Quite possibly (and quite likely to be) one of the funniest video games ever released. David Cage is like the Ed Wood of the video game industry, but only if Ed Wood had zero charm, a legacy that’s seen as a joke rather than an inspiration, and a fandom of incredibly strange sycophants who have tricked themselves into thinking any of his stories would be able to hack it on daytime television.
Heavy Rain is an experience, and one that you legitimately owe it to yourself to play. This isn’t because it’s good, but rather because it’s atrocious. Games critics were over the moon for this back in 2010. People were desperate to totally own Roger Ebert for saying video games couldn’t be art, so they latched onto shit like this. It’s a poorly-acted, poorly-scripted, poorly-thought out mess. It's like a living guide on how not to make a game. It’s incredible. Get some friends together and make a stream night or two out of it.
Ethan Mars can have both of his children murdered and then be propositioned for sex by his new love interest while kneeling atop their graves. He then walks to his car and kills himself. This is supposed to be sad and not actually the most hilarious thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life.
Heavy Rain is an experience, and one that you legitimately owe it to yourself to play. This isn’t because it’s good, but rather because it’s atrocious. Games critics were over the moon for this back in 2010. People were desperate to totally own Roger Ebert for saying video games couldn’t be art, so they latched onto shit like this. It’s a poorly-acted, poorly-scripted, poorly-thought out mess. It's like a living guide on how not to make a game. It’s incredible. Get some friends together and make a stream night or two out of it.
Ethan Mars can have both of his children murdered and then be propositioned for sex by his new love interest while kneeling atop their graves. He then walks to his car and kills himself. This is supposed to be sad and not actually the most hilarious thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life.
Folks I have been looking for Jason for a good twenty to thirty hours
This is some CLASSIC dog shit, if we're talking quality of the game and story itself, this is a 1.5 star easy, but if we're talking entertainment value with a group of friends, five stars all the way.
Played this just to experience the Shaun glitch, it didn't work for me. Wasnt happy.
there are two ways to enjoy this game: as a serious, emotional story of a father looking for his kidnapped son (not recommended) or as a big pile of ridiculous sub-Saw bullshit full of unintentionally hilarious moments (also not recommended).
Pretentious the game. Rarely have I played a game so high on its own self-importance. Heavy Rain really thinks it tells a dynamic and emotionally resonate story. For those that made the effort to play the game, they were rewarded with a straight to DVD cinematic experience that is both exploitive and derivative. Where to start? The villain is Walmart brand, diet Jigsaw. Madison exists to get naked, sexually assaulted, and be a mere love interest in the best of the game’s its endings. Do you like quick-time events? You know that popular mechanic from the early 2000’s that EVERYBODY loved? Well, you better because that is all the game is.
What is the story really trying to say? What is anyone supposed to take away from it? “How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?” Well, if you don’t go far enough, I guess you are at fault, not the serial killer. I suppose the motion capture was pretty good for its time, and the actors do their best to make the stale characters presentable, but that is the best that can be said about Heavy Rain. I will never understand how David Cage was able to keep making games after this nonsense.
What is the story really trying to say? What is anyone supposed to take away from it? “How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?” Well, if you don’t go far enough, I guess you are at fault, not the serial killer. I suppose the motion capture was pretty good for its time, and the actors do their best to make the stale characters presentable, but that is the best that can be said about Heavy Rain. I will never understand how David Cage was able to keep making games after this nonsense.
I can’t profess to know fully the timeline of triple-A gaming — just when exactly we reached the shift towards what we’re getting now — but something funny I found as I played through David Cage’s Heavy Rain is how it honestly predates a lot of the trends present nowadays. The core relationship (or, at least, one of them) is between a father and his son, the latter representing the father’s attempts and desires to be redeemed of his past sins. It’s a game that’s evidently attempting to be more than just a game, to prove that the medium can be seen as art, yet, rather than leaning into being a video game, instead tries to achieve this by trying to emulate Hollywood films, with a specific focus on cinematography, hiring screen actors, using mo-cap amongst other things. It got praise in its time for bringing the medium forward its approach of interactive narrative being seen as revolutionary by mainstream critics, showing to the world what the future of gaming could be (and, admittedly, while Cage did not invent interactive narrative, he did make games such as Heavy Rain, games where “your choices matter” a trend for years to come). You even watch your child die in the first half hour of the game. I’m not sure whether it’s necessarily counted amongst, say The Last of Us or 2018's God of War in terms of cinematic AAA gaming, but to some extent it did walk so they could run. For better or worse.
The game follows four particular characters, who, while not initially knowing each other, are tied together in their attempts to find the Origami Killer: a serial killer who entraps and drowns children during periods of extreme rainfall, challenging their fathers to Saw-esque torture games where both their, and their sons, lives hang on the line. You play as Ethan Mars, who, after the accidental death of his first son, Jason, now must race against time to save his second son, Shaun, after the two of them are chosen as the Origami Killer’s next victims. You also play as Scott Shelby, a former cop turned private investigator visiting the previous victims of theorigarmy Origami Killer, trying to unearth old clues to find new leads. You also also play as Detective Narmin Norman Jayden, an FBI agent investigating the origammy Origami Killer and attempting to find Shaun, while at the same time dealing with his crippling addiction to drugs and VR sunglasses. You also also also play as Madison, who, after being attacked by dream terrorists in her apartment, goes to a hotel, finds Ethan, and gloms onto him for the rest of the story. But every minute that passes is one less minute to save Shaun, and only through the four’s combined investigation may the secrets of the Origami Killer be revealed…
I’ll give it a few things: I do love all the ways individual scenes can diverge and reconvene and take into account most of the things the player does. While everything on an overall arc level tends to streamline and go down the one path, it’s kind of incredible just how differently individual scenes can diverge based on what happens, and just how many outcomes you can get. There was one early scene as Scott where a store I’m in gets targeted by a robber who doesn’t notice me. I’m encouraged to sneak up and grab a weapon, but then I fail the QTE, which leads the robber to see me and point his gun in my direction. What then follows is… a completely different scene, one where I can either try and talk the robber down, or try and stall for time until I can get close enough to attack. And this is all just from a branch that occurred when I fucked up a QTE. There’s also another moment where you can stumble across something you’re not meant to, finding yourself in a life-or-death confrontation with a completely different threat… or you can get what you need and get out without triggering that branch of the scene, your character not even having an idea of the bullet they just dodged. On a scene-by-scene level, a lot of the way the game constructs its interactive narrative is honestly pretty awesome, and I really loved looking up a lot of individual moments afterwards and seeing just how many different outcomes I could’ve gotten.
