Heavy Rain Demo Impressions

I didn’t like Fahrenheit – it just wasn’t for me and didn’t grab me like it did some people out there. For me it was the pointless tasks that you had to do in order to progress that annoyed me – like hanging a coat up before getting information from someone in the office or kissing your girlfriend goodbye for being able to get out the door. The story to me was also boring and I really didn’t care how it finished.

So of course I was sceptical about Heavy Rain – the story intrigued me as I’m a big fan of murder mystery type games and the graphics also looked great from the trailers I saw. I don’t mind quick-time events so I also knew I’d be ok with it. But I wasn’t sold – the bad taste that was Fahrenheit was still in my mouth. When I heard there was a demo coming I was interested in checking it out to see if the game would be worth my time and I was lucky enough to get one of those codes off the web and get an early look at the game.

I was right about the graphics – they look pretty amazing. The characters are extremely lifelike and the environments really set the scene. The heavy rain is right there and pours down over the environment which reminds me a lot of the film Seven – provided there was only two levels in the demo but both were different in their look and offered different effects that showed off visuals.

The gameplay is what’s going to either keep people playing or make them trade this in – the majority of the time you’ll be interacting with a cutscene through quicktime events. This could be either hitting one of the face buttons or rotating the right thumbstick – there doesn’t appear to be a time limit unless you’re in a fight or tense situation. Conversations also require you to hit the face buttons and swirl around on screen making it difficult to read at times especially when they overlap. Perhaps the most annoying part of the gameplay is having to hold R2 to walk – the left thumbstick will steer your character but you need to hold down R2 if you want them to move. I don’t know why this is necessary as a lot of games only use the left thumbstick to move your character – it just seems like the developers are doing this just to be different. There are also Six Axis controls like shaking an asthma puffer or an opponent off you – I just hate six axis controls in general and don’t think they should be implemented in any game.

Of course – I’ve only played two levels and therefore this isn’t exactly a review rather then just impressions. The game did impress me with its visual and story but it’s going to be interesting to see how the gameplay holds up after eight hours or however long the game is. We should have a full review on the show when the game is released later this month.