Post 3 - Heavy Rain Phoenix Review

HEAVY RAIN REVIEW
(PLAYSTATION 3)
(May contain spoilers)

I finished playing through Heavy Rain pretty much a week ago, and now that I've had time to process, go back and replay a handful of endings, I feel like I'm ready to offer up a review.

To start off, Heavy Rain tells the story of 4 seemingly unrelated characters (main characters) that all seem to be going towards a similar goal, uncovering the mystery that is the Origami Killer. Each character has their own reason to be on the hunt, taking the player on a miriad of adventures.

Characters
As previously mentioned, Heavy Rain focuses on 4 individuals, Ethan Mars, Scott Shelby, Norman Jayden and Madison Paige. Each character has a set of unique attributes, flaws, and quirks that make playing them truly interesting,

Ethan Mars: Father of the missing son, desperately on the trail to prevent the death of his son, his character is particularly interesting and challenging to play due to the desperation in the character.




Scott Shelby: A former cop and Private Investigator, Shelby takes you through the town as he questions the former victims families. He has high charisma which allows him to gain information that the families are initially unwilling to unveil.



Norman Jayden: An FBI profiler, Jayden has been assigned to the case to attempt to use his superior logic to pinpoint the location and identity of the killer. He has a pretty interesting tool called ARI that allows him to see evidence and crime scenes in a truly unique way. This makes your job as FBI investigator extremely fun.



Madison Paige: Madison get's pulled into the story when she lands in the same location as Ethan by chance. With high wit, connections, and the willingness to help Ethan at all costs, she allows the player to progress the story in subtle ways behind the scenes and get into the underbelly of the city.



These may seem like some week characters, but it's hard to talk about them too much without spoiling some of the story. This is truly a game that needs to be experienced fresh from start to finish.

Story, plot, execution

As previously mentioned, the story takes the player on an adventure to discover the truth behind the Origami killings. The victims are all young boys who have been drowned, had mud placed on their face, a orchid on their chest, and an Origami figure in their hand. No one ever sees the kid go missing, even though it typically happens during the day in public places. The story picks up for our characters when Ethan's son get's kidnapped, creating a fresh trail for Jayden to search, and a new leverage for Shelby to use on the families of former victims. As Jayden is focusing on the current, Shelby tends to take the player to the past to try and uncover the identity of the killer. All the while Madison uses the opportunity to help Ethan without his knowledge with her connections. Madison's role is hard to describe without giving away some of the larger plot elements of the story, so forgive me for that.



Overall, one of the best stories in a game I've ever played. The execution is fantastic, there are times when your character knows something before you do, which really adds to the overall emotions as you reach the end. Each characters story is fun, unique, challenging and have tons of outcomes. Depending on the choices and actions you make can completely change your ending, and these important choices start almost instantly as you play the game. Characters can die in multiple ways, situations and points in the game, and rather than restarting from the point they die, that's it, that character is gone and you have to keep going from that point, reshaping your ending.

Due to the amount of endings you can achieve this game has tons of replay value. With the option of picking up from any chapter and point in the game, you can really utilize all the outcomes and easily milk this 7-12 hour game to 20 or more depending on whether or not you feel like replaying right from the start or just from closer to the end to see just how much little choices affect the ending. So if the length concerned you, I wouldn't worry too much about it just because of how much fun you can have going back and making different choices. Personally I see myself going back to this in 6 months to a year and replaying with a fresh face on it just to see what my outcome would be.

Gameplay
Very, very unique gameplay. Every action your character performs is controlled by you. To do minor movements you'll be required to twist and turn the analogue sticks in different ways, in moments of action, you'll have to press buttons and combinations in the allotted time or else your character could be in serious danger. Even something like jumping or climbing will require a different series of button combos, stick movements or even controller moving. This game really puts the power of sixaxis dualshock 3 to it's maximum output allowing players to perform tasks as easy as brushing your teeth, to slamming something into a wall.

When talking or interacting, a series of different words will swirl above your head with a different button corresponding. These choices will depend on how you respond to a character, what you ask a question about, and so on. So imagine someone's doing something they shouldn't be, you could get a couple words like X: Persuade, O: Threaten, square: sympathize, and so on. Depending on how you respond will push the person you're interacting with to a different state of emotion.


People worried about the challenge, don't fret too much, before the game starts, you can pick the difficulty of the controls, and this difficulty can be changed at any point in the game.

While playing I never ran into any issues or glitches with the controls, everything was fluid and depended on me performing the right movements rather than hoping the controller would pick up on it.

They also implemented a really cool aspect to the game that if you're character was on it's way to interact with someone, or away from someone they should be focusing on, it would cut to split screens, one with your character, doing whatever you're controlling it to, and then either what they need to be focusing on in order to get through, or where they're headed. So say you were distracting someone, half the screen would show the distraction and the people who were trying to solve it, then you would be moving towards your destination on the other half.

This game is heavily story driven so it's more like playing a movie and getting to control the protagonists than playing a video game. This may seem off putting to some people, but for me, and my girlfriend who watched me play, the story aspect is really what drug us in. Knowing that it wasn't how hard you could hit the attack button that would get you out of a tight situation, but purely your attention and quick hand that would get you to your destination. The story progressed in such a unique way that it was hard to put down the controller because it felt like you were watching a movie where you controlled the outcome. This is a real testament to the game creators because I can only imagine how hard it was to program a game like this with so many outcomes on a large and small scale.

Graphics



The graphics in this game were fantastic. Seeing as it's extremely story driven a lot of it is a cut scene in which your character can perform various movements in that situations, but sometimes you get the full fledged cut scene experience. As such, a lot of time and dedication went into the character designs, making them look as real as possible. With a full range of emotion, interaction with the environment, this is easily the most realistic game I've played.

The graphics would incorporate each event that happened to you, like if you slipped and fell in mud, wherever you fell would get dirty in the exact place you fell and in a way that seems extremely realistic, cuts were dependent on how badly and where you hurt yourself.

The environments were all extremely well done. All the locations are properly textured, and developers took the time to make sure there were subtle additions to the backgrounds. Due to the fact that the game takes place almost entirely in rain, this could have made texturing and making characters interacting with the environments difficult, but they executed it flawlessly. Characters become wet in accordance to the time they're outside, the rain drips off them and their surroundings realistically, and so much more. The dreary sky is perfectly created when some days are perfect overcast, while otherdays have slight glimmers of sun through the clouds.


I could go on, but I don't know how many more ways I can tell you that the graphics are some of the most realistic thing you'll witness in a video game to date.

Sound
Great soundtrack for the game. When there was music playing it was perfectly fitting to the situation, getting progressively more intense or "epic" as you reached the outcome. There were a multitude of songs that would associate themselves with certain character scenes, progressions and actions. They definitely hired the right composers for the songs because they truly display every emotion the characters are going through.

Voice acting was also top notch. I found that every voice matched the character, which doesn't always happen with games, none of the voices were annoying or over the top, and each voice actor played the parts flawlessly.

So, to the overall ratings!

Characters - 8.5 out of 10
Story, plot, execution - 10 out 10
Gameplay - 9 out of 10
Graphics - 9.5 out of 10
Sound - 10 out of 10

Overall Rating - 9.5

While this game might not be for everyone at the 60 dollar price tag, it's definitely a must try. I'd recommend everyone at least renting or borrowing this game because it's truly a unique experience.

-Hybrid Phoenix

(Originally posted on Phoenix Ignition [Blogger] by Amanda Coneen)
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