Heavy Rain Move Support Might As Well Be Violin Support


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Heavy Rain Move Support Might As Well Be Violin Support

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In theory, the PlayStation 3 controller is a complicated mechanism, a device with too many buttons for the average person to understand. In theory, the better control mechanism for interactive drama is a good old remote control you can wave.

Heavy Rain, which is indeed an interactive drama made to be appreciated by regular people who like cop shows and mysteries, will soon support Sony's Move controller.

For me, a person who is comfortable with a PS3 controller, the Move feels like it is just no good for this task. Last week, at a Sony showcase event, I tried playing Heavy Rain with the Move. This is a game I liked. This Move was a controller that had already impressed me.

I was playing the scene when the private investigator visits the prostitute. There is conversation early on and then, once the prostitute's "friend" shows up, there is a brawl. With a PS3, you control everything, from the private eye's leaning and coaxing for more information up to the violent swings and lunges of the brawl, with various prompted presses of controller buttons and sticks. The concept is the same with the Move, except now you are not tilting a stick or pressing a button ? you are gesturing.

Some of the gestures work, as when you knock on the door of the prostitute's apartment by knocking on an imaginary door in front of the TV. During the brawl, some of the arm swings needed make it feel like you're fighting the guy right there in real life.

But... the big downer here ... is that gesture control systems are poor at explaining failure. If a game prompts me to press a button and I fail the challenge, I assume I didn't press the button fast enough and I commit to pressing it more swiftly next time. If a game wants me to jab the Move wand forward and I think I do but I get a red circle indicating failure, I can't tell if my timing was off, my forward jab wasn't far forward enough, or ... was it pointed down too much? Too high? Not a straight line?

Perhaps the Move support for Heavy Rain, which will be offered as a downloadable update to the game, will work better in the hands of a person who doesn't have the PS3 controller as a point of reference.

Maybe for them the Move will feel as natural to wield as a PS3 controller does for me. At least I now know how exotic a new controller feels to someone who isn't comfortable wielding it, as exotic and ungainly as a violin you might put in my hands if you told me Heavy Rain could be controlled with a few toneful notes on that.

Heavy Rain with Move isn't for me. I'm too convinced the PS3 controller is the superior input device for this. But I'm left wondering: Will Move players of Heavy Rain know, when they have failed, why they have failed? Will they be able to improve?

Or will they do one last shake of their arms, a wave of frustration?

Source: Kotaku

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Super tiny spoiler in that article if someone didn't play the demo or game.

Thanks for the read. I still think Heavy Rain is ideal for Kinect. Heavy Rain is an epic game that should be played by all.

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^ yeah I had to read around that...

As for HR, I still think Kinect would suit it better than Move/Wiimotes.

edit: doh, Brian stole my reply! His sneaky ninja edits :angry: :p

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According to the hands on Kinect would probably be even worse than move blink.gif

But... the big downer here ... is that gesture control systems are poor at explaining failure. If a game prompts me to press a button and I fail the challenge, I assume I didn't press the button fast enough and I commit to pressing it more swiftly next time. If a game wants me to jab the Move wand forward and I think I do but I get a red circle indicating failure, I can't tell if my timing was off, my forward jab wasn't far forward enough, or ... was it pointed down too much? Too high? Not a straight line?

So the gesture ONLY based hardware would work better than the mashup between button/gesture? Not according to Kotaku.

I'll load this up to try it, but it's a done and dusted game for me.

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^ yeah I had to read around that...

As for HR, I still think Kinect would suit it better than Move/Wiimotes.

edit: doh, Brian stole my reply! His sneaky ninja edits :angry: :p

Beverly-Hills-Ninja-ps02.jpg

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Gesture only could work if they design the game to give some kind of feedback for the movements. It sounds like they just shoehorned Move controls into the game.

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Massive Spoiler:

I don't understand why Shelby tried to help out the families? He was incredibly cruel to the children he drowned, but why help the parents? And why even play him as a character? Why did he investigate people? I just don't understand.

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Massive Spoiler:

I don't understand why Shelby tried to help out the families? He was incredibly cruel to the children he drowned, but why help the parents? And why even play him as a character? Why did he investigate people? I just don't understand.

I assumed he was there to hoover up any remaining evidence in case it ever fell into the hands of the police. The biggest plot hole to me was the fact that, after you find out that Shelby is the evil dude, all mention of Ethan's blackouts is completely forgotten about, why he had visions of drowning the children is never entered into, and how he woke up from them with origami in his hands is never explained. To my mind this is a massive ****ing cop-out that renders the game artistically null and void as far as narrative is concerned. By the end of the game it's painfully obvious that the whole issue of the blackouts was just a cheap invention on the part of the writers to lead the audience up the wrong alley when they inevitably try to postulate who the murderer is. A cheap and amateurish trick.

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So is this any more effective or engaging than using a standard controller? I didn't think it would be, but I must admit that my answer, based on the 10 or 15 minutes of game I played, is "yes." The actions aren't one-to-one -- the game still waits for the input before reacting -- but the actions certainly make you feel more involved than simply pressing buttons on a control pad. This was particularly noticeable in some of the high intensity scenes, like when Shelby fights the biker or Madison fights off attackers in a dream sequence. The on-screen actions are already getting your heart racing, and it's likely that (depending on how "into it" you get) the Move actions will help get it moving a bit faster.

The takeaway? I wish I had played Heavy Rain with Move the first time around. Because while the experience was more absorbing, I'm not sure it's enough to get me to play through the game's story (or stories, as the case may be) again. From what I'm told, Quantic Dream isn't adding any additional content beyond Move support. But if you haven't played Heavy Rain yet, I urge you to hold off a bit -- the game will receive the update for Move support when the controller ships this fall.

http://www.destructo...t--179879.phtml

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Using a controller is no doubt the most accurate, lag free way to experience the game. Adding motion may enhance your perception of immersion, but in the end, they are still gimmicks.

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