Heavy Rain

Meh. Nothing else seems to be happening, and I got some time till I finish with Bad Company 2 and God of War 3 (which was donated by a fan...omg I have a fan; thank you Thomas!) so why not? Oh yea, because I'm a game critic, and this aint a game. Don't give me some philosophical bullshit about how this changes the nature of video games or some shit like that because it don't. You can get the same effect with an interactive DVD except I guarant-damn-tee you it won't be 8-10 hours long. Is it interesting? Yes. Is it engaging? Yes. Will you see it to the end? Probably Yes. Would I recommend it for purchase? You know what, Yes. So it's a game? Heeeeeeeell the fuck no.

In this story, you "play" through the perspectives of 4 people who, each for their own reasons, are looking for the Origami Killer, a guy who kidnaps little boys and leaves their dead bodies somewhere in a wasteland days later with origami figures left in their hands. Nice. To be a successful serial killer, you always gotta leave a calling card of sorts, and make that card as unrelated to the crime as possible. If you like to behead your victims, leave beanie babies. If you like to torture them to death, leave copies of Sonic Unleashed. If you're into choking, place a Mets jersey over them. Okay, now it's starting to get a little relate-able, but the point is be random with it. That way, you gain notoriety and yet no one will know what the fuckin point of it is. The story starts off incredibly slow...turtle slow...fuckin paint dryingly slow, but stick with it then something remotely interesting will happen. After that, THEN the story shows excellent pacing. Each character you play as is somewhat interesting, but only one of them sparks any emotional interest, and that's the dad trying to get his son back. Everyone else I can take or leave (or in this case...kill off). The story is heavily dependent on the decisions you make and will change accordingly. In other words, there's no game over. The story moves on no matter what you do. That's cool and all, but there's one fatal flaw in the design: the killer is always the same person. Murder mysteries aren't fun if you know the killer already, so it kinda kills the replay value, especially since you can just watch the alternate endings on youtube. There's also one big glaring plot hole, but people normally disregard it anyway.

Someone asked me how do you play it? Simply, you push buttons. That's it; you push buttons. The whole game is quick time events, and if you know me by now you know I HATE quick time events. Luckily, you don't get dinged too bad for missing one or two in this game. I will admit that the moments are intense and since it's a core part of the gameplay it doesn't feel like a burden. Still, pressing buttons when prompted to isn't really that interactive. When you're at a ballgame and the announcer tells you to stand up and cheer, do you really feel like part of the game? I don't remember you striking out the batter so I guess not. It's more like a choice your own adventure book (I used to love the Goosebumps ones). There are times when you can walk around and talk and/or interact with shit, and these moments play like good old fashion adventure games, except it's boring as hell. All you're doing is touching random shit to try to make the story progress, and it's just tedious. Why the fuck am I'm juggling? What purpose does this serve? This ties into the slooooooow start I was talking about because shit like this unnecessarily eats up time, time I could be spending finding the killer.

I give the development team credit for trying something different (something games tend to NOT DO anymore), and once it finally got going, it was a kick-ass experience, but this is definitely not for everyone. A little bit more interactivity would have been nice, and for god sakes, let's try something else besides quick time events for a change.

Rating: Fuckin Awesome, Sweet, Meh, Ass, Bricked!

NOTE: I tried to be a spoiler-free as possible, hence no videos.