Heavy Rain Previews Show Promise

As the February release date for Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain nears, several publications have gotten a chance for some hands-on time with the game and seem to be intrigued by what they saw. Quoting the Opposable Thumbs blog: "The game grabs you during the quiet moments where nothing 'happens.' When you look at a picture your child drew. When you're questioning someone about a crime. When you're trying to figure out how to react to a violent situation. The preview we were sent put me in different situations as I played a small handful of characters, and each one provided a few tiny moments that were surprising in terms of storytelling or subtlety." Eurogamer's previewer had a similar reaction: "To my great delight as well — Heavy Rain isn't a mature game because it has unhappy families and moody lighting, it's a mature game because it anticipates an adult response from the player and is prepared to receive it."

Comments

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Interesting

[enderjsv]

From what I've seen of the game so far, I think I can honestly say without hyperbole that this game is the biggest and possibly most important experiment in the past 15 years of gaming. It really takes the whole idea of what is considered to be a game and breaks the mold. It actually reminds me a bit of Indigo Prophecy, but ten times more deviated from standard gameplay practices. I'm excited to see if it will work and how it will be received.

Re:Interesting

[protodevilin]

My problem with Indigo Prophecy was that, while I expected the game to immerse me into an intriguing mystery-thriller plotline (which it did for the first half), I did not expect it to suddenly devolve into a silly SciFi Channel circus about space aliens and Mayan Kung-Fu ghost people. I was totally engrossed and throroughly impressed with Indigo Prophecy, and then quite abruptly my 'wow's became 'WTF's. I hope Heavy Rain doesn't make the same mistake.

Re:Interesting

[Kagura]

From what I've seen of the game so far, I think I can honestly say without hyperbole that this game is the biggest and possibly most important experiment in the past 15 years of gaming. It really takes the whole idea of what is considered to be a game and breaks the mold. It actually reminds me a bit of Indigo Prophecy, but ten times more deviated from standard gameplay practices. I'm excited to see if it will work and how it will be received.

Remember Spore before it came out? That's all I'll say until I actually have this game in my hands. I have learned my lesson about expecting too much.

Re:Interesting

[eulernet]

Don't expect too much !

Hint: I have been one of the programmers behind Omikron the Nomad Soul, their previous success.

The biggest problem with Omikron is that we spend a lot of time adjusting the gameplay on the first level, at the expense of the following levels.
Making the game appealing takes a lot of time, and when the game is too large (and not clearly defined), it takes an exponential amount of time.

Another big problem is that Omikron tried to merge several types of games: adventure, action and fight.
Instead of creating one good adventure game, we created 3 below-average games.
And these games mix as easily as water and oil.

I lost all my ties with Quantic Dreams, but I'm pretty sure they still have these problems, with a boss who wants to create too ambitious games, and a team confronted to an unclear direction.
Quantic Dreams also lost a lot of their coders at the end of the first game, due to stress, bad scheduling, and in general a terrible lack of organization.

An anecdote:
the boss wanted that the player might pilot the cars in the city, so we spent 3 weeks of coding to allow that, plus a lot rework of the 3D graphics, since the roads needed to be tagged. Did you know that you could pilot the car manually ?

Re:How Is The PS3 Putting Out Graphics Like This?

[enderjsv]

Do we HAVE to turn this into a system war? Can't we instead talk about Heavy Rain?

mature, adult

[md65536]

I hope it stays that way, in North America too. I played Indigo Prophecy, the American version of QD's Fahrenheit. For the American version, they took out "adult" things like sex.

There is a shower scene still in Indigo Prophecy, but the character is showering in her underwear! What an odd confusion of sex and nudity, where it's okay to walk in on someone showering, as long as they're doing it with clothes on! IMHO not a very "mature" way of handling nudity.

(inb4 European vs. American acceptance of nudity)

Re:How Is The PS3 Putting Out Graphics Like This?

[smcn]

Agreed completely. Besides, everyone already knows that console games will never look as good as on the PC.

Interesting but not fun

[ninjackn]

I'm rather puzzled by this "game". It's really unique, the screen shots look gorgeous, I find it really interesting and I want to play it. However I feel as if I'm not going to find it fun, it seems just too heavy and mature.

Maybe it's just a sign of my immaturity. The original half-life is a good example of fun in terms of character interaction. I smack a fellow scientist in the face with a crow bar and he just stands wit his best retort, "what are you doing?" and maybe get the smarts to run away after I smack him a second time. Sometimes he'll just riddle me with dialog until he's on the floor. In Heavy Rain, it seems too close to reality and I wouldn't want to do something like beat my virtual child with a light saber till he runs to his mom, the only choice is the mature adult choice and to let him win.
 
On the other side of the coin it could be a sign of my maturity. I am able to recognize that the game will require deep emotional involvement on my part and it's just something I don't want to invest or experience through a "game".

Re:Interesting but not fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should consider the word "game" more like you consider the word "film." There really isn't anything in the definition of a game that says it must be fun. I mean, chess is a game and it is not exactly the kind of fun that you probably associate with fps video games.

Re:Interesting but not fun

[Anonymous Coward]

And e.g. many Bergman or von Trier movies are not exactly "fun" either. But they are still fascinating, intriguing and quite often challenging.
Err, and they don't sell well.

Re:Can't wait

[Ihmhi]

I hear they're also making a mobile version exclusive to the LG Chocolate.

Real life rarely makes a good game...

[OverZealous.com]

When I read the (mostly vague) descriptions of the game in the article, all I could think of was that the author summed up the game early on:

You'll be doing many mundane things: turning lights on and off, cooking dinner, taking a shower. In fact, the first hour of the game seems to exist only to show you how normal your life as an architect and a father is. In that time I did some work, played with my kids, and helped my wife around the house.

