transient thoughts

So, as previously mentioned, the one game I got my hands on at Day One of TGS 2009 was Heavy Rain. If you’d like to know what I thought of the demo, keep reading…

After about 45 minutes of waiting, I spent about 15 minutes with the demo. Here’s a rundown of what happened in that time. Be warned, this is my interpretation of it through an imperfect grasp of Japanese (did I mention it was in Japanese? It was in Japanese), and could be considered to contain some small spoilers.

The demo had 2 separate playable episodes; the one I chose had me playing as FBI agent Norman Jayden (<3 wikipedia). I was going to question junkyard owner ‘Mad Jack’, about a car that he’d sold. He couldn’t/wouldn’t tell me who he’d sold it to (he’s apparently bad with names). He walked off, and I had a chance to wander around his workshop, finding clues using Agent Jayden’s ARI, a set of high-tech glasses and a fancy glove which let you scan your surroundings and pick up additional information. As I went to leave the workshop, Jack held a gun to the back of my head, stopping me (for not trusting him, or finding him out, or something). As he led me back into his workshop, I was able to trip him up with a tile, allowing me to disarm him, and take him on in a good old fashioned fist fight… until he grabs a nearby pipe, and starts smacking you with it. After a valiant struggle, I fell, and was summarily bludgeoned to death by Jack. Thus ended my playthrough.

Fun, if not a little short. There was a heap more to the chapter that my ineptitude at quick time events precluded me from seeing. Very sad. A few thoughts from my time with the game though:

Firstly, there are a lot of quick time events. The entirety of the fight with Jack was a series of quick time events, although they weren’t too harsh time-wise. That said, it does kind of fit with the rest of the game – almost the entirety of the game, aside from moving, is played through pressing buttons corresponding to various on screen prompts attached to parts of the environment, characters, etc. Outside of the fight these were, or course, entirely untimed and repeatable, but it is an interesting control scheme. On the up-side, it also allows the developers to build whatever kind of interactions they like into the levels, with less concern as to how to have the player perform them, or know they can perform them. It’s interesting, and though somewhat unconventional, does play quite well.

The game has far more control over the camera than is traditionally the case. This potentially gives the game a greater degree of cinematography than is typical – camera angles can be changed for different sorts of effects. Again, the control scheme helps to make this possible, especially when things like movement are dictated by the direction your character is facing, not the camera angle.

Having just finished playing Arkham Asylum, it’s impossible to avoid drawing parallels between Agent Jayden’s ARI and the Bat’s Detective Mode, with both allowing you to draw extra information about your surroundings, as well as chucking a coloured filter over your entire screen. A really nice touch during the fight was when Jack throws you – although you initially start the fight with the ARI on, he knocks the glasses off, kicking you back into “normal mode”.

That’s it for now. This game had already been down in my books as a “to buy”, and today’s demo only served to strengthen that view. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the whole game, with it’s multiple POV characters fits together and plays out. With any luck, I’ll be able to check out the other scenario tomorrow, and then hopefully, sometime in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be able to do it all again but in English!

written by .klik2