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Heavy Rain won't be the kind of game many gamers have played before - its blend of intense, top-notch Hollywood thriller storytelling, character immersion, and the quick time events that constitute the majority of its traditional gameplay are a new creature - while interactive drama has been attempted before, never has such polish and quality gone into the effort. To call Heavy Rain a tremendous success may be a bit misleading, because not every gamer will be ready - or wants to be ready - for this experience. That said, Heavy Rain's achievements make it accessible to even the most dismissive gamer, given the right setting. The fact that it's the best-looking game for the PS3 to date doesn't hurt, either.
This is a game to be played with the lights off, alone - or at least with a friend who's willing to keep his or her trap shut. Quantic Dream's interactive drama is at its best when you follow it into the unexplored space between dramatic games and compelling drama - I've summarized the game to friends (by no means a perfect analogy) by saying something like this: 'Imagine you're actually in one of the Saw movies, only it's a good movie, and you're playing all the major parts, and instead of watching Cary Elwes decide whether or not to cut off his foot, you are Cary Elwes, and if you do decide to cut off your foot, not only do you have to actually do it, but you have to figure out how.'
So while the demo available on PSN might have given gamers the wrong taste of the game - the mechanics of asthma inhalers never having made for great gameplay or drama - when playing the game proper, the story quickly pulls you in and imparts genuine urgency to your control over the literal, sometimes mundane actions of the four playable characters. Buying a balloon for your kid at the mall before the opening credits may not sound intense, but chasing him through the crowd with the balloon as your only marker certainly can be. Especially while knowing, with that foreboding sixth sense that all good movie-watchers have, that losing sight of your kid in a crowded mall is never a sign of good things to come. Instead of watching helplessly, as you would in a Hollywood thriller, you're now acting, and you never know whether the situation is helpless or not. That bumps up the suspense tenfold.
Published Date: 03/15/2010
SECTION: Science & Technology
SOURCE: GayGamer.net
Category: heavy rain, heavy raininteractive drama, interactive dramaorigami killer, origami killerps3, ps3quantic dream, quantic dreamreview, review
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