I'm only a couple of hours into the greatness that is Heavy Rain. I've heard awesome things about it, and today, one of my friends had just beat the game at the library. The game seems short, but apparently the ending he got was way different from the ending that our resident gamer librarian got. I'm excited to see what kind of ending I get!
If anyone remembers the review I did for Call of Duty 4 I did about two years back, I said it was one of the greatest interactive movies ever. Playing Heavy Rain, this game is so far and beyond CoD as an interactive movie, I look back and I think,"I had some pretty low standards, huh!" I think Indigo Prophecy was a much better interactive movie than Call of Duty was.
I think one of the main appeals to the game and one of the things that make this game so good is how tense it makes you. You have to go into the game thinking and knowing that at any point, your character can die. This game gives you a lot of chances to think that it's over. The game also gives you very small reaction time for quick-time events. You could be doing everything fine and smoothly, but once you make that one mistake, you go from tense to off-of-your seat.
The other most appealing part of the game to me is that small choices DO affect how your story is played. I know that many games claim to do the same thing, but not at the same scale that Heavy Rain does it. Games that claim this usually change the events to the game, but they all lead up to the same last choice which is the only one that seems to matter. In Heavy Rain, anything you do can change how the story flows dramatically. As I told you earlier, one of my friends, Dane, had beaten the game and had gotten a completely different ending from what the librarian, Taylor, got. I haven't beaten the game, but apparently I had already proceeded to do things very differently from how she got through the levels, resulting in the death of an important character who didin't die on her save, probably throwing the game into a completely different direction. I just admire that a lot about this game.
The last thing I want to mention good about the game is how pretty the game looks. All the enviroments and characters seemed to have been worked very hard on, it takes you in. That's practically my main point about this game (and probably something I'll use as the sub-title for my upcoming review), "If you allow it to, Heavy Rain immerses you into a fantastic concept for a new generation of games". Sounds ambitious, right? But that's basically what I think. If you allow yourself to become connected withe characters, you will experience all the emotion and tension that they are feeling, which is something that many games that focus on story should do but fail to do.
I'm going to stop myself right here so I can save all my thoughts for the actual review, which will come out very soon after I finish the game. All I have to say right now though is, this game is a must-play! My contender for Game of the Year so far!