I’m also fond of how this game styles itself after detective noir, yet at the same time avoids the pitfalls I’ve seen other noirs trudge into. From the persistentheavy rain backdropping the game no matter where you are in this nameless American city, to the drab, grey, muted colour scheme that avoids the perils of low saturation, the game wears an aesthetic and wears it well, providing a little throughline that helps to suggest its colour and tone. I’m in addition a fan of the way they used mo-cap: not merely just to capture the actor's likeness and such, but also to choreograph many of the QTE action sequences. And not only are they pretty well-choreographed in their own right (they’re clear, they have a bit of slapstick style, you can easily tell what’s happening) but I love how seamless they feel with the many ways they can go. Every action by a bad guy, every action by you can succeed or fail based on the appropriate QTE, yet never at any point did the editing feel choppy or unable to handle a particular combination of wins and losses, providing an overall sequence that’s fairly unique in terms of how it specifically shakes out yet still flows without much interruption.
Unfortunately, before any of that, the first thing you get to experience is just how awfully the game plays. I’m not sure what exactly possessed David Cage to put tank controls in his interactive narrative but good god are they a mismatch. As opposed to moving via tilting the control stick, doing that merely has your character tilt their head in that direction, and you must instead hold down R2 to actually have your character move. This makes things so much more cumbersome than they need to be, between having your characters get caught on objects, getting stuck between camera angles, and in general having a hard time getting to the precise place they need to be to interact with something. The quicktime events… are better and also worse. On default they’re fine, even if oftentimes it’s really hard to see them given the way they fly around (and behind) things in the environment. Other times they don’t fare as well: there’s this one specific type of QTE you have to do which effectively requires you to pretzel your hands across the controller in a way that's so uncomfortable to hold for an extended period. Anything that requires using the Playstation Move controls isn’t exactly great. You’re told to physically move the controller down but because up/down are reversed (and this isn’t changeable) you're actually meant to move the controller up. You’re told to move the controller up and then you get in position to do so and then suddenly you pass the QTE without even trying. You’re told to shake the controller and you have to do it for so long that it could honestly qualify as a form of exercise. Legitimately by the end the motion sensors were auto-succeeding QTEs without any input on my part, which was great when I was trying to get somewhere specific but the game instead pulled me away from it over and over again. I’m honestly a fan of how long the QTE action sequences go on for — they’re the type of endurance test I think works fairly well, imo — but as a whole, this game does not control well. At best it’s stiff and clunky, and at points feels physically painful to have to interface with.
The story also has some pretty major problems. Amongst other, more minor things (this city apparently has at least four separate serial killers) the overall mystery... feels rather slipshod, at points. The game directly lies to you at several points regarding the identity of the Origami Killer, and while that’s not something I hate in theory, the game doesn’t have nearly enough grace or proper consideration to pull a twist like that off. There are little moments that you can point at, in hindsight, but as the game actively goes through with the reveal and flashes back to all the things the culprit did throughout the story, many of the things you see are either things you, the player, never actually got to see, or actively plays a completely different scene to the one you saw, leaving it feeling like the story was actively trying to trick you for the sake of its twist as opposed to providing you any sort of clues or natural progression (and, at the same time, bringing into question why the culprit would’ve done certain things the way they did if they were the culprit the whole time). The game will assume you’ve gone down branches you never actually took, with Madison referring to events that she wasn’t there for, having the contact information for somebody she never meets depending on certain events, and, at one point, being whispered the identity of the killer, reacting in shock… despite, due to what was likely a cut interaction, the killer being somebody Madison has never met before.
And honestly, you can tell that certain plot elements were cut mid-development, yet the vestiges are still present, and leave quite a lot of plot points that never conclude or get expanded on. Ethan explicitly has visions, gets teleported across the city, gets sent into psychic realms, and it’s brought up that maybe he’s not fully in control of himself… and the moment this is addressed as a problem is the last time it’s ever brought up, apparently because they wanted to excise all supernatural elements from the mystery (yet still keep the sci-fi sunglasses?), meaning there’s this whole aspect of the plot that just ends up going nowhere. The game keeps track of how many inches the titular Heavy Rain reaches in every new scene (just like Indigo Prophecy did by showing the temperature continually dropping) but this doesn’t amount to anything, it’s just some background detail that this city is receiving continuous, unending, apocalyptic amounts of rain while everybody runs around and tries to find this one serial killer. Jason and Shaun were aged up from 4/5 to 10/11… yet still act like they’re the former, making it really feel as if this game doesn’t know how children act. There was meant to be a whole backstory beat where Madison is trying to live with her memories of being a journalist for the Iraq war, but then this is never expounded upon, so Madison just has her first scene be this dream sequence of being stalked and attacked by two men in her home, which, speaking of, it’s kind of incredible how literally every scene Madison forces her into some archetype: either being subservient to a man, or being subjected to some sort of sexualized violence. She goes from potential assault victim to being Ethan’s wetnurse to being Ethan’s wetnurse again to potential torture victim to being forced to strip at gunpoint (and of course the way the game frames this is very classy) to very suddenly becoming Ethan’s love interest and giving the player a fucking incredible QTE sex scene. The very first scene she’s in you can interact with a clothesrack and then very suddenly she takes her clothes off and has a full-on shower scene. And meanwhile, unless you look at something rather specific in that same segment you don’t even get to know that she’s a journalist until the game’s almost over. She at least manages to be the main driver of the plot during the endgame — and manages to do so without the game relegating her into some sexist trope, barring her potential endings — but god, is the road to get there so Frank Miller-coded. And this isn’t even getting into the game’s two black characters.
Something that struck me is that the audio quality is, uh, quite bad. And this is from somebody a bit too hard of hearing to notice stuff like this. Oftentimes I’d find that the music, or the titular heavy rain would overpower everything else in the mix, making it impossible to hear anything the characters were saying unless you turned the volume down. The mic quality — particularly for the kids — is rather spotty. Every time I listened in on a character’s thoughts I legitimately thought something was wrong with my setup because it sounds so rough: the echo effect is so loud and tinny and the same channel as the unaltered line and it legitimately feels like the line is playing twice at once instead of merely being an echo filter. And this doesn’t even get into the voice acting. Most of the cast seem to be British or otherwise European playing Americans and it really shows. Everybody seems to be in a perpetual state of fighting with their accent. There are pretty consistent intonation issues across the board: nobody pronounces “origami” consistently, or even correctly. There are a couple of decent performances among the muck — Madison pretty consistently does a good job, Norman tries his best despite being the most hamstrung by accent issues — but a lot of the other performances either strike me as either… bad direction or screen actors not quite being used to motion capture/voice acting. People meme the whole ‘press X to Jason’ thing but it’s clear that there’s some sort of miscommunication between intent and execution: the direction was evidently ‘call for your son’ but absent context it feels more like Ethan’s trying to get Jason to set the table more than he is desperately trying to find his son in the middle of the crowd. So many performances feel kinda apathetic or robotic or like they have a really bad cold, including the two main characters guaranteed to make it to the end. It’s very funny that, among other things, this game mostly predates the trend of using non-voice actors in voice roles (at least for video games — Aladdin and Shrek had long pushed voice actors out of film roles) because it showcases a lot of the pitfalls that doing so can lead into, not to mention all the other, persistent issues with this game’s audio.
