Outline · [ Standard ] · Linear+ Play, Want, Bin, February 2010 edition

[Luscan]

Is anyone playing the Heavy Rain demo? It seems to be getting near universal hate and pre-order cancelling rage.

What did I say. What did I fucking say.

[cavalcade]

Well, rllmuk aren't convinced.

They cite shite voice acting and dodgy controls as the biggest worries.

[cavalcade]

I don't trust rllmuk that much, but NTSC-UK feedback is also very patchy. That said, it is mainly demo feedback, the full game could well be better.

[cavalcade]

What did I say. What did I fucking say.

WHERE THE HELL IS MY PIZZA, BITCH!

[Luscan]

WHERE THE HELL IS MY PIZZA, BITCH!

One it was a burger.

Two I think there was talking of pushing people down stairs.

[cavalcade]

Foodstuffs and the exact nature of the threats delivered were changed in the previous quote to protect certain individuals.

[Ianos]

I honestly didn't think they'd release a demo, as I thought it would do exactly this. I don't want to sound like a complete twat, but it is a different experience to what we're used to and as such needs to be judged in a more rational sense than just "OH HE LOOKS LIKE A DICK 1/10 PRE-ORDER CANCELLED".

The controls can be dodgy at times, some of the voice acting is a bit shit (too many French accents, natch) and if you're looking for a standard 'go here shoot that' game you're going to be disappointed. For all the derisive laughter in Quantic Dream's direction though, at least they're trying something different. This fact hits home even harder when I'm sat here playing Dante's Inferno. Ohwhat'sthat? It's another GoW-'em-up? With added tits? BRILLO.

Gah, I dunno. I just think Heavy Rain isn't going to get given a chance by a lot of people because they simply expect something from it that it isn't going to give.

I have no idea if I had a point here. Apologies.

[cavalcade]

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. If I was buying games, I'd be buying it at launch purely to support a dev trying something different. I am amazed they released a demo. AMAZED. What can it hope to achieve? No good will come of it.

[Ianos]

Oh I wasn't shooting anyone, I only have forum-rage towards Rllmuk. That place tends to hit a nerve.

[aniki]

I've never really been all that interested in Heavy Rain - it sounded like a fairly typical story hidden behind some deliberately quirky controls, which meant it was a rental candidate but nothing to get terribly excited about.

The demo has me considering a pre-order, and I'm seriously thinking about a day-one purchase as well - which would make it the first PS3 game I've picked up at launch.

Yeah, the acting's dodgy, and the controls are a bit awkward (and Jesus, that fight QTE was a bit longer than it needed to be), but I'm hard pushed to think of a game that's felt quite this... interactive. I'm hoping the storyline will be less than linear, but if its not then at least it'll have been an interesting ride.

[Mr Party Hat]

(and Jesus, that fight QTE was a bit longer than it needed to be)

I thought that, and looking back, how much mo-cap must that have needed? Because presumably, if you failed to complete an action the fight would go another way. Every time I missed a button, the other guy got the upper hand.

The amount of variables was mind boggling.

[Brian Bloodaxe]

...I'm hard pushed to think of a game that's felt quite this... interactive...

That seems like a funny thing to say, care to elaborate?

I haven't played the demo so my jumping off point here is Fahrenheit which could probably be described as the most interactive film I have ever played. As far as I can tell Heavy Rain is much the same but less linear.

[aniki]

That seems like a funny thing to say, care to elaborate?

It's a difficult thing to describe without making it seem more awkward and heavy-handed than it actually is. It's the way that nearly every action you take requires so much input from the player - it seems that there are no context-sensitive buttons that generally just mean "interact" or "use" - instead, it uses skate.-style rotations and flicks of the right stick to perform actions. Taking out your detective's badge, for instance, is a quarter-rotation from 3 down to 6. To open a car door, move the stick to the right. Putting on glasses is a quarter-stick rotation from 3 up to 12. But in different circumstances, those actions might do something totally different anyway.

And to make it even more complex, the speed at which you move the stick determines how fast the action is performed - while I didn't see any instances in the demo where that might have made a major difference, it's possible that whipping your badge out quickly rather than slowly could change how someone reacts. (This, of course, is speculation approaching Molyneux territory based on my limited exposure to the game.)

It's a weird disconnect; on the one hand, the fact that you have to think or read a prompt on the screen before doing anything breaks the immersion, but the way that every action requires a lot of input from the player gives your character weight, somehow.

Like I said, it's difficult to describe. I'll hopefully get a chance to play through the whole thing tonight and crystallise my opinion a bit more - at the minute, it's a bit vague.

[Brian Bloodaxe]

It's a difficult thing to describe without making it seem more awkward and heavy-handed than it actually is. It's the way that nearly every action you take requires so much input from the player - it seems that there are no context-sensitive buttons that generally just mean "interact" or "use" - instead, it uses skate.-style rotations and flicks of the right stick to perform actions. Taking out your detective's badge, for instance, is a quarter-rotation from 3 down to 6. To open a car door, move the stick to the right. Putting on glasses is a quarter-stick rotation from 3 up to 12. But in different circumstances, those actions might do something totally different anyway.

And to make it even more complex, the speed at which you move the stick determines how fast the action is performed - while I didn't see any instances in the demo where that might have made a major difference, it's possible that whipping your badge out quickly rather than slowly could change how someone reacts. (This, of course, is speculation approaching Molyneux territory based on my limited exposure to the game.)

It's a weird disconnect; on the one hand, the fact that you have to think or read a prompt on the screen before doing anything breaks the immersion, but the way that every action requires a lot of input from the player gives your character weight, somehow.

Like I said, it's difficult to describe. I'll hopefully get a chance to play through the whole thing tonight and crystallise my opinion a bit more - at the minute, it's a bit vague.

Sounds a lot more like Fahrenheit than I expected then because it uses basically the same system. In Fahrenheit I thought that it was an interesting idea hampered by the fact that translating everyling someone might do into flicks of a stick doesn't really work because the sticks are too limited and it all gets a bit abstract. I thought that maybe with something like the Wii remote it could work better but after playing twenty or thirty similarly abstract wii games I'm starting to doubt that it would help.

The benefit of this sort of system is that the game can throw anything it likes at you and you will always know how to deal with it. In Fahrenheit that meant actually throwing everything Mr Cage could think of at you. Hopefully Heavy Rain manages to be more reserved.

[Brian Bloodaxe]

One of my SquareGo colleagues has written up his opinions of the demo: click here. Seems he was quite impressed.

[Hapimeses]

Well, it may only be destined to sell 14 copies, but I'll be getting one of them. I'm hugely interested.

[Brian Bloodaxe]

Well, it may only be destined to sell 14 copies, but I'll be getting one of them. I'm hugely interested.

I'm hugely interested too. I just suspect it won't work very well.

[JDubYes]

Well, it may only be destined to sell 14 copies, but I'll be getting one of them. I'm hugely interested.

I think it might sell quite well, actually. Nothing huge, but I think there's enough interest to make sure it does okay here, and (conservatively) rather well in the States*, and even possibly Japan.

I'm probably wrong, though.


* - because the US box art has nipples on it.

[cavalcade]

I reckon it'll top a million, possibly reach 2. Needs some heavy TV advertising though and a big push from Sony with a better grasp of the product than the absolutely atrocious stuff they did for MAG.

[JDubYes]

And hey, if me and cav think it'll do well how can it go wrong?

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Apologies in advance to Quantic Dream.