Zero Punctuation: Heavy Rain

[SerpentStare]

I lit up when I saw that Yahtzee had reviewed this game, because -I- had just recently watched a friend play the last half or third of it. Which of course means that I missed the slow beginning and jumped in at about the point that poor lost father was wondering whether he was slowly killing his own son and had to run through a crowded subway with an insomniac girl away from the police.

He's right about the biggest disappointment - that you can't dramatically alter the plotline, no matter what you do, only make a few little differences. For instance, the first thing Corey, my buddy, decided to do after beating it was return to the underwater car scene and rescue the girlfriend of the fat cop to see how it changed the next scene if he managed to save her - It didn't, really - absolutely nothing changed except perhaps some skipped revenge dialogue.

And then he tried going back and trying -not- to manage to get out of the car in time, since he'd been told there were some plot points where your major characters could die. And it turned out that you could still be sitting tied up when the water rushed in - you'd magically get out alive. With the girl, even! Failing completely got you the preferable ending!

Admittedly, the atmosphere of the game, at least the last part, and the suspense of its first play-though, is truly awesome. The decisions you have to make seem to carry a lot of weight - at least until you find out they change jack squat important. And the way you got to select thoughts and reactions, as little keywords floating nervously around your head, was a clever and evocative way of suggesting the feeling of thoughts spinning in your mind - and made the process of -thinking- at least more interactive than in many games wherein characters endlessly repeat whatever opinions or plot points they think you should know as you're running through the map.

 

[EAS_Suit]

I agree, it is bad at the start

 

[Aiden_the-Joker1]

I thought he would find the start really boring so did i. I leaped at the first opportunity to kill them off. second part was really good though.

 

[Dapz]

I agree with most of his comments, but I think it's best that the killer is always the same person. A murder mystery's story can't be very strong if it's that flexible!

 

[nipsen]

I agree with most of his comments, but I think it's best that the killer is always the same person. A murder mystery's story can't be very strong if it's that flexible!

..they could have just not declared who the killer was, and allowed it to be up to the viewer to decide who it really was.

But yeah, I agree the objection to the way they did this in Heavy Rain seems to be some sort of "academic" point about interactive gaming. Because in Heavy Rain they really have both. They had a very compelling narrative about deciding who the killer is first - then a detective part where you continue trying to figure it out. And they have a separate scene where the killer is revealed. And it seems pretty ridiculous to demand a more flexible scene like that, if they had to trade the "revelation" for it. After all, from the beginning we know that Ethan can't have actually been the origami killer in the papers. But he can be a copy-cat murderer. So QD really did the best possible with that story.

And any objection to that way of making the story would have to come along with a suggestion to restructure the story to be much less linear, with huge amounts of content that never would have been shown. And I'm not sure that's a very good suggestion, when the design in Heavy Rain was to have choice within particular context - and then reasonably limited story-paths and event triggers between those scenarios.

Instead, I guess you could mention that QD was pretty skilful in hiding where those branches happen. Because there are several events that are picked up and cause actual changes - most of them are never mentioned by one reviewer alone.

In the same way, the choices within the contexts are pretty intelligent - they make you choose for yourself what sort of motivation you have in the situation, rather than try to figure out what the main character's motivation is. Or, said in a different way, you are giving your character motivations in a situation - and the game then acts those out for you.

And that's.. pretty good, and novel, and new, and stuff like that.. on it's own. So that bears to be mentioned, before the "not enough choices" things - specially when combining those two ways of telling an interactive story really isn't possible.

Obsidian had a similar discussion going on when it came to choice in Alpha Protocol. Bioware has mentioned the same when comparing Mass Effect and Dragon Age. That you have two different approaches to the choices you insert in the story. So it's not as if you have nothing whatsoever to rest on here either..

 

[Angus Gibson]

I honestly thought that the game was one of the best games I've played in the realm of video games I've played in my 20 years of existence, but I agree that the game is a little bit slow at the beginning. However, being a literary/cinematic type of guy, I imagined that playing Heavy Rain was like a movie that the viewer was involved with.

 

[Angus Gibson]

Oh and I had to laugh at Yahtzee's talk about the hacking of extremity part.

"Just hack off an extremity where I can see you, *****! Anyways, the whole sequence gripped me by the BELL END!"

 

[Quillpaw]

Managed to get my hands on the game- not bad, pretty good story with a lot of padding, and I'll admit I was starting to nod off right around interrogating the hooker (meaning I ended up missing about half the QTE's in the immediate fight scene afterwards), but Yahtzee is right- it does get better later.

But as some people have said before, the plot holes just drove me up the wall. Hello?! What about Ethan's blackouts? What about Madison's insomnia? Where the hell was the ex-wife for all of this?

On second thought, screw the ex-wife. She was kind of a *****.

 

[Guyton77]

Very funny review but heavy rain is still the best game ever!

 

[Kekon3]

What's sad is that whether or not it's worth experiencing is irrelevant since it's a PS3 exclusive. The question is then not "Is it worth 50-60$ +tax?" but instead "Is it worth 350-360$ +tax?" the answer to which is sadly "Of fucking course not."

