Heavy Rain is one of those games that I’ve been this close to picking up for a long time now.
Essentially a long-form interactive cutscene/choose your adventure game, the game has always struck me as an intriguing, if not unique; gaming experience.
While I’ve heard many complain about Heavy Rain’s slow start, and distinctly hands-off approach to gameplay; based on the hour or so I’ve seen of the game, I feel that my personal opinion of the game remains mostly positive.
It’s taken me a long time, but recently I’ve come to realize that I tend to favor games that tell stories, even if said games can often be intensely linear or tedious.
I’m a completist, so open world games tend to intimidate me with the breadth of options they present to me.
At the same time, first-person shooters tend to bore me with their largely one-note gameplay mechanics and twitch oriented gameplay.
These days, story driven action-adventure games with a clear cut A-B-C progression seem to be my what appeals to me.
While it’s supposedly very far from a linear experience, the core concept and mechanics of Heavy Rain appeal to me for perhaps the simplest, and most base of reasons:
The objective of the game lies within unraveling it’s story, a story that I just happen to be somewhat interested in.
While I probably will in fact get around to playing Heavy Rain at some point, the real point of this post concerns a little blip I happened on Kotaku.com.
Apparently someone went out of their way to create a 12 hour playthrough of Heavy Rain, with the strictly gameplay oriented segments removed in favor of presenting the story in a straightforward cinematic fashion.
Think of it as viewing Heavy Rain as if it were a long-ass movie or TV series.
Here’s a link, and bear in mind this is a playthrough, so be ready for *EVERY HEAVY RAIN SPOILER IMAGINABLE*:
http://www.youtube.com/user/direx1974
Anyway, while I myself won’t be viewing this playthrough, for fear of spoiling the gameplay experience for myself; it does in fact sound like the kind of thing I would watch after I’ve played through the game once or twice.
In any case, consider this post a heads-up for those who might be interested in checking out something like this.
One thing that’s kind of neat about a project like this, is the fact that the game is known to contain so many branching paths, making for a video compilation that very well may differ drastically from the gameplay experience of those who’ve played through Heavy Rain following a different route.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for tonight, see yah’ tomorrow!
Filed under: Games, Movies, Uncategorized, 3, Bowfinger, Chubby Rain, comedy, Eddie Murphy, film, game, Heavy Rain, kotaku, Let's Play, movie, Playstation, playthrough, PS3, Sony, video, videogame, Youtube