After watching me playing the game, my real-life wife made pointed out that I could have actually done some work, helped her around the house, and then played with my kids in the time I had just spent with Heavy Rain. I didn't have a good counter-argument.

(Emphasis Mine)

I'm aware that there is more to the game than this, but I think what makes a video game interesting is the way it abstracts you from the real world. How is this game going to abstract mundane details of everyday life in a way that isn't just boring? It's too bad the author didn't expand on any more details.

There really isn't anything in this review that makes me think the game shows promise, despite the Slashvertisment's summary.

Re:Real life rarely makes a good game...

[Rogerborg]

Remind me: how many millions of people play The Sims?

Re:Real life rarely makes a good game...

[DreamsAreOkToo]

Now we need to make robots that are hooked up to these games. That way, when you play Heavy Rain, the robot can play with your kid and do some work. Heck, you can mix it up some by going on xbox live and playing with someone else's kid! Think of the possibilities!

Re:Real life rarely makes a good game...

[a0schweitzer]

I think games like this serve to further gaming as an art form, which is something that isn't done nearly enough. Sadly, the common perception of games is that they are for children, and that adults who play them are silly and unwilling to grow up. Sure, casual games are changing this, but only becasue their casual nature makes them easier for 'adults' to accept and enjoy. Making games serious will allow gaming to advance as an artistic medium. The mundane details, as you put it, allow for introspection, and show that gaming can have much, much deeper meaning than is normally attributed to it. If games continue to be made in such a style, they can have a much greater impact than movies (for example), due to their immersive nature. Imagine watching a provocative and thought-provoking artistic film, and compare the impact that can have to the potential impact of actually making the decisions within the story, if the story were to be told through a game. I suppose you're right, this game doesn't look fun, but I think it can help to further games as an art form.

Re:Real life rarely makes a good game...

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine the fun part of the game comes in once you play through the normal, mundane hour and shit goes very wrong and you start doing detective work. The first hour is to establish your life, as the article says. Then your life goes sideways.

Re:Real life rarely makes a good game...

[OverZealous.com]

I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I disagree (a little).

I recently was replaying Shadow of the Colossus. To me, there is a game that exemplifies art. It was beautiful to watch, immersive, playing it was unlike anything I had played before, and the story was deep and dramatic. (It even ended on a sad note for those who believe that anything that makes you happy can't be art.)

Forcing someone to play through an hour of boring, everyday tasks is less than art. It's not even very creative (in my opinion). How many movies and books and other things have been made that focus on everyday things?

Or, for that matter, how many games already been made where the user gets to choose between decisions (Black-and-White, Fate [I think], that one with the biological superhero)? Every time, while the game is interesting, the decision making process is hampered by the vary fact that a game is limited to what the designers have already though up. Currently, decision-based games are more like choose-your-own-adventure books. The decisions are more thrown in to add "replay value" than to truly give the user choices. (Save the baby, or let it die? Play it twice, to see the different cut-scenes! Yay, more hours of gameplay...)

The gaming medium as art has to be more than just taking a movie or book and slapping lame controls on it. That's like doing a crayon drawing in oils, and calling it art. It needs to incorporate what makes games different than the other mediums.

Re:Real life rarely makes a good game...

[ProppaT]

Tell me about it. I've been reading comments here for half an hour now and it already seems like an eternity.

Re:Real life rarely makes a good game...

[lymond01]

In a way, a game should let you escape, immediately, outside the bounds of your mundane world. This is why people play Counterstrike, Left4Dead, Wolverine, etc. You leave the mowing of the lawns for the emptying of the clip as soon as the game is done loading. But there's a way to tell a story -- the build-up, the foreshadowing, and mostly, in terms of fantasy (fantasty/scifi/horror), to note the way things should have been had something not significantly changed. It sounds like Hard Rain is going to be like a book -- it's not going to throw you into a gunfight or a zombie massacre in the first page. It wants you to sit down, get involved with the characters, so that when they are pinned to a wall by a demon having their throats ripped out, you'll be thinking, "Dammit! He has T-ball in the morning!" and you'll care...even from your comfy computer chair.

1) Action game: You love your wife. She means the world to you. Zombies are attacking her. What do you do?

2) Story:
"Hi, honey. I'm home!"
(From the kitchen)"Wow. Just like yesterday. Coincidence?"
"Hah. Hah. Did you manage to find my bowtie for tonight? The award ceremony's in a couple hours."
"Yes, sir. Found it, sir."
"What's that supposed to mean?" (hangs up his coat)
"It means that you go from disorganized computer nerd to commander-in-chief whenever there's something that specifically involves you."
(groaning)"Mmm. We don't have to go. I'm sure someone will accept the award for me." (heads towards kitchen door)
"No no. I'm already dressed...."
(Opens the kitchen door to find his wife seated with her legs on the table wearing a bowtie...and nothing else.)
"Oh, we should skip it..."
"No way." She lets him pick her up. "I think we can manage both."
(As our reluctant hero carries her through the living room to their den of iniquity, their front door is struck so hard it nearly breaks the hinges. Slobbering and drooling can be heard from the other side...)

In #2, the zombies are secondary. They are the obstruction to the normalcy you'd rather be enjoying.

Re:Can't wait

[aplusjimages]

I think people need a video reference here. Chocolate Rain

Re:Can't wait

[thisnamestoolong]

Yeah, I heard you have to move away from the phone to breathe when you're playing it...