Heavy Rain [PS3]

patsu

Legend
I decided to stay out of the Heavy Rain demo, but this GAF post nearly made me fire up the demo last night:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=19875341&postcount=1507

So I live in a house with about 50ish other people. We share meals, kitchen, the entertainment center, bathrooms and living area (everyone has their own one room apartment). We have a lot of money lying around with which to buy items for the house, I along with another house member proposed we get a PS3 (almost as a joke assuming it would be turned down) turns out we got enough votes and today in came the PS3 with a copy of SF4 (which I find kinda boring, but anyway....)

So being a slight connoisseur of gaming I decided to DL a bunch of demos for the house to try (we have to vote to buy anything for the house including new games)...I threw in Katamari, Lost Planet 2, Naruto, Yakuza, and...Heavy Rain.

So I boot up the demo, there are about ten other people watching I handed the controller over to someone else. They go through the tutorial struggling with the quarter circles and the strange controls (the tv was also set ridiculously dark so we had to adjust it), a few wtfisthisshits were heard, then we got into the "Sleazy Demo"...first thing I hear is "Wow that looks real"...general consensus all around as Shelby walks into the motel.

Someone finally says, "wow this game is very cool" as Shelby walked around knocking on doors. Tired with the controls, but wanting to see what happens the controller gets past to me, I spent a few minutes running into walls trying to get a hang of the game. But holy shit is this a FANTASTIC game to play in crowd, when the options for what to say popped up, people were shouting the prompts wanting to see what would happen. More people filtered in asking what we were playing. The room was silent as the "interviewee" talked, unless a prompt came up. Some laughed as I bumbled my way through the apartment, but people were yelling "comfort her" or "whats that over there?"

We got the "crying" exit... many people were actually sad to see that we hadnt gotten the information, whatever it was. Once we thought the demo was over (myself included) the "fight scene began. People were literally out of their seats screaming out the prompts as Shelby dashed around the room. People were hooten and hollerin when I missed a prompt or got one. The whole room was into it. One of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.

All I heard from people was "wows" "what if we did it again, but instead.." "that was moody as hell" no one complained about the fact that our big screen wasnt running in 720p (1080i ish) or that the screen tore every once in a while, people were absorbed in the story and the characters. I handed off the controller for the detective scene, more oohs and ahhs. Sometimes when going through these threads I wonder why people scream "weird controls" or "screen tearing this" or not "full HD that." Fuck that. Gamers have lost contact with the purpose of games: to engross, to entertain, not to beat or to optimize or to scrutinize. People are worried that "Heavy Rain" wont appeal to the masses, I worry that the "true gamers" are going to be the ones to rip it to shreds.

Anyway, I have no doubt Heavy Rain will be one of the best games ever made. Finally turned my favorite medium into something more adult, but still fun and engrossing. Thanks Quantic Dream wish you guys the best of luck.

Side Note:
Playing Katamari Forever and Heavy Rain, one after the other has really increased my faith in the future of games. This is the golden age of gaming. Period.

It warms me up when consumers respond to a work of art or innovation positively. They seem to "get it".
 
It wouldn't be Sony without some sort of delay, if a tiny one: :devilish:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/19/gamestop-says-heavy-rain-pre-order-dlc-delayed/

GameStop, which, among other retailers, is offering a code for the first Heavy Rain Chronicles DLC episode as a pre-order bonus with the game, recently updated the title's listing on its site, stating, "due to a delay by the publisher, this content will not be available for download until Thursday, March 4, 2010."

SCEE confirmed to VG247 that the delay wouldn't affect the DLC's European availability on "day one," so it would appear that the delay is particular to North America.
 
GameSpot review is in 8.5
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/adventure/heavyrain/review.html

Not bad, but consider the amount of hype it is a little disappointed.. There are some control and technical issues as well..

Heavy Rain's problems aren't strictly limited to the plot either--there are a number of other flaws as well. You move your character forward by pulling the R2 trigger and alter the direction he or she is facing by moving the left analog stick. On paper, this is a sound system, but in practice, it is clumsy and imprecise. The frame rate is inconsistent, screen tearing is frequent, and noticeable texture pop-in occurs almost every time something is closely examined. Rare immersion-breaking glitches can also occur, including audio that doesn’t match what’s happening onscreen, and textures failing to load and leaving you with either an all-black environment or a silhouetted character.

Ugh... Sound nasty. The visual is one of the most hyped aspect of this game as well.
 
I think the positive feedback for Heavy Rain are mostly directed at the gaming experience. The visuals seem to fluctuate between impressive and trying. Due to its far out nature, you'll probably find a wide range of scores for this game.
 
Apparently , no 2 reviewer/player will have the same problems with streaming.some Will have close to none ,others will be plagued with.

Seems gamespot got the worse to date .Never heard about 'an all-black environment or a silhouetted character' until now...
 
Could this be a disk-read issue? In Champions of Norrath there'd be streaming issues accessing the second layer, resulting in blacked-out environments for a moment. My suspicions is this is more a fault of the disk or PS3 in this case, otherwise the fault would be a commonly reported one.
 
GameSpot review is in 8.5
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/adventure/heavyrain/review.html

Not bad, but consider the amount of hype it is a little disappointed.. There are some control and technical issues as well..



Ugh... Sound nasty. The visual is one of the most hyped aspect of this game as well.

gamespot meh. Really, it's the first time who read so much complains about HR flaws. From the others reviews the fps it's acceptable, tearing bad but occasional & pop in of texture nothing so worse compared to ue3 engine. I don't understand what's going on to the gamespot code.
 
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It's probably more important to get in touch with them to diagnose the inconsistencies (e.g., Does the problems occur after reformatting the HDD ?).

In this game, I doubt the scores will do much. The demoes are already out there for people to judge for themselves. It's a brand new, if not controversial, experience. Some (like Adam Sessler and one of the posters here) will call it ground-breaking, some will call it a mess. Most of us will probably be able to find flaws with the game since the "formula" is so new.
 
I just played the demo and must say it is one of the best, most unique demos I've ever played. I wasn't sold on the indirect control scheme at first, but it really made sense to me during the fight scene. It seemed more lifelike than your average video game fight and gave me a real sense of urgency as though I were in a real fight, unlike most button-mash combat games today.

I was already going to buy this game (along with about 15 others) but I think this just vaulted to the top of my list.
 
Screen tearing I can almost understand, but in a game with mostly? static scenes I'm not sure why there should be any texture pop-up.
 
I think its totally variable & down to streaming/disc/HDD issues.As I once mentioned earlier when I played the demo that I had lots of scene where the textures didn't switched to higher resolution mode even after being in the scene for 8-9 seconds....this made me think that the game isn't using any high res textures at all.

I mentioned it here & then someone pointed out that there isn't any such case of low resolution textures in the demo. being curious I fired up the demo again & this time the textures loaded aptly without any pop ups.
 
According to my local EB 18 of the 25 copies they received for the street date are reserved for pre-orders.

No idea whether that is a good or bad thing as far as sales go, just thought I would mention it.

Cheers
 
Picked it up during my lunch break. I already have a few hours available this evening to delve in. Looking forward to it.
 
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