Heavy Rain
After a great deal of thought my beloved wife and I agreed to buy a gaming console for Chez Hall at Christmas and it has been a very big hit here as we endure the wettest spring and summer in Queensland for at least a decade which has meant that playing outside during the school holidays has been not so nice most of the time. After much agonising and a great deal of research we bought a PS3 and to ensure that they ended up with games that they would enjoy (and meet with our approval) took even more research select “Little Big planet” for our daughter and for our son is “Lego Star Wars” and since Christmas they have both been having a lovely time playing the console and even my beloved wife and I have been having a go from time to time. As much as I enjoy playing both games with the kids I was wishing for a more adult game so I bought “Heavy Rain” from an Ebay seller and when it arrived in the mail yesterday I was, well, quite excited after reading many good reviews.
- a screenshot from Heavy Rain
Well my daughter and I have both been playing the game and we agree that it is brilliant! I like the way that doing different things makes the plot play out differently and I like the look of the graphics and while there are some aspects of it that look a little clunky (fabric objects in particular don’t always look right) mostly you can just go with it. and enjoy the game I have not got that far into it yet but even my daughter who was previously declaring “Little Big Planet” the best game everRRR! is impressed by this game.
I have in the past been rather dismissive of gaming consoles and their games because they are just a little too violent or too stupid but Heavy Rain is (if you can forgive a bad pun) a game changer for me, it is intelligent and immersive with characters that are individually interesting and believable. You get to care about them and more importantly you want to play out the game to find out what happens if you do this instead of that. My daughter and I are taking turns to play out each chapter and it is most interesting to see just how the choices we make will change the outcome. My only beef with the way the game plays out, and its a small one, is that you don’t have the option of playing out the mystery entirely from any one of the playable character’s viewpoints and there is no option for cooperative play.
Its not quite like the game playing environment of Star Trek’s holodeck but it is the sort of experience that gets very close to the sort of “live another life” experience that the holodeck idea suggested is the future of home entertainment.
Cheers Comrades
Yeah, I remember about 20 years ago when they brought out the golf game that you could plug in to your TV. It was pretty basic stuff but it really got you in because you just wanted to make (or break) par for the course. After a few gos I became very good at it and hit a course record 59 (13 under par!) and boy was I chuffed to be such a great golfer.
Then I went and played the real game and realised the dumb video game was of no help to me at all and was just … a dumb video game. I’ve never played those games since – they’re too distracting from real life.
Oh I still have reservations about computer gaming but I do think that playing out a detective story where you get to try to solve the mystery has some merit in terms of being engaging and entertaining especially as that is something that in real life most of us just don’t have an opportunity to do unlike golf where anyone with the cash to buy or hire the gear can have a go. I would love to see a game where a classic detective like Poirot or Miss Marple has to solve a murder and you can play as the detective or even the murderer trying to evade discovery… You see such a game exercises the “little grey cells ” and that is what I like.
I’m surprised – given the NSFW screenshot you’ve chosen to illustrate it – that you’re playing Heavy Rain with your young daughter. The game is MA15+ and does feature a bit of nudity. There’s also an (incredibly creepy) sex scene later on.
Oh, and if you want to retain your positive impression of “interesting and believable” characters, I’d suggest stopping about 2/3rds of the way through…
Jeremy
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Firstly thanks for a civil comment
My daughter is a very mature girl for her age and we don’t have any hang-ups about nudity or sex in this family.
While I am happy to concede that the character realisations are not perfect what has fascinated me about the game is what it is attempting to do and the fact that it comes pretty close to succeeding in creating an interactive narrative story.
I have seen and now played (badly) a first person shooter game (Call of duty) and frankly I would be more concerned about that sort of game for young children than one that rather clumsily depicts sex (and in my first run through I did not get the controller movement right to undo the bra