Heavy Rain review: two thumbs up!!

I just finished Heavy Rain and two thumbs up is the appropriate word for it. Heavy Rain is interactive, decision based drama about a serial killer called Origami Killer. The game is told from 4 different perspectives whom somehow connected to the killer.

The game itself is a combination of QTE (quick time event), instant decision making based, and role playing. It is hard to specify Heavy Rain into specific genre. Once you played it, you'll understand what Heavy Rain is all about.
Quantic dream wanted to make a different game where player can feel some emotions. David Cage said that gamers until now are only feel simple emotion ie (excited, angry). By creating this game, he wanted gamers to feel more emotions such as remorse, sad, sympathy and I think while Heavy Rain won't make you cry, I would say they manage to achieve their goal.

The entire game is a series of cut scene, just like if you are watching movie. But instead, you'll be making your own decision and every decision resulted in almost different situation, which of course will impact the ending. Should you play Heavy Rain twice, it will not be 100% the same with the first one. For example: You hear that a women is being beaten in other room. In this situation you will save her, but it depends on how quickly you are. If you didn't act quickly, after the scene, the girl's face is bruised. Otherwise, the face will be fine.
And it is refreshing to play second walkthrough but choosing a different decision and see how it goes.

Apart from glitches and bugs, Heavy Rain is a must play game. It's not everyday you will encounter game like this. I bet from now on, a lot of developer will be interested in making this type of game.
Well presented story, insane graphics makes Heavy Rain worth game of the year award.

Score: 9.5/10
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Game in focus: Heavy Rain

Developed by Quantic Dreams, Heavy Rain is a PS3 exclusive that set to release Spring 2010.
It's an interesting out of normal game. It is a game that is not action nor RPG, its hard to describe. It mainly involves with story telling about normal people in extraordinary situation. The plot is about a serial killer named "Origami Killer", the story will be divided between three different people, hence different view of the story. A detective, a woman who tried to find her missing child, and a private investigator (yet to be confirmed), which of course, all of them has a tie somehow to this Origami Killer.

The gameplay is expected to be dynamic enough to give you freedom. For example: there was a scene that require you to gather information from a shopkeeper, then a robber comes in and point the gun to the keeper. You happened to stay out of sight from the robber. Do you plan to grab a bottle and sneak behind the robber and hit him, or you simply try to calm the robber down and talk to him? Every decision you make has a consequences. Fail to talk down the robber can result in a bullet in your arms, for example. And depending what action you take, the information from shopkepper will be different also.

David Cage, the CEO of Quantic Dreams confirmed that Heavy Rain demo is on the way, but he reiterate that it is hard to decide what is it in the demo.

We are currently working on a demo, which is a real challenge. Finding one scene that can convey what we are trying to achieve with Heavy Rain is something really difficult. If we show an action scene, some players will think that this is what Heavy Rain is all about, and it is the same thing if we show an exploration scene. The problem is that each scene of the game offers contextual game play, which is something very difficult to explain and convey in a single demo.

Demos are often a double-edge thing: if you don't release one, players might think that you have something to hide. We also know many good games that ended up not being massive hits because the demo could not convey the quality of the game behind it.

Because Heavy Rain is a anew concept and since many gamers will want to check what it is before buying it, we will be releasing a demo. We just need to find the best scene for it.

I will certainly look forward the demo when it comes out, cause I have a feeling that this game might be one of the extraordinary games.

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