…It feels weird, in the end, to place this lower in rank than the two other Quantic Dream games I’ve played thus far. If, in part, because of what Heavy Rain has going for it. As opposed to Beyond: Two Souls, which plays it rather boring except for the parts that maybe don’t stand out for the better, or Indigo Prophecy, which honestly reads like David Cage got concussed halfway into writing it, Heavy Rain does a decent amount well. It builds up a tone, its action sequences are well choreographed especially considering how many permutations of them are present, and it’s really cool to see just how its choice-and-consequence is structured on a scene-by-scene basis. It’s a pity, then, that all these good parts stuck in an overall package that… struggles, between its awful control scheme, its poorly edited mystery, the rough audio quality and how David Cage really needs to drink Respect Women Juice. Sure, compared to everything else, and considering its place in history, Heavy Rain has a lot I’m personally willing to bat for, but under the deluge, after the storm, when the rivers and the creeks have burst their banks and dealt irreversible damage to the ecosystem… it’s rather difficult to care about the water amongst the mud. 3/10.
The game follows four particular characters, who, while not initially knowing each other, are tied together in their attempts to find the Origami Killer: a serial killer who entraps and drowns children during periods of extreme rainfall, challenging their fathers to Saw-esque torture games where both their, and their sons, lives hang on the line. You play as Ethan Mars, who, after the accidental death of his first son, Jason, now must race against time to save his second son, Shaun, after the two of them are chosen as the Origami Killer’s next victims. You also play as Scott Shelby, a former cop turned private investigator visiting the previous victims of the
I’ll give it a few things: I do love all the ways individual scenes can diverge and reconvene and take into account most of the things the player does. While everything on an overall arc level tends to streamline and go down the one path, it’s kind of incredible just how differently individual scenes can diverge based on what happens, and just how many outcomes you can get. There was one early scene as Scott where a store I’m in gets targeted by a robber who doesn’t notice me. I’m encouraged to sneak up and grab a weapon, but then I fail the QTE, which leads the robber to see me and point his gun in my direction. What then follows is… a completely different scene, one where I can either try and talk the robber down, or try and stall for time until I can get close enough to attack. And this is all just from a branch that occurred when I fucked up a QTE. There’s also another moment where you can stumble across something you’re not meant to, finding yourself in a life-or-death confrontation with a completely different threat… or you can get what you need and get out without triggering that branch of the scene, your character not even having an idea of the bullet they just dodged. On a scene-by-scene level, a lot of the way the game constructs its interactive narrative is honestly pretty awesome, and I really loved looking up a lot of individual moments afterwards and seeing just how many different outcomes I could’ve gotten.
I’m also fond of how this game styles itself after detective noir, yet at the same time avoids the pitfalls I’ve seen other noirs trudge into. From the persistent
Unfortunately, before any of that, the first thing you get to experience is just how awfully the game plays. I’m not sure what exactly possessed David Cage to put tank controls in his interactive narrative but good god are they a mismatch. As opposed to moving via tilting the control stick, doing that merely has your character tilt their head in that direction, and you must instead hold down R2 to actually have your character move. This makes things so much more cumbersome than they need to be, between having your characters get caught on objects, getting stuck between camera angles, and in general having a hard time getting to the precise place they need to be to interact with something. The quicktime events… are better and also worse. On default they’re fine, even if oftentimes it’s really hard to see them given the way they fly around (and behind) things in the environment. Other times they don’t fare as well: there’s this one specific type of QTE you have to do which effectively requires you to pretzel your hands across the controller in a way that's so uncomfortable to hold for an extended period. Anything that requires using the Playstation Move controls isn’t exactly great. You’re told to physically move the controller down but because up/down are reversed (and this isn’t changeable) you're actually meant to move the controller up. You’re told to move the controller up and then you get in position to do so and then suddenly you pass the QTE without even trying. You’re told to shake the controller and you have to do it for so long that it could honestly qualify as a form of exercise. Legitimately by the end the motion sensors were auto-succeeding QTEs without any input on my part, which was great when I was trying to get somewhere specific but the game instead pulled me away from it over and over again. I’m honestly a fan of how long the QTE action sequences go on for — they’re the type of endurance test I think works fairly well, imo — but as a whole, this game does not control well. At best it’s stiff and clunky, and at points feels physically painful to have to interface with.
The story also has some pretty major problems. Amongst other, more minor things (this city apparently has at least four separate serial killers) the overall mystery... feels rather slipshod, at points. The game directly lies to you at several points regarding the identity of the Origami Killer, and while that’s not something I hate in theory, the game doesn’t have nearly enough grace or proper consideration to pull a twist like that off. There are little moments that you can point at, in hindsight, but as the game actively goes through with the reveal and flashes back to all the things the culprit did throughout the story, many of the things you see are either things you, the player, never actually got to see, or actively plays a completely different scene to the one you saw, leaving it feeling like the story was actively trying to trick you for the sake of its twist as opposed to providing you any sort of clues or natural progression (and, at the same time, bringing into question why the culprit would’ve done certain things the way they did if they were the culprit the whole time). The game will assume you’ve gone down branches you never actually took, with Madison referring to events that she wasn’t there for, having the contact information for somebody she never meets depending on certain events, and, at one point, being whispered the identity of the killer, reacting in shock… despite, due to what was likely a cut interaction, the killer being somebody Madison has never met before.
And honestly, you can tell that certain plot elements were cut mid-development, yet the vestiges are still present, and leave quite a lot of plot points that never conclude or get expanded on. Ethan explicitly has visions, gets teleported across the city, gets sent into psychic realms, and it’s brought up that maybe he’s not fully in control of himself… and the moment this is addressed as a problem is the last time it’s ever brought up, apparently because they wanted to excise all supernatural elements from the mystery (yet still keep the sci-fi sunglasses?), meaning there’s this whole aspect of the plot that just ends up going nowhere. The game keeps track of how many inches the titular Heavy Rain reaches in every new scene (just like Indigo Prophecy did by showing the temperature continually dropping) but this doesn’t amount to anything, it’s just some background detail that this city is receiving continuous, unending, apocalyptic amounts of rain while everybody runs around and tries to find this one serial killer. Jason and Shaun were aged up from 4/5 to 10/11… yet still act like they’re the former, making it really feel as if this game doesn’t know how children act. There was meant to be a whole backstory beat where Madison is trying to live with her memories of being a journalist for the Iraq war, but then this is never expounded upon, so Madison just has her first scene be this dream sequence of being stalked and attacked by two men in her home, which, speaking of, it’s kind of incredible how literally every scene Madison forces her into some archetype: either being subservient to a man, or being subjected to some sort of sexualized violence. She goes from potential assault victim to being Ethan’s wetnurse to being Ethan’s wetnurse again to potential torture victim to being forced to strip at gunpoint (and of course the way the game frames this is very classy) to very suddenly becoming Ethan’s love interest and giving the player a fucking incredible QTE sex scene. The very first scene she’s in you can interact with a clothesrack and then very suddenly she takes her clothes off and has a full-on shower scene. And meanwhile, unless you look at something rather specific in that same segment you don’t even get to know that she’s a journalist until the game’s almost over. She at least manages to be the main driver of the plot during the endgame — and manages to do so without the game relegating her into some sexist trope, barring her potential endings — but god, is the road to get there so Frank Miller-coded. And this isn’t even getting into the game’s two black characters.
