. Plus, it's hard to talk to much about such a story oriented game without giving anything away so instead I'm gonna quickly sum up the good and bad.
Note -- There are absolutely NO SPOILERS to be found here so don't worry about that
The Good
Compelling story
Kind of a given by now; the story is the big selling point of this game and it doesn't disappoint. In fact I haven't felt so invested in a games narrative since Metal Gear Solid 4.Pretty graphics
The level of detail in this game, most notably the character's faces, is mad. I was honestly blown away.Solid Gameplay
Yeah that's right -- it ain't just a big cutscene. I had my doubts but for the most part, the quick time event style of gameplay was just a huge amount of fun. You might think it gets old and repetitive fairly quickly. You would be wrong. Character movement however is a different story, more on that further down.
The Bad
Awkward character animations
For the most part, the animations in this game ain't half bad ... for the most part. Some scenes involving physical character interactions (with objects and other characters) just look way off.Tank movement
This almost drove me to insanity a few times. The controls for moving playable characters are not entirely unlike a PS1 survival horror game except now you hold R2 for them to start moving and then you change direction with the stick. I got used to this very quickly and to be honest there isn't a whole lot of walking around. However I lost count of how many times I managed to get a character stuck in a corner or a doorway or the like.Flat out weak voice acting
Simply put, the voice acting just isn't that good. I might be wrong but I'm led to believe that most of the cast are British and (being British myself) the accent comes through quite clearly despite being set in America with American characters. Some of the voice work (most notably the children in the game) sounds so rushed and artificial which is a damn shame in such a character driven game.
So yeah you might notice that there are some pretty horrid flaws in this game which I think speaks volumes about how good an experience Heavy Rain is. I was easily able to just forget about the problems this game has and I really enjoyed it. In fact I played it untill I unlocked every last trophy which brings the platinum trophy count up to 2 ... impressive huh?
If I was gonna do a very late game of the year top 10 (I'm not) then yeah, this would be up there without a doubt. Top 5? Nah, but without the flaws this game unfortunately does suffer from, it could be. The whole 'interactive drama' thing that the developers have gone for really works and has massive potential for something really great, although perhaps not a sequel ... please god not a sequel.
Next game on the list: Final Fantasy XIII -- This ain't a backlog game, I've already beaten it however amidst all this XIII-2 hoopla (Don't get me wrong, I'm firmly against the idea) I got the urge to play it again. Hopefully another platinum?
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