Heavy Rain Demo Rocks!

I think you may very well be right, I work with alot of testorone driven folks so MW2 is sorta where we all go. If i'm not doing that I'm doing AION on the PC

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I got Heavy Rain yesterday and I played last night. To be honest, my initial experience was not a good one.

So here's the breakdown:

I start installing the game (requires 4GB of HDD space) when they tell you that included with Heavy Rain is a piece of highly decorated paper you can fold your own origami bird with. So as I'm installing the game and the game's patch, I'm folding this origami bird. Even after the installation is done, I'm still folding the origami bird (incorrectly, obviously).

Anyways, so about 5 minutes after the game is installed and waiting for my paper-folding ass, I finally hit start, configure the game, and get rolling. The first action is to get the father character, Ethan, out of bed. I stall a little bit to see what happens, but nothing, so I slowly raise my character out of bed.

And the game crashes.

So, to retrospect my first half-hour of playing Heavy Rain:
"I spent more time folding a fucking paper bird than playing the damned game."

However, the next SIX HOURS I spent on the game were the most nerve-wrecking, heart stopping, action packed and dramatic moments I've ever experienced in either a game or a movie.

Granted, the first half hour of Heavy Rain was very slow and was spent setting up the main character, Ethan, for an inevitable fall.

Afterwards, the story jumps 2 years into the future with Ethan where we left him off: His pristine family life that we spent the first half-hour on is ruined, he's divorced, his son is detached, and Ethan himself is in a state of depression. After interacting with Ethan a bit, the story jumps right into where the demo version of the game began: With the Detective questioning the mother of one of the Origami Killer's young victims. After that fiasco, it leads into the FBI Agent's bit in the demo, and so on and so forth.

I'm going to end the story-telling here to keep out spoilers. But, the game is playing pretty intense right now. It turns out that the Origami Killer is very much a 'SAW' sort of murderer, where the father of the boy (Ethan) must overcome some pretty brutal trials in order to collect the clues to save his son. Some of the trials include crawling through glass, driving against oncoming traffic for 5 miles on a highway, and cutting off one of your fingers.

Other intense scenes involve different characters talking down crazed gunmen, where one wrong word, or one wrong move will get your character killed, or get someone else killed in the process. Another scene involves the girl (can't remember name, too much time thinking of the shower nudity scenes) being assaulted in her own apartment by masked hitmen, and you have to fight like hell to survive.

One thing I am noticing is that I don't think that the outcomes are as 'dynamically influenced by my decisions' as I thought they would be. For instance, if you come close to completing a scene, and then pause the game and quit, you can have the opportunity to re-choose your words and actions in that scene to see if they play out any differently. Outside of the life-and-death situations, they really aren't all that different.

Overall, the game is extremely EXTREMELY straining on the heart and mind, which is refreshing to get a player so deeply involved.

I'll give my full thoughts in a future review after I've played the game through more than once. I still have to finish my first run, however, so don't expect anything too soon.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
When you write a review for Heavy Rain you must include that story!

Heavy Rain does sound exciting! Does anybody know if I can RENT a Playstation 3?

Probably impossible because a rental company would need to do a harddrive wipe every time they get the system back. I can just see them being more of a liability to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Same with the Xbox 360's that actually come with a hard drive.

Hey wait a minute. Why do you need to RENT one? You did the Folklore review for the Playstation 3?

I beat Heavy Rain last night. Two endings, anyways... The first I got by getting to the very end of the game, and fudging up a button sequence that got one of my heroes arrested and ended up getting Ethan shot to death by the police. I replayed the last chapter (thank God for a chapter select feature) and corrected my mistake and I believe I received the best possible ending.

**VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD**
There are some story elements that are still bothering me... a lot. Each character has a condition: Aesthma, insomnia/nightmares, blackouts, drug dependency. Two of the characters' conditions (the blackouts and the insomnia/nightmares) ARE NEVER RESOLVED, especially when they have such a heavy presence at the beginning of the game. The context of the nightmare (not plural) you will experience is never explained. The blackouts that play a significant roll early on all of a sudden stop occurring midway through, which led me to believe they were medically induced or possibly hypnotic suggestions. While the use of medical/psychiatric methods to execute the Origami Killer murders would have been a hell of a cool twist, sadly it wasn't so.

I had my suspicions about the identity of the Origami Killer, and I was somewhat correct, but I had anticipated a bit more of a twist than the "Yup, I did it!" revelation I received from the character.

**END VAGUE SPOILERS**

Heavy Rain was probably one of the most action packed, genuinely adrenaline-rushing, head-fucking games I've played since Silent Hill 2. While the story is significantly weaker than the masterpiece, Silent Hill 2, Heavy Rain still immerses the player in an experience that puts to shame nearly all of the Hollywood suspense movies I've ever seen.

My suggestions for playing Heavy Rain are to follow your gut, pay attention to even some trivial matters like clothing and time, and do your damnedest to try to stay alive.

So who dunnit?