The scene where heroine Madison visits a creepy doctor is genuinely tense and scary, and some of tubby gumshoe Scott Shelby’s scenes are great. Any narrative where a parent has to go to extreme measures to rescue their child will have some resonance, and Ethan Mars’ trials include some shocking and heartbreaking moments. Let’s be clear: there is some really good stuff here, including a handful of good performances and some powerful or suspenseful scenes. What’s more, the moments where interaction should be strongest – with FBI agent Norman Jayden and his augmented reality specs – turn out to be the weakest, involving the kind of detective work that Batman: Arkham Knight and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate put to shame.
You might even feel like you’re being forced to work through the bits Hollywood movies would be smart enough to leave off the screen. Even the Dualshock 4’s rarely-used accelerometers come into play here, a sudden jerk becoming a shunt or an awful, self-inflicted blow.Īt other times, though, you just feel distanced from the action and not really in control. The technique also works when it reinforces identification with your protagonist, with their discomfort on the screen mirrored by your awkward grip on the controller. The game is at its best when it sets up a suspense scene and your ability to wrangle the controls and think quickly suddenly counts, for instance, as you try to help an injured man exit a building with the cops about the break down the doors. That might be a bit harsh, and it’s not actually as bad as it sounds. You’re almost literally going through the motions. Each character has a part to play, and it’s your job to make them play it. You can moan that Telltale’s games can make you feel more like the director of a scene than an actor in it, pushing the drama in one direction or another, but in Heavy Rain you feel more like a puppeteer. The prompt says hold L1, then L2, then pump the X key repeatedly. The prompt says move the right-stick to the right then curve it down and to the left. And while there are some light puzzles and moments where you can affect the direction of the dialogue or take decisive action, your main mode of interaction is doing what the prompts on the screen tell you to. It’s a horrible system and seems utterly unnecessary. This is a game where you steer your character around like a car, the R2 button working much like the accelerator on a dodgem. It’s on the gameplay front that Heavy Rain’s real problems lie. It’s worth trying if you have similar issues.
#Heavy rain review Ps4
Simply restarting the game didn’t fix this, even after a patch, yet powering off and restarting the PS4 seems to do the trick. On my first session with the game I encountered all sorts of weirdness, ranging from flickering and strobing white text to stuttering animation to elements of the background dropping in and dropping out and – at one point – the protagonist getting trapped inside the model of their sofa. What’s more, those sequences now load much faster. True, the in-game character models never look quite as good as the stunning facial close-ups we see while sequences load, but they’re closer to the mark.
#Heavy rain review skin
At times, the crystal-clear presentation highlights a lack of detail in the background, but with enhanced anti-aliasing, lighting and shadows, not to mention new textures and improved water and skin simulations, this is one PS4 remaster that could pass as a next-gen game.
#Heavy rain review 1080p
Now running at full 1080p and (mostly) minus the frame rate drops and screen tearing that blighted the original, Heavy Rain still looks fantastic. This PS4 remaster makes what impressed us so much back then even more impressive. I’d be tempted to say that we were so excited about the ‘drama’ that we forgot about the ‘interaction’, but the closer you look at Heavy Rain, the more the drama falls apart as well. Now, after The Walking Dead, Remember Me and Until Dawn it seems a curious concoction, technically dazzling but weirdly unsatisfying. What were we all thinking? Six years ago Quantic Dream’s pioneering interactive drama seemed like the future a combination of advanced facial animation and motion-captured performances promising a new era of cinematic games.
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