Oh well...

That was a terrible analogy.

 

[Kekon3]

I agree, it is bad at the start

But good at the finish

 

[Kekon3]

I'm surprised Yathzee actually like the game

Interesting interpretation of, "as a game, it's a stack of poo poo pancakes."

That's pretty much what I derived from researching it, really. It's not so much a game as it is a cinematic experience. Then, it's not so much a cinematic experience as it is a movie with some elements of interactions being rendered on PS3 hardware.

On the other hard, it did make Yahtzee highly uncomfortable, so it served as an excellent game for a Zero Punctuation review.

He also says the game gets getter better later. This is not a negative review. It's a mixed and somewhat ambiguous one. Hopefully he'll clarify himself with his next extra punctuation article.

That wasn't ambiguous to me. It gets better and better as something other than a game. It's as much a stack of poo poo pancakes at the beginning of the review as it is at the end of the review, as long as you're looking at it from the perspective of gameplay as opposed to cinematic experience. This is backed up with everything Yahtzee said from the beginning to the end of the review, from the poor pacing, to how the movement was handled, to how the ending was so linear.

He notes "it really does get better later"
Because THE STORY and EMOTIONS it forces you to feel (that's why the pacing was aweful at the beggining, so you can care what happens to these characters)
Stop being dependant on what Ben says.

 

[Kekon3]

See, what i don't like about this review is that everything is part of the plot, he claims that the dream sequence isn't important, but its character development, this is why I hate yathzee sometimes. He goes to the hot tub next to the pool and claims that there is no pool.
Its just a fuckin time waster to say things are bad when you just not paying a(FUCKING)ttention

 

[Kekon3]

Very funny review but heavy rain is still the best game ever!

Where do you live? I'd like to shake you hand and say "thank you for not being a idiot"

 

[Redgethebat]

See, I liked that the Killer doesn't change. For me, it always breaks the immersion, and I feel taken out of the experience when the killer changes. I mean, it wouldn't make sense, how would your actions change what person is killing these people?

 

[deserteagleeye]

I DONT GIVE A F*** WHAT ANY1 SAYS, HEAVY RAIN AND INDIGO PROPHECY ARE THE BEST GAMES EVER! I was emersed into the games at the beginning. I dont care if i sound like im overreacting, David Cage is the only guy that can bring a good simple yet compelling videogame. Not like Hideo Kojima who tries to make the plot so brain-rapingly confusing and detailed like hes trying to make americans feel like retarded republicans... I mean republicans. These games are the only good thing that came from the french... except maybe french maid outfits.

 

[deserteagleeye]

Very funny review but heavy rain is still the best game ever!

Where do you live? I'd like to shake you hand and say "thank you for not being a idiot"

I feel the exact same way man

 

[Dapz]

I agree with most of his comments, but I think it's best that the killer is always the same person. A murder mystery's story can't be very strong if it's that flexible!

..they could have just not declared who the killer was, and allowed it to be up to the viewer to decide who it really was.

But yeah, I agree the objection to the way they did this in Heavy Rain seems to be some sort of "academic" point about interactive gaming. Because in Heavy Rain they really have both. They had a very compelling narrative about deciding who the killer is first - then a detective part where you continue trying to figure it out. And they have a separate scene where the killer is revealed. And it seems pretty ridiculous to demand a more flexible scene like that, if they had to trade the "revelation" for it. After all, from the beginning we know that Ethan can't have actually been the origami killer in the papers. But he can be a copy-cat murderer. So QD really did the best possible with that story.

And any objection to that way of making the story would have to come along with a suggestion to restructure the story to be much less linear, with huge amounts of content that never would have been shown. And I'm not sure that's a very good suggestion, when the design in Heavy Rain was to have choice within particular context - and then reasonably limited story-paths and event triggers between those scenarios.

Instead, I guess you could mention that QD was pretty skilful in hiding where those branches happen. Because there are several events that are picked up and cause actual changes - most of them are never mentioned by one reviewer alone.

In the same way, the choices within the contexts are pretty intelligent - they make you choose for yourself what sort of motivation you have in the situation, rather than try to figure out what the main character's motivation is. Or, said in a different way, you are giving your character motivations in a situation - and the game then acts those out for you.

And that's.. pretty good, and novel, and new, and stuff like that.. on it's own. So that bears to be mentioned, before the "not enough choices" things - specially when combining those two ways of telling an interactive story really isn't possible.

Obsidian had a similar discussion going on when it came to choice in Alpha Protocol. Bioware has mentioned the same when comparing Mass Effect and Dragon Age. That you have two different approaches to the choices you insert in the story. So it's not as if you have nothing whatsoever to rest on here either..

My main point is that the reason we usually observe murder mystery stories is for the shocking (if done well) revelation at the end about who the murderer is. However, if you find out who the murderer is but know that it's just one possible outcome out of many then the effect is somewhat marred. For a strong murder mystery story, you need to have a definitive murderer.

 

[samaugsch]

"Weird black thing found dead; no one cares."