Something that struck me is that the audio quality is, uh, quite bad. And this is from somebody a bit too hard of hearing to notice stuff like this. Oftentimes I’d find that the music, or the titular heavy rain would overpower everything else in the mix, making it impossible to hear anything the characters were saying unless you turned the volume down. The mic quality — particularly for the kids — is rather spotty. Every time I listened in on a character’s thoughts I legitimately thought something was wrong with my setup because it sounds so rough: the echo effect is so loud and tinny and the same channel as the unaltered line and it legitimately feels like the line is playing twice at once instead of merely being an echo filter. And this doesn’t even get into the voice acting. Most of the cast seem to be British or otherwise European playing Americans and it really shows. Everybody seems to be in a perpetual state of fighting with their accent. There are pretty consistent intonation issues across the board: nobody pronounces “origami” consistently, or even correctly. There are a couple of decent performances among the muck — Madison pretty consistently does a good job, Norman tries his best despite being the most hamstrung by accent issues — but a lot of the other performances either strike me as either… bad direction or screen actors not quite being used to motion capture/voice acting. People meme the whole ‘press X to Jason’ thing but it’s clear that there’s some sort of miscommunication between intent and execution: the direction was evidently ‘call for your son’ but absent context it feels more like Ethan’s trying to get Jason to set the table more than he is desperately trying to find his son in the middle of the crowd. So many performances feel kinda apathetic or robotic or like they have a really bad cold, including the two main characters guaranteed to make it to the end. It’s very funny that, among other things, this game mostly predates the trend of using non-voice actors in voice roles (at least for video games — Aladdin and Shrek had long pushed voice actors out of film roles) because it showcases a lot of the pitfalls that doing so can lead into, not to mention all the other, persistent issues with this game’s audio.
…It feels weird, in the end, to place this lower in rank than the two other Quantic Dream games I’ve played thus far. If, in part, because of what Heavy Rain has going for it. As opposed to Beyond: Two Souls, which plays it rather boring except for the parts that maybe don’t stand out for the better, or Indigo Prophecy, which honestly reads like David Cage got concussed halfway into writing it, Heavy Rain does a decent amount well. It builds up a tone, its action sequences are well choreographed especially considering how many permutations of them are present, and it’s really cool to see just how its choice-and-consequence is structured on a scene-by-scene basis. It’s a pity, then, that all these good parts stuck in an overall package that… struggles, between its awful control scheme, its poorly edited mystery, the rough audio quality and how David Cage really needs to drink Respect Women Juice. Sure, compared to everything else, and considering its place in history, Heavy Rain has a lot I’m personally willing to bat for, but under the deluge, after the storm, when the rivers and the creeks have burst their banks and dealt irreversible damage to the ecosystem… it’s rather difficult to care about the water amongst the mud. 3/10.
When I was like 14 I bought this at a low price from the game retailer Game. I thought it was okay at the time but then I got a call that I had missed the deadline to return the game.
Very confused I asked what the hell they were talking about I bought it outright. Turns out no, they had just rented it out to me and not made this clear at any point in the transaction. Anyways I got my account suspended for that but Game sucks anyways so it wasn't a huge loss and I havent bought a game there since.
Very confused I asked what the hell they were talking about I bought it outright. Turns out no, they had just rented it out to me and not made this clear at any point in the transaction. Anyways I got my account suspended for that but Game sucks anyways so it wasn't a huge loss and I havent bought a game there since.
The Twister gameplay is fine for what it is, but the plot is straight up god-awful. This is a game written by someone that thinks true-crime dramas are deep and profound just because people cry and suffer a lot, not because of conveying an actual message and developing any themes. This game seems to exist just to delight on other people's suffering. Beyond the "four people need to catch a serial killer" premise it doesn't do anything interesting or even good. The female character in particular has various scenes that are borderline sexist, which I fear is a recurrent theme on David Cage games.
A game that has nothing to say that seems to put its characters in increasingly horrible situations just to show off more human misery, and does it in a way that feels just uncomfortable. And, to top it off, it's delivered with such a bad taste that it becomes gross (or ridiculous, depending on how you look at it).
A game that has nothing to say that seems to put its characters in increasingly horrible situations just to show off more human misery, and does it in a way that feels just uncomfortable. And, to top it off, it's delivered with such a bad taste that it becomes gross (or ridiculous, depending on how you look at it).
David Cage write a woman challenge
Always wondered which button me would have to press to shower if my life was a PS3 game
i played this entire game in one sitting and to this day i'm not entirely convinced the whole thing wasn't a fever dream because the only fucking thing i can remember from it is i am the Orrygarmy Killer
This review contains spoilers
El misterio no es quien es el Asesino del Origami. El misterio es como alguien es capaz de darle millones de presupuesto a David Cage para perpetrar lo que hace.
Al grano: David Cage es un autor completamente horrible. Ahí están de ejemplo Beyond: Two Souls y este Heavy Rain.
Me cuesta entender como en una historia de 8-10 horas puede meter tantas cutreces, sinsentidos, conveniencias, casualidades y cosas sin explicación. Como puede tener personajes tan planos y genéricos donde prácticamente nunca hacen nada medianamente coherente. Como es capaz de apañárselas para mostrar todos los clichés inventados por el ser humano sin aportar nada. Como es capaz de dar tanta vergüenza ajena en tan poco tiempo. Hasta tiene mérito.
El único personaje femenino de los 4 protagonistas, Madison, es uno de los más deplorables que he tenido la desgracia de ver. Literalmente lo único que sucede con ella es: salir desnuda (o desnudándose), ayudar y curar al protagonista masculino en todo lo que necesite aunque no lo conozca y sepa que es sospechoso de asesinato, que intenten violarla de manera gratuita y bailar sensualmente. Literalmente es lo que hace en todo el juego. No vale para nada. En la parte final Cage intenta darle un sentido haciendo que descubra quien es el asesino, pero da igual porque los otros 2 personajes jugables ya lo saben y el uso que ella le da a esa información solo lleva a que el antagonista la encierre mientras que los otros 3 personajes (masculinos, obviamente) llevan la acción. Afortunadamente en mi partida murió al final y me libre un poco de la vergüenza ajena.
Hazte mirar tu trato hacia las mujeres, Cage, que entre Beyond Two Souls alias escuchar a Ellen Page gritar y gemir durante 10 horas y Madison, tienes telita.
También David odia a sus personajes, aunque pretenda sugerir lo contrario. A lo largo del juego los pone a todos en situaciones de violencia y sufrimiento salidas de la nada, como ese intento de violación porque sí, porque necesita lágrimas y drama para que los jugadores se piensen que lo que ven es intenso. Es como un niño aplastando hormigas, siendo estas sus creaciones.
Quiere que llores, quiere que te emociones y reflexiones. De ahí la música dramática que suena constantemente, la trama que trata sobre niños muertos y desaparecidos, las caras en primer plano en los tiempos de carga, la paleta de colores grises, la lluvia. Pero también quiere que te excites, de ahí lo de Madison. Quiere llenar la historia de acción, peleas, persecuciones, tiroteos a lo John Wick y pruebas a lo Saw. Porque al final lo que creo es que su verdadera intención es hacer una trama de acción típica pero lo viste de temas dramáticos para aparentar ser más importante y engañar a todos los jugadores que pueda.
Porque la realidad es que en muchas escenas le da más importancia a la pelea y a su corografía que a una madre hablando de su hijo muerto. Encima de autor malo, también impostor.
Y la jugabilidad es paupérrima, la cámara atroz y los controles toscos. Y él lo sabe. Por eso hace que tengas que pulsar botones hasta para lavarle los dientes al prota, para dar una falsa sensación de interactividad.
Pero lavarle los dientes o vestir a los personajes no hace ni que me involucre más en la trama ni que me caigan mejor. Lo único que hace es confirmarme lo desesperado que está para que usemos el mando de la consola.
Al grano: David Cage es un autor completamente horrible. Ahí están de ejemplo Beyond: Two Souls y este Heavy Rain.
Me cuesta entender como en una historia de 8-10 horas puede meter tantas cutreces, sinsentidos, conveniencias, casualidades y cosas sin explicación. Como puede tener personajes tan planos y genéricos donde prácticamente nunca hacen nada medianamente coherente. Como es capaz de apañárselas para mostrar todos los clichés inventados por el ser humano sin aportar nada. Como es capaz de dar tanta vergüenza ajena en tan poco tiempo. Hasta tiene mérito.
El único personaje femenino de los 4 protagonistas, Madison, es uno de los más deplorables que he tenido la desgracia de ver. Literalmente lo único que sucede con ella es: salir desnuda (o desnudándose), ayudar y curar al protagonista masculino en todo lo que necesite aunque no lo conozca y sepa que es sospechoso de asesinato, que intenten violarla de manera gratuita y bailar sensualmente. Literalmente es lo que hace en todo el juego. No vale para nada. En la parte final Cage intenta darle un sentido haciendo que descubra quien es el asesino, pero da igual porque los otros 2 personajes jugables ya lo saben y el uso que ella le da a esa información solo lleva a que el antagonista la encierre mientras que los otros 3 personajes (masculinos, obviamente) llevan la acción. Afortunadamente en mi partida murió al final y me libre un poco de la vergüenza ajena.
Hazte mirar tu trato hacia las mujeres, Cage, que entre Beyond Two Souls alias escuchar a Ellen Page gritar y gemir durante 10 horas y Madison, tienes telita.
También David odia a sus personajes, aunque pretenda sugerir lo contrario. A lo largo del juego los pone a todos en situaciones de violencia y sufrimiento salidas de la nada, como ese intento de violación porque sí, porque necesita lágrimas y drama para que los jugadores se piensen que lo que ven es intenso. Es como un niño aplastando hormigas, siendo estas sus creaciones.
Quiere que llores, quiere que te emociones y reflexiones. De ahí la música dramática que suena constantemente, la trama que trata sobre niños muertos y desaparecidos, las caras en primer plano en los tiempos de carga, la paleta de colores grises, la lluvia. Pero también quiere que te excites, de ahí lo de Madison. Quiere llenar la historia de acción, peleas, persecuciones, tiroteos a lo John Wick y pruebas a lo Saw. Porque al final lo que creo es que su verdadera intención es hacer una trama de acción típica pero lo viste de temas dramáticos para aparentar ser más importante y engañar a todos los jugadores que pueda.
Porque la realidad es que en muchas escenas le da más importancia a la pelea y a su corografía que a una madre hablando de su hijo muerto. Encima de autor malo, también impostor.
Y la jugabilidad es paupérrima, la cámara atroz y los controles toscos. Y él lo sabe. Por eso hace que tengas que pulsar botones hasta para lavarle los dientes al prota, para dar una falsa sensación de interactividad.
Pero lavarle los dientes o vestir a los personajes no hace ni que me involucre más en la trama ni que me caigan mejor. Lo único que hace es confirmarme lo desesperado que está para que usemos el mando de la consola.
This is so hollywood run-of-the-mill thriller right down to what makes them predictable, boring, sexists or just ludicrous to follow. I don't think anyone is supposed to take these games seriously if they to have fun.
What would you do if you were standing over your kid's grave, mourning him and reminiscing about the memories you have of him, and your new wife next to you says "I want you to cum in me and impregnate me". What would you say.
Actual review: Extremely sloppy story, for example why does Ethan have blackouts? Oh it's a cut story element! Leave the cutscenes in, make your bad story even more confusing because who gives a fuck! Characters are paper thin and talk to themselves CONSTANTLY (fuck you Cage for damning us with this trope). Madison is a journalist, apparently, but it's only mentioned once and then she's Ethan's sidepiece for the entire rest of the game.
The color palette ranges from a dark grey to grey-brown. Better enjoy that opening cutscene because they're the only vibrant colors you'll ever see in this dogshit game. Voice acting is mediocre, nobody can seem to pronounce origami right. Dialogue is terrible. Overall garbage game and I truly wonder how Cage was allowed to have a career after pushing out said piece of garbage and I immediately ignore the opinions of those who say this is good.
Actual review: Extremely sloppy story, for example why does Ethan have blackouts? Oh it's a cut story element! Leave the cutscenes in, make your bad story even more confusing because who gives a fuck! Characters are paper thin and talk to themselves CONSTANTLY (fuck you Cage for damning us with this trope). Madison is a journalist, apparently, but it's only mentioned once and then she's Ethan's sidepiece for the entire rest of the game.
The color palette ranges from a dark grey to grey-brown. Better enjoy that opening cutscene because they're the only vibrant colors you'll ever see in this dogshit game. Voice acting is mediocre, nobody can seem to pronounce origami right. Dialogue is terrible. Overall garbage game and I truly wonder how Cage was allowed to have a career after pushing out said piece of garbage and I immediately ignore the opinions of those who say this is good.
All that needs to be said about this game is that the most memorable thing about it is a YouTube video where the main character glitches into screaming his son's name over and over again, turning what should be the crux of the game into camp. Miserably self-serious.
I loved it. It sucks.
This may be a record for me, I started playing in 2012 on the ps3, picked up my save and played some more on my ps4, and then this week finally finished my first playthrough on the ps5. Its janky as hell and very...very cringe, however it has a charm and sense of pushing the tech (of its time) as far as it can that won me over.
an absolute Plague upon my brain since i first started playing, and ive written so much thru various livemessages that trying to gather All my thoughts together into a semi-coherent piece of writing is intimidating. the most succinct summary i came up with before now is "i definitely would have loved this when i was 14, and im somehow genuinely kinda 50/50 on whether the fact that i didnt get the chance to Experience it back then is a blessing or not", so ig ill just start trying to unpack that and the various larger emotions it reduces to shorthand
so on one paw, considering that my first few hours in this game were filled with such absolute bewilderment as to how literally anyone even the wasteland of Gamers In 2010 took this seriously or praised it, i ended up Seeing The Vision several times by the end, and on the whole, even tho my bewilderment was justified, i do Get how the various tricks it pulls off earned it such a sizable initial reputation. even tho it's also Far too long, that does mean it gets into a rly good Spread of various pulpy paperback appeals that are not lost on me even as i care infinitely more about some then others...because for the most part, i do think it comes across that cage really likes All Of Them even as he leaves some undercooked. the world famous Norman Jaden and his Stupid Fucking Glasses are probably the biggest example...his plot utility is very little, interest in him as a human is Zilch past drug problems and being the relative "good cop", but his Stupid Fucking Glasses and emphasis on investigative process come across as sincere indulgences for cage..."indulgence" absolutely not meant as a criticism here, because whenever he's not being Wildly Misogynist And/Or Racist, cage is absolutely at his most endearing when he's attempting to show you something he thinks is really cool and will really impress you. he might not pull it off, but as much as i hate the Stupid Fucking Glasses im glad at least Someone was excited about them and how Neat they are. its easier for me to process in the show-off moments that are more directly in my wheelhouse...the killer's silly jigsaw games, especially the first three, were massive highlights for me, with the third in particular giving this brief glimpse into The Saw Game I Always Wanted. overenthusiastic film student flourishes like the various split-screen sections or that shot of jason's balloon flying off into the sky grew more and more likable the more i sat with them. it often has an amateurish energy that can be Unsettling given the clearly huge amount of money gone into this! but even tho the most fun you can have with heavy rain is probably just imagining a better version of its occasionally provocative concepts, theres a mind-consuming charm that kept it compelling thru the driest and most uneventful chapters. it ticks many many boxes of my personal proclivities...melodrama, high concept thriller shit, death games, big pulpy plot twists, formal experimentation, goddamn Water Symbolism...theres a lot im an easy sell for, and sometimes it lined up in my head just right
on the other paw! this is a 2000 page first draft, a "cinematic" experience with next to no faith in its imagery beyond blunt metaphor and uncanny hollywood pastiche (so many scenes and beats are constructed entirely out of two or three or four Big Movie Shorthands for Sadness), messily married to a genuinely garish use of the video game medium that intersperses every weighty dramatic moment with comical klutziness. cage seems to care about video games entirely in that they allow him to explore his fixation on Narrative Choice , which mostly ends up allowing him to deny the responsibility of having to make his Big Ideas and potential thematic threads Go Anywhere...if ethan is meant to have a coherent arc about realizing that nothing was his fault, it has to take for granted that he's Still Alive and Waggles The Stick Fast Enough to get his catharsis,,,and as the most dramatically coherent character in the game, u can imagine how the others make out. every madision chapter somehow managed to shock me with new flavors of Badly Written Woman, scott gets a really fun flashy twist that nevertheless feels deeply unreconciled on a human level, and norman is a prop to hang his Stupid Fucking Glasses and Prestige Cop Show Antics on. its so hard to meaningfully build to anything, or give impactful takeaways...i cant rly emphasize enough how much looking into the other endings lowered my opinion of the game, even considering the super mega happy ending i got wasnt entirely coherent or satisfying. instead the only coherency to be found is in the overall creative lens of the game, which is deeply emotionally unimaginative, self-obsessed, and insecure...cage's sad dad neurosis ceasing to be even theoretically sympathetic the moment he wields it against his Bitch Wife and his Inexplicably Devoted Trophy Gf. even putting aside the Larger Oopsies that happened at quantic dream, there is just such a scummy underbelly to this thing...big Provocative Questions:tm: explored in entirely self-justifying ways, an anti-arc where u realize u did nothing wrong and were actually an awesome epic dad the whole time. for all its occasionally endearing, mindlessly compelling qualities, it feels like i have at least a moderately moral duty to be mean to this
so on one paw, considering that my first few hours in this game were filled with such absolute bewilderment as to how literally anyone even the wasteland of Gamers In 2010 took this seriously or praised it, i ended up Seeing The Vision several times by the end, and on the whole, even tho my bewilderment was justified, i do Get how the various tricks it pulls off earned it such a sizable initial reputation. even tho it's also Far too long, that does mean it gets into a rly good Spread of various pulpy paperback appeals that are not lost on me even as i care infinitely more about some then others...because for the most part, i do think it comes across that cage really likes All Of Them even as he leaves some undercooked. the world famous Norman Jaden and his Stupid Fucking Glasses are probably the biggest example...his plot utility is very little, interest in him as a human is Zilch past drug problems and being the relative "good cop", but his Stupid Fucking Glasses and emphasis on investigative process come across as sincere indulgences for cage..."indulgence" absolutely not meant as a criticism here, because whenever he's not being Wildly Misogynist And/Or Racist, cage is absolutely at his most endearing when he's attempting to show you something he thinks is really cool and will really impress you. he might not pull it off, but as much as i hate the Stupid Fucking Glasses im glad at least Someone was excited about them and how Neat they are. its easier for me to process in the show-off moments that are more directly in my wheelhouse...the killer's silly jigsaw games, especially the first three, were massive highlights for me, with the third in particular giving this brief glimpse into The Saw Game I Always Wanted. overenthusiastic film student flourishes like the various split-screen sections or that shot of jason's balloon flying off into the sky grew more and more likable the more i sat with them. it often has an amateurish energy that can be Unsettling given the clearly huge amount of money gone into this! but even tho the most fun you can have with heavy rain is probably just imagining a better version of its occasionally provocative concepts, theres a mind-consuming charm that kept it compelling thru the driest and most uneventful chapters. it ticks many many boxes of my personal proclivities...melodrama, high concept thriller shit, death games, big pulpy plot twists, formal experimentation, goddamn Water Symbolism...theres a lot im an easy sell for, and sometimes it lined up in my head just right
on the other paw! this is a 2000 page first draft, a "cinematic" experience with next to no faith in its imagery beyond blunt metaphor and uncanny hollywood pastiche (so many scenes and beats are constructed entirely out of two or three or four Big Movie Shorthands for Sadness), messily married to a genuinely garish use of the video game medium that intersperses every weighty dramatic moment with comical klutziness. cage seems to care about video games entirely in that they allow him to explore his fixation on Narrative Choice , which mostly ends up allowing him to deny the responsibility of having to make his Big Ideas and potential thematic threads Go Anywhere...if ethan is meant to have a coherent arc about realizing that nothing was his fault, it has to take for granted that he's Still Alive and Waggles The Stick Fast Enough to get his catharsis,,,and as the most dramatically coherent character in the game, u can imagine how the others make out. every madision chapter somehow managed to shock me with new flavors of Badly Written Woman, scott gets a really fun flashy twist that nevertheless feels deeply unreconciled on a human level, and norman is a prop to hang his Stupid Fucking Glasses and Prestige Cop Show Antics on. its so hard to meaningfully build to anything, or give impactful takeaways...i cant rly emphasize enough how much looking into the other endings lowered my opinion of the game, even considering the super mega happy ending i got wasnt entirely coherent or satisfying. instead the only coherency to be found is in the overall creative lens of the game, which is deeply emotionally unimaginative, self-obsessed, and insecure...cage's sad dad neurosis ceasing to be even theoretically sympathetic the moment he wields it against his Bitch Wife and his Inexplicably Devoted Trophy Gf. even putting aside the Larger Oopsies that happened at quantic dream, there is just such a scummy underbelly to this thing...big Provocative Questions:tm: explored in entirely self-justifying ways, an anti-arc where u realize u did nothing wrong and were actually an awesome epic dad the whole time. for all its occasionally endearing, mindlessly compelling qualities, it feels like i have at least a moderately moral duty to be mean to this
This review contains spoilers
This game is entirely centered around its narrative, so reviewing it requires full spoilers. I’m not going to hold back any details, especially because I think the story in this game is so terrible that I want to ensure no one wastes their time.
Heavy Rain is about a father whose son has been kidnapped by a serial murderer called the Origami Killer. Their method is to abduct children, then blackmail the father into a series of deadly trials to prove their dedication, and killing the child if they refuse. The narrative is divided into the perspectives of four characters, with the first being the aforementioned father, Ethan. Next, you have an investigative reporter, Madison. Then, there’s the FBI agent tasked with the investigation, Norman, and a private eye named Scott. Ethan’s chapters are him going through the killer’s trials to earn his son’s freedom. Madison’s chapters are about her independent investigation into the murders, Norman’s chapters are about his independent investigation into the murders, and Scott’s chapters are about his independent investigation into the murders.
If you’re sharp, you may have noticed some redundancy there, and that brings me to the game’s other hook, where the decisions you make can lead to the deaths of the main characters. So weirdly enough, this redundancy is fully intentional, it’s just a bizarre way to provide 1-ups in a cinematic game and ensure the plot can move on even if Ethan fails. If he doesn’t though, this means that ~44% of the game is pointless. If you’re even more sharp than before, you may have noticed that this number is closer to 50% than 75%, the number you would expect if three out of four characters are totally useless. This is because of the game’s big twist, that the investigator Scott is actually the killer. You may wonder how this is possible, since you’re the one controlling him and listening to his inner thoughts. Wouldn’t the only way for him to be the killer is for him to know when the audience is listening to his thoughts, and mentally lie to conceal his intent? Well, yes. That part just makes no sense, so in addition to 44% of the chapters being about characters who may have no bearing on the plot, an additional 24% is spent with a character so committed to providing a twist that his thoughts and actions make no sense.
So, Ethan’s fraction is the only hope left for the game, and it’s the only time Heavy Rain shows even the slightest glimpse of a decent plot. Most people will have Ethan brave the initial trials, but as the danger escalates, you have to make some hard calls on how much you’re willing to risk life and limb, and how much you’re willing to trust in the success of the other characters. However, mixed in with that good concept is a lot of random nonsense that goes nowhere. The best example is how Ethan will randomly have blackouts, wake up somewhere else, and have no idea what he did in the meantime. This is never explained. I wish I had more to say about that, especially when it’s a major plot point early in the game, but it doesn’t go anywhere. He also finds origami figures in his pockets after these blackouts, similar to the kind the killer is named after. This is also never explained. It’s just a pointless red herring to make Ethan seem like the killer. However, the truth is that these weird plot threads were the result of cut content, where Ethan had a psychic link with the killer and would be mentally transported to a flooded world whenever they made another kill. Ethan would have to search for an origami figure to escape, which he would then find nearby once he awoke. The removal of these sections came late in development, so a lot of time is spent on establishing scenes that no longer exist, for a subplot that never should have gotten past the concept stage.
In any case, the reason Ethan and the killer are linked, and why Ethan was chosen as a victim, is because the killer saw Ethan put his life on the line in an attempt to save his other son from a car accident many years ago. Since the killer’s twisted motivation is finding a father who would lay down his life for his child, he… wait a second, didn’t this plot just accidentally resolve itself before it started? Was Ethan chosen to prove he would give his life for his son because he had proven he would give his life for his son? If we take a moment to add up the damages right now, we have:
Ethan’s story, full of nonsensical or incomplete plot threads, almost entirely pointless if Madison or Norman succeed
Madison’s story, entirely redundant if Ethan or Norman succeed
Norman’s story, entirely redundant if Ethan or Madison succeed
Scott’s story, with nonsensical motivations and a presentation that relies on him knowing people are listening to his thoughts
I normally try to end reviews on some positive note, or how to enjoy even a flawed game, or giving some sort of design takeaway, but I just can’t for this one. Nothing makes sense. It’s not fun, the drama is false, it isn’t enhanced by interactivity, nothing that makes me love video games as an artistic medium is here. It might be my least favorite game of all time.
Heavy Rain is about a father whose son has been kidnapped by a serial murderer called the Origami Killer. Their method is to abduct children, then blackmail the father into a series of deadly trials to prove their dedication, and killing the child if they refuse. The narrative is divided into the perspectives of four characters, with the first being the aforementioned father, Ethan. Next, you have an investigative reporter, Madison. Then, there’s the FBI agent tasked with the investigation, Norman, and a private eye named Scott. Ethan’s chapters are him going through the killer’s trials to earn his son’s freedom. Madison’s chapters are about her independent investigation into the murders, Norman’s chapters are about his independent investigation into the murders, and Scott’s chapters are about his independent investigation into the murders.
If you’re sharp, you may have noticed some redundancy there, and that brings me to the game’s other hook, where the decisions you make can lead to the deaths of the main characters. So weirdly enough, this redundancy is fully intentional, it’s just a bizarre way to provide 1-ups in a cinematic game and ensure the plot can move on even if Ethan fails. If he doesn’t though, this means that ~44% of the game is pointless. If you’re even more sharp than before, you may have noticed that this number is closer to 50% than 75%, the number you would expect if three out of four characters are totally useless. This is because of the game’s big twist, that the investigator Scott is actually the killer. You may wonder how this is possible, since you’re the one controlling him and listening to his inner thoughts. Wouldn’t the only way for him to be the killer is for him to know when the audience is listening to his thoughts, and mentally lie to conceal his intent? Well, yes. That part just makes no sense, so in addition to 44% of the chapters being about characters who may have no bearing on the plot, an additional 24% is spent with a character so committed to providing a twist that his thoughts and actions make no sense.
So, Ethan’s fraction is the only hope left for the game, and it’s the only time Heavy Rain shows even the slightest glimpse of a decent plot. Most people will have Ethan brave the initial trials, but as the danger escalates, you have to make some hard calls on how much you’re willing to risk life and limb, and how much you’re willing to trust in the success of the other characters. However, mixed in with that good concept is a lot of random nonsense that goes nowhere. The best example is how Ethan will randomly have blackouts, wake up somewhere else, and have no idea what he did in the meantime. This is never explained. I wish I had more to say about that, especially when it’s a major plot point early in the game, but it doesn’t go anywhere. He also finds origami figures in his pockets after these blackouts, similar to the kind the killer is named after. This is also never explained. It’s just a pointless red herring to make Ethan seem like the killer. However, the truth is that these weird plot threads were the result of cut content, where Ethan had a psychic link with the killer and would be mentally transported to a flooded world whenever they made another kill. Ethan would have to search for an origami figure to escape, which he would then find nearby once he awoke. The removal of these sections came late in development, so a lot of time is spent on establishing scenes that no longer exist, for a subplot that never should have gotten past the concept stage.
In any case, the reason Ethan and the killer are linked, and why Ethan was chosen as a victim, is because the killer saw Ethan put his life on the line in an attempt to save his other son from a car accident many years ago. Since the killer’s twisted motivation is finding a father who would lay down his life for his child, he… wait a second, didn’t this plot just accidentally resolve itself before it started? Was Ethan chosen to prove he would give his life for his son because he had proven he would give his life for his son? If we take a moment to add up the damages right now, we have:
Ethan’s story, full of nonsensical or incomplete plot threads, almost entirely pointless if Madison or Norman succeed
Madison’s story, entirely redundant if Ethan or Norman succeed
Norman’s story, entirely redundant if Ethan or Madison succeed
Scott’s story, with nonsensical motivations and a presentation that relies on him knowing people are listening to his thoughts
I normally try to end reviews on some positive note, or how to enjoy even a flawed game, or giving some sort of design takeaway, but I just can’t for this one. Nothing makes sense. It’s not fun, the drama is false, it isn’t enhanced by interactivity, nothing that makes me love video games as an artistic medium is here. It might be my least favorite game of all time.
SHAUN! SHAUN!
JASON?!?! JASON!!
Also fail all the chase sequences/fights it’s so funny
JASON?!?! JASON!!
Also fail all the chase sequences/fights it’s so funny
I honestly don't understand how this game received so much praise back when it was released. I imagine it was probably because the graphics (for the time) were really cutting edge and the whole idea of a game being a playable movie was kind of a novelty.
That being said, a story-driven video game is supposed to, you know, actually have a good story, which this one most definitelly does not. Leaving all the problematic depictions and characterizations aside, you're still left with an uninspired, cookie cutter "thriller" with the kind of twist that makes the whole thing completelly fall apart and make no sense at all. I'm absolutelly convinced that, had this same story been released as a film or limited series, it would have been demolished by critics on account of how terrible and nonsensical it is. I guess that just shows how low game critics' standards for what defined a good story in a game used to be (still are?).
That being said, a story-driven video game is supposed to, you know, actually have a good story, which this one most definitelly does not. Leaving all the problematic depictions and characterizations aside, you're still left with an uninspired, cookie cutter "thriller" with the kind of twist that makes the whole thing completelly fall apart and make no sense at all. I'm absolutelly convinced that, had this same story been released as a film or limited series, it would have been demolished by critics on account of how terrible and nonsensical it is. I guess that just shows how low game critics' standards for what defined a good story in a game used to be (still are?).
Is it silly, poorly acted, a bit sexist, and weirdly European? Yes. But you know, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it.
Why is Shelby's doorknob in the middle of his door, though? It makes me so mad.
Why is Shelby's doorknob in the middle of his door, though? It makes me so mad.
Fuck this game. The first half of it or so is bad, but at least something I could imagine being fun with friends and/or drunk, but it just gets to a point where it's unbearable. David Cage needs to be restricted from creative liberty for like ever.
Besides some meme-able moments and a scarring qte sex scene, a very enjoyable game with a good story
EU NÃO AGUENTO ESSE JOGO.
Cada movimento que tu faz é um botão aqui um botão lá, meu deus é estúpido. E que porcaria o jeito que isto roda meu deus, parece tudo travado a menos de 30fps.
Jamais vou voltar pra isso.
Cada movimento que tu faz é um botão aqui um botão lá, meu deus é estúpido. E que porcaria o jeito que isto roda meu deus, parece tudo travado a menos de 30fps.
Jamais vou voltar pra isso.
david cage retire bitch
this is the funniest game ever actually
As with most of games from David Cage (who is actually an android in real life, I think), the high points are always in the most grounded moments.
Heavy Rain might be Cage's best game for this reason, on the basis of it being the least sci-fi-centric (or at least less so than Fahrenheit and Detroit (yuck). That said, it's still very bloated with more silly ideas than good, and let's not get started on the dialogue.
Heavy Rain might be Cage's best game for this reason, on the basis of it being the least sci-fi-centric (or at least less so than Fahrenheit and Detroit (yuck). That said, it's still very bloated with more silly ideas than good, and let's not get started on the dialogue.
I have a really, really weird relationship with David Cage and his games. While Detroit: Become Human proved that he can make a good game (Even if that game is incredibly flawed), his design philosophies and self-serious attitude both make him come off as a guy who's wallowing in his own pretentiousness. Despite that, I think that his games are unique and interesting, flawed as they may be.
Before I go any further, I need to make this crystal clear: Heavy Rain is a terrible game. It's a sappy and melodramatic mess that takes itself way too seriously, and it's impossible to take the game seriously when pretty much all of the game's technical aspects are awful. I rarely rag on a game's graphics, but when your game is 95% cutscenes, 4% button prompts and QTEs, and 1% walking around, the least you could have done was not make the game's world and characters look so lifeless and robotic. The voice acting is also terrible, with line deliveries ranging from wooden and stilted to overblown and unconvincing.
While all of these aspects make Heavy Rain an awful game, I also think that they make it one of the most unintentionally hilarious games I've ever played. While the story was serviceable, I wanted to keep playing just to see how badly the game could keep failing at trying to tell its story, and because of that, I was pretty much never bored throughout my playthrough. If I were to rate this game objectively, I'd give it a 2/10, but I think it would be fair to give the game a 4/10 since it was so entertaining, albeit for the wrong reasons.
Before I go any further, I need to make this crystal clear: Heavy Rain is a terrible game. It's a sappy and melodramatic mess that takes itself way too seriously, and it's impossible to take the game seriously when pretty much all of the game's technical aspects are awful. I rarely rag on a game's graphics, but when your game is 95% cutscenes, 4% button prompts and QTEs, and 1% walking around, the least you could have done was not make the game's world and characters look so lifeless and robotic. The voice acting is also terrible, with line deliveries ranging from wooden and stilted to overblown and unconvincing.
While all of these aspects make Heavy Rain an awful game, I also think that they make it one of the most unintentionally hilarious games I've ever played. While the story was serviceable, I wanted to keep playing just to see how badly the game could keep failing at trying to tell its story, and because of that, I was pretty much never bored throughout my playthrough. If I were to rate this game objectively, I'd give it a 2/10, but I think it would be fair to give the game a 4/10 since it was so entertaining, albeit for the wrong reasons.