Heavy Rain

So I remember a lot of people hating on the game when it came out and then a lot of other people saying the first group of people were wrong. I myself never paid attention to the whole thing but for reasons I have no idea, the urge to give it a shot just came over me. I know it's apparently a very plot-heavy game and that is kinda what I like in my games, even if I'm mostly a fan of RPGs. I also know nothing of this game's plot since I paid no attention to it when it was new and talked about a lot.

So my fellow Xeno nerds who can empathize with mah love of plot-heavy games, what did you think of it?

I enjoyed it, for the most part. After playing Indigo Prophecy, I really wanted to see Quantic Dreams build on their story-driven games and improve. Which it did, but I felt it kind of fell apart near the end. There were some nasty plot holes and moments that really stretched the limits of the imagination (in a bad way). Overall, I enjoyed the journey, not the destination. If you like it, though, I would also recommend Beyond Two Souls since it is from the same company, though that was also an imperfect experience I could nitpick at. Of course, it is my opinion, so don't let my negativity influence you in the least.

I absolutely loved Heavy Rain! I consider it a huge improvement over Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy), although I still liked that game as well. I don't really agree with Jin about the game falling apart towards the end, I personally thought the game remained solid all the way through. The only real plot hole I can think of was explained in the deleted scenes which Quantic Dream released;

i.e. they had a paranormal explanation for something which happens in the game, but they decided to remove the paranormal aspect because they wanted to keep things realistic, which does make that plot point make no sense anymore (they should have just removed that plot point entirely instead of keeping it in with no given explanation).

Btw, as for gameplay; it's not so much a game as it is an interactive movie. Think point-and-click adventure game with the point-and-clicking replaced by button prompts. The gameplay is basically 80% QTE, except most of the time screwing up the button prompts won't get you killed. Oh, and the few times when your playable character can die, know that this game has 4 playable characters and if one of them gets killed, the story continues with the remaining characters. But you will always make it to the end of the game, it's not possible to get all 4 of your characters killed before the end of the game. I would recommend trying to keep everyone alive, though, unless you don't mind getting depressing bad endings (this game has a lot of different endings). There are at least 20 different ending scenes (emphasis on scenes, not endings; several endings share the same scenes).

As Jin said, there's also the spiritual sequel Beyond: Two Souls, but I personally felt that game was nowhere as good as Heavy Rain. The gameplay is pretty much the same, though. Except in Beyond you can't die at all, which made the game feel unrewarding to me. What's the point of getting the button prompts right if messing them up will never, ever get your character killed? There's no thrill during danger scenes because you know the main character can't die anyway.

PS: Heavy Rain can probably be considered a spiritual sequel to the previously mentioned Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, which also has similar gameplay, but that one is considerably heavier on action scenes and your characters can very much die in that game, a lot more than in Heavy Rain (which is more forgiving in that regard). Fahrenheit is an old PS2 game, though, and I think it will be fairly hard to find (I had some trouble getting my hands on a copy of the game myself).

But yeah, Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit and Beyond: Two Souls are all plot-heavy games made by Quantic Dream.
Omikron: The Nomad Soul is their only game which is quite different (Omikron is a mix of Third Person Adventure/First Person Shooter action scenes/2D Fighter-style hand-to-hand combat and Open World exploration, quite a mix, eh?  :happy5: ).

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I do agree it was a step up from Indigo Prophecy.  I loved that game, but the second half went downhill fast, pacing-wise.  I also agree that I probably prefer Heavy Rain over Beyond Two Souls.  There were several times in Beyond Two Souls where I wanted to either control someone or move something in order to reach the goal, but the game only wanted you to do things in certain ways:  only this person can be possessed, only this object can be moved.  What's the criteria?  Beyond the choices you make, the gameplay felt incredibly linear, like QuanticDreams is telling you exactly how to play their game.

Well, this is gonna be a massive spoiler-reply, so I'm stuffing it all in a spoiler box. v

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