We should probably start with the gameplay, because frankly, it would not be the same game with any other control scheme. For the most part, the story follows 4 main characters; and as the story progresses, you control one of the four main characters to determine the outcomes in the game. There is a general control scheme, press R2 to walk, look with the left joystick, etc. But the various things you can do in the game depend, almost entirely, on quick time events that are dictated by the situation including which character you are, what you're looking at, and if you're involved in an action sequence. For those of you who are confused by the quick time event (assuming there are readers out there like that) you'll find notable examples in the God of War trilogy in which boss battles have a huge element of quick time events worked into them. Because the game isn't balls-to-the-wall action packed, the quick time events are a nice control scheme and offer the ability for the story writers of the game to have the game play out more like a pick-a-path book with the exception that it's not only what you choose for your character to do, but it's also what you can make your character do by following the on-screen commands in a time appropriate matter. I do offer the criticism that the game isn't always as responsive as I'd like and that there are times when I feel like an option should have been offered to me, but I was in just the wrong position.
Of course, the gameplay, based on the style, leads directly into the story of this game. The game is, as I said, pick-a-path in fashion, but centers around a mystery feeling story. One of the four main character's son is kidnapped and the story revolves around trying to figure out either where the kid is before he dies, who kidnapped the kid in the first place (because this isn't the first time the killer kidnapped to kill), or both. Your direction plays an important role* in determining what each character does to try to solve the mystery.
*I say play an important role because Ashley the Bard was frequently met with frustration because there are only a limited number of options available and she often felt that none of them were the option she wanted. I think she's been ruined a little bit by D&D and the open-endedness offered by a living, breathing game-maker present determining how the world interacts with literally whatever decision you make.
As far as the look of the game, I feel like they did a lot to make the game feel movie like. Obviously, this is not an uncommon choice in video games. It is somewhat accepted that games based in a world similar to ours should look, feel, and sound like our world and Heavy Rain seems to buy into that idea. It seems to me that character models are built on some kind of layers, especially the faces. And even if it's not true, that's the perception I get, which is fine. Our faces are made up of layers and I believe this layer feel in the game is what so often leads the main characters to have expressions I can understand and identify with. I don't believe, however, that the same attention to detail was paid to lesser characters which has left them with a less than understandable and certainly not natural looking facial expression. I understand that correcting this problem is something that could take years of work and possibly more than the PS3 has to offer as a video game system. Otherwise, though, I appreciated the environments and the rain effects in the the game were beautiful, and one would hope that they would be given the title of the game.
Sound was also something that I both loved and hated about the game. I, for the most part, didn't notice the background sounds in the game, which usually means to me that 1) it was there (I would have noticed its absence), and 2) they didn't do anything really wonky that would distract from the game. To me, that's a win. In the foreground, though, there was voice acting. some of it was very well done, and again, I found that the characters who were less important had not only lesser quality voice acting than the main character, but they were also just bad in some cases. Again, I found the emotions in the voices unidentifiable as human emotion which distracted from what they were supposed to be conveying. I'm sure this was more a budget issue than anything else, but I can't escape the feeling that the makers of the game spent the perfect amount of time on some scenes or even possibly too much but then too little on others.
Beyond the issues I had with the sound, the controls, and the faces, I found (like many other players) that Heavy Rain freezes and glitches at some points. I even ran into a situation at one point in the game where I walked into a place that I was unable to walk out of because there was a ramp that led me over the ledge blocking it off so I could get into it, but not one to let me back out of it once I fell into this pit trap. All of these drawbacks pulled away from my favorite video game concept immersion. The all important concept that, other than gameplay, will be the reason you keep coming back to a game or even a set of games. With all this said, my experiences with glitching, freezing, and getting trapped were very few, but without them, I would have almost nothing negative to say about the game.
The last thing I'd like to mention about the game is that one of the characters has access to an augmented reality system that is pretty much my dream of what augmented reality should be like. It can be used anywhere on pretty much anything of interest and it even stores your computer/office for you so you can take it anywhere. It's much more portable than a laptop, an ipad or, hell, even an iphone. In a game that's all about concepts, such as the gameplay system, the non-fixed storyline, etc. I think the augmented reality system in the game was my favorite concept.
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