Heavy Rain Embargo lifts tomorrow at 9am Pacific


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Awww dude, I didn't have to see that guy in his birth suit this early :|

EDIT: Pubic hairs, GTFO!

Just as I'm tucking into breakfast :(

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Not quite the same thing, but Batman had a 5-o'clock shadow by the end of the game.

Yeah I definitely noticed that, I thought it was a real subtle but incredibly cool touch. (Y)

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Two things I notice

1) unobtrusive GUI... nice.

2) The interesting storyline and attempt to do something outside the box juxtaposed against the sheer amount of QTE could make for the funniest Yahtzee in a while.

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Two things I notice

1) unobtrusive GUI... nice.

2) The interesting storyline and attempt to do something outside the box juxtaposed against the sheer amount of QTE could make for the funniest Yahtzee in a while.

While I'm sure he'll tear it a new one unless he likes the story which seems to be quite dark/oppressive and moody (what he likes about SH2 one of his fav games), his main gripe with QTE is game over screens and having to re-do things. None of that here.

There are only a few proper QTE scenes, and mostly in fights where you actually have to think fast. All of the contextual movements popping up are basically the same as the verb commands in any adventure game, only less intrusive. Instead of a pointer turning into a huge eye as you hover over an action point, you get a little stylized icon with a direction.

You've gotta remember it really is just an old school adventure game modernized with a new-age control scheme, kind of like an evolution of point and click.

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Is this the game where you play a serial killer?

No, you play as 4 characters looking for the serial killer

It's boring, until it's not: the subtle genius of Heavy Rain

After spending a few evenings with a preview disc of Heavy Rain, we walk away excited about the game... but man does it start slow. This is going to be the next argument between critics about how important games are becoming in pop culture, and the sense of gravity the characters bring with them can be crushing.

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The scariest scene I played in a video game this year took place inside a mall, when I was tasked with watching my virtual child in Heavy Rain. The scene that unfolds uses a few tricks to keep you disoriented, and the tension is slowly increased until it's nearly unbearable. The way the action is laid out is hard to describe without spoilers, but the end result is nightmarish, and the pacing makes the outcome feel almost inescapable. This is a game that's going to divide critics, and gamers will find it either the high point of the industry or a complete failure.

Which one is it? I've played through the first few hours, and I can't make up my mind. I will say that we've never seen anything quite like it, and the emotional pay-off for these characters is high. These aren't power fantasies we're moving around a screen, and they don't do amazing things. They're people, and the game puts them in terrible circumstances to see how you, the player, will react.

Is this is a collection of quick-time events?

That's the most often heard criticism, based on what we've seen of Heavy Rain. Yes, you'll be hitting buttons to interact with onscreen cues, and some movement requires you to move the physical controller, taking advantage of the DualShock 3's motion-sensing abilities. You'll be doing many mundane things: turning lights on and off, cooking dinner, taking a shower. In fact, the first hour of the game seems to exist only to show you how normal your life as an architect and a father is. In that time I did some work, played with my kids, and helped my wife around the house.

After watching me playing the game, my real-life wife made pointed out that I could have actually done some work, helped her around the house, and then played with my kids in the time I had just spent with Heavy Rain. I didn't have a good counter-argument.

The game grabs you during the quiet moments where nothing "happens." When you look at a picture your child drew. When you're questioning someone about a crime. When you're trying to figure out how to react to a violent situation. The preview we were sent put me in different situations as I played a small handful of characters, and each one provided a few tiny moments that were surprising in terms of storytelling or subtlety. The problem is you'll also be asked to take a shower. You can use the restroom. Starting your car can take more than a few button presses. The speed of how you move the buttons matters when it comes to animations. Is all that granularity for simple tasks really needed?

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The idea behind creating this illusion of "real life" is immersion, and to make these characters feel real and breathing. But we're playing a video game here, and the effect may turn off more players than it draws in. The controls also take a while to get used to: you have to hold the trigger button to move forward, and when the static camera switches to a new view it can throw you off. You can look around on your own, sure, and in an interesting gimmick you can hold a button to explore what the character is thinking at all times, but again, for every upside to this system there is a downside.

The voice acting

Sony utterly spoiled the gaming world with the voice acting in Uncharted 2. That game is basically the high water mark for voice actors that sound involved, committed, and natural. Heavy Rain, with all its emphasis on this day-to-day nightmare, stumbles in this regard. The characters all feel fully fleshed out, but when they open their mouths the voice acting seems forced, and the rhythms are off. There are multiple vocal tracks, so you can hear them speak in nearly any language you want, but in English they simply don't sound like native speakers. It's barely noticeable in most cases, annoying in others.

For a game that's going to rely so much on emotion to make an impact, this is a big disappointment. There is still time before release to have this tightened up, and I was only able to play a small portion of the game, but from what I saw, this could be a downer for the game.

Choose your own tragedy

At E3, I was told that any of the characters could die at any time. That doesn't mean you've failed, it just means that you have a somewhat darker tale than other players. "There's no such thing as failure or winning or losing, you're creating a story. We have four characters, and any one of them can die at any point, and the story continues. It's just that character's storyline has been removed from your story," Petro Piaseckyj, Managing Producer for SCEA told Ars.

You get a sense that in Heavy Rain the stakes are much more personal than in most games. You're not saving the world, you're not fighting for the galaxy, you're just trying to hang on in what seems to be a very dismal city while faced with very bad circumstances. The way the button presses and movement allow you to interact with your world feels natural after a short time, and it stops seeming like a series of quick-time events almost instantly. You're simply opening an door, and you're moving the analog stick to do so instead of hitting a generic "action" button. Much thought went into these interactions.

The minutiae of gameplay?the showering, drying yourself off, and getting dressed?is a device to give you a sense of humanity, but with such a slow burn on the gameplay it may be hard to draw players in. When a pivotal scene is putting a child to bed, you may lose some gamers who are just waiting to fire a gun. This is a risky game, and it relies on human interaction and personal suffering for power. That's not a bad thing, and those that are drawn in may be rewarded with something very rare in our business: a new experience.

Heavy Rain will be released for the PlayStation 3 on February 28 in North America.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/12...-heavy-rain.ars

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  • 3 weeks later...

New trailer here, guys might be interested for a scene near the end, NSFW ;) - http://tvgry.pl/?ID=771

There's a dynamic theme as well but it's incredibly simple, still for those that like minimalistic approaches and things that don't interfere with the XMB icons

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Well they are quite frankly the best modelled ###### in a game.

I'm hoping the penis and vagina are up to scale as well (yes from what I've read both are in).

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There's a PENIS?!? Woohooo!

Btw Gavin, where's mah' gold?

Early night tonight, need to take the GF to work for 9am tomorrow :(

I'll hop on and send you some gold though if you need some money to keep going tonight - 5 mins.

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