Heavy Rain gets some flak for uncanny facial animations and awkward voice acting, which sure, it does suffer a little for, but it's a pretty incredible and innovative game. The game relies almost entirely on quick time events as the main gameplay, but does it in an intuitive way that almost feels natural, despite not having played QTE-heavy games before. I think this speaks to the thought that was put into this game from the developers and the level of care given to the game.

The story starts fairly slow; there's an entirely-too-long sequence where you play as Ethan just schmoozing around his house, living it up, doing various mundane ♥♥♥♥♥. I will say that it illustrates the importance of exploring your surroundings and showing that not every action is going to be highlighted for you, but in my opinion, it drags on too long and this tutorial section could have easily been translated into another section.

Once it picks up however, you're quickly put on an in-game timer of a handful of days to unmask the Origami Killer, and the stakes remain high for the rest of the game. You take control of four characters who are all tiptoeing around the same overarching storyline, and will occasionally cross paths in their pursuit of the truth. These sections were always interesting