Heavy Rain, a game that’s, well, not your typical game.  I like to refer to it as an interactive drama.  Heavy Rain is not for people who like to just skip the story and get straight to the action, its about character development and interaction.  For those who say to themselves “why would I want to pay 60 dollars for a game that’s more like a movie?”, well think of it this way, the game took me roughly 10 hours to complete, which would be the equivalent of 5 2 hour movies, so I’d say its a pretty good deal if you want to look at it in that light!  Also it is not just like watching a movie, you the player get to decide how these characters turn out.  The game held my interest and really did have me on the edge of my seat for some parts, and what made it even more thrilling is the fact that I was in control, and missing one button press could change everything.

The controls in Heavy Rain are pretty straight forward, you use the analog and the R2 button to move your character, and if you can interact with something the corresponding button will pop up on screen.  The game is full of quick time events (QTE), making for some pretty intense sequences.  In some cases these QTE’s can literally mean life and death.  When you load up Heavy Rain for the first time the game will ask you how familiar you are with the controller, basically it boils down to easy, medium, and hard.  The difference between them is how fast you have to react in the QTE’s, so those who don’t have the greatest reflexes can put it on an easier setting and still enjoy the game.  Though if you are familiar with the controller I recommend putting it on the harder setting, it makes it much more intense!

The graphics are top notch, the characters look amazing, and the facial expressions they give are pretty realistic.  There are a few cases where you’ll come across a character that just doesn’t look quite right, but its not that big of a deal. During my play through I never found any graphical glitches of any kind, but I have heard of some people having issues of things just disappearing, or characters teleporting around.

The music really delivers the whole dramatic experience, queuing up music that just adds to the moment at the right times.  The sounds were nothing that stood out, which might be because the developers were going for the realistic approach even with the sounds.  I don’t remember there being any huge BANG or POW sounds when say, one character punched another.

Many people say that its hard to play through again since you have set in your mind how the story should play out, but, one doesn’t have to play through the entire game to see how different scenarios play out, you can go back and select a particular scene and just play that part differently.

So Heavy Rain overall was a game that I thoroughly enjoyed and will be playing through again just to see just how much the story changes depending on my decisions.