Heavy Rain is exhilarating.

It starts out that way but it doesn't end that way and it doesn't take long to improve, either. How much of it have you played? Heavy Rain isn't the absolute masterpiece that its biggest fans would have the world believe, but there's a lot to love about it.

Haha, yeah, I know it gets better, although I'm three hours in and so far I've taken two showers and nursed a baby and not much else. This game might turn out to eventually be the Second Coming but that will never change how slowly it starts.

The Third Coming will occur by the time Heavy Rain gets good.

//Zig

I have seen gameplay (that word!) footage of at least.... maybe 50/60% of the game, and it does seem to get a little bit better later.

However, the beginning deserves all the ridicule it gets. I have watched it four times now, and it's still just as silly as the first time I saw it.

Heavy Rain is a deep and emotional experience. The filmwatch is amazing.

Just finished it. Uh... I'll hold comment until my review.

And wait... this game was supposed to be set in Philadelphia? Ha ha ha ha NO.

i predict suskie will give it a 6 out of 10.

He rated it a 4.

edit - The French man's idea of Philly.

I played it a little at a friend's house. IT seemed pretty neat to me, though I did find all the little things you had to do a bit annoying. I didn't mind it too much, though... I had more issues with the fact that the QTE cues blnded too much with the background so it was hard to follow them, and the fact that the camera seemed a bit unwieldy (i.e. it took me forever to find stairs and things) despite the fact that you could change the camera angle.

Still, I remained unbelievably intrigued about the people I was playing as. That's what I really found fascinating about the game; the control issues or whatever don't really matter compared to that.

If Suskie didn't like Heavy Rain... well, it doesn't come as a big surprise considering some of the comments he's made in the past about the game.

Suskie's writing in many of his reviews has indicated that gaming "experiences" don't interest him as much as gaming "games." Or maybe a better way to say it would be that there is a very specific experience he likes to have if the game is going to go that direction.

He may show up shortly with some possibly offended counter argument to this, but... well, what can I say? It really seem evident from reading the majority of his reviews.

It's not a bad thing. It's just what he prefers. But Heavy Rain is a game that relies on you being able to enjoy the vision it's portraying, and I'm not sure Suskie would enjoy that particular vision.

I'll be curious to see what his review says. He probably hated the controls.

I believe the game Suskie was thinking of was killer7. It's Heavy Rain but with excitement, interesting characters and setting and the bullshit is actually fun in a twisted, perverted way.

Suskie, I'll be interested in reading your review and seeing whether it agrees with Jim Sterling's opinion that the story really isn't as great as people hype it to be.

Interesting you say that, Genj, because I was just thinking about that. See, the story does eventually get good. It's got some clever twists and a central mystery that wraps up pretty neatly. I keep thinking that Heavy Rain would be better suited as a two-hour film with all of the filler and pretentious quick-time events removed; you could easily fit the entire plot into such time constraints.

Thing is, it still wouldn't be a great movie. It's a satisfying murder mystery, but how many murder mysteries do we see nowadays? Hell, just last week I saw a Korean movie called Mother that had more red herrings, presented a cooler "big reveal" and explored more interesting complexities of human nature.

Anyone who claims interactivity is the big selling point of Heavy Rain's plot is kidding themselves (I'll get more into this in my review), so all that's left is the plot itself, which eventually gets interesting but takes eight or nine hours to unfold and is ultimately "just another" murder mystery.

(Some of this might wind up in my review, actually. I'm still in the process of organizing my thoughts.)

For me, the big selling point was the feeling of consequence, which games like Fallout 3 and Fable (with all their hyped emphasis on player choice) hadn't been able to give me.

That's what sold me on Heavy Rain and made the experience worthwhile for me.

There's nothing Heavy Rain does in that regard that Mass Effect 2 hadn't already done a month earlier. ME2 also had the advantage of being an immensely enjoyable game -- and, ironically, it had a better story. So you can see why I'm not impressed by that argument.

HEAVY RAIN

I'd be curious to know what you think of my review now that you've played through the game, Suskie. Did it feel right to you?

For you, Mass Effect achieved that. For me... well, I've never played Mass Effect. Maybe if I one day break down and decide it's worth it to own a system that will inevitably break down, I may play the game and suddenly change my entire enthusiastic perspective on Heavy Rain.

But I doubt it.

Really, I think someone liking or disliking Heavy Rain has little to do with what you've played in the past.

^^^ You're probably right, though it's worth pointing out that being an "interactive drama" is Heavy Rain's only real claim to fame, and it forsakes gameplay in the process, which is a pretty serious sin in my book. So, it had better do the interactive drama thing pretty damn well to earn my favor, and I think it's telling that other, more complete games have done it better without even trying.

And please put it out of your mind that I've just compared a PS3 exclusive to an Xbox 360 game. Christ. You're really gonna start this again?

Jason: I'll try to leave another post in the feedback thread for your review sometime soon. Obviously I have a somewhat different perspective on it now that I've played the game.

And ha! HMD's link just made my week.