Heavy Rain (Epic/PC) -> My Thoughts / Review

[TheMysterD]

INTRO.
Took a little over 10 hours today (July 4th, 2019), but I went through it (Heavy Rain for the PC / Epic Store Version) ... in one day, for my first play-through.

CHARACTERS & STORY.
So, here's the story, in short: a man's son get kidnapped and he has to go find the kid, who might've been kidnapped by the infamous Origami Killer. There's a girl who rides a motorcycle (who is important), a private detective, an FBI agent, and a few other characters who the player will take control of; make decisions; investigate people & locations; and whatnot - all who are involved with trying to find this child, the Origami Killer, and the whole story behind this saga.

WRITING, STORY, VOICE-ACTING, ETC.
Sometimes, the writing, dialogue and voice-acting is stilted. Sometimes, it's all right where it belongs...and is fine. There are some typical David Cage type of issues here: sometimes, things that happen are melodramatic ridiculous, unrealistic, and/or over-the-top. Sometimes, there are things that feels like they're complete plot-holes. This all seems common also with other David Cage games, such as Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy.

It feels like Heavy Rain takes a bit to really get the story & characters actually going - but once it gets its actual plot actually going (which takes a little bit, around an hour or two), it's actually good at the plot stuff. There's a lot of pieces moving and things going, so you will be trying to follow a lot there.

QTE's & (A LACK OF) PUZZLES.
Everything (almost) is interactive and there's QTE's everywhere (Quick Time Events), which often are in the direction and movements of what you're supposed; to do and they are often used to make the player do the exact motion and feel as if they are really doing the movement & any emotion/reaction necessary. Though, like Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy, this game can take all kinds of different paths and turn out all kinds of different ways, which is what makes this game really tick.

If you're looking for challenging or difficult puzzles: find another adventure game. Heavy Rain is not that type of adventure game; it's not like those of the old days. It's more of a QTE-fest and decision-making game.

ISSUES.
The PC Version isn't without technical issues, though. First up, The Taxidermist DLC isn't currently here. Some levels, I had issues where the framerates, no matter what I did to lower the settings, still took massive hits and/or became a slide-show. Though, most of the time: the game ran at fine at 1080p40fps on High (capped it to 40fps max with MSI Afterburner, to stop the framerate bouncing and framerate hits it took with an in-game cap of 60fps).

FINAL THOUGHTS.
Overall, I liked Heavy Rain, despite its issues. It could've been great, if they ironed out some of the issues (especially the performance issues and some stilted dialogue).

Heavy Rain is good. Flawed, but still good and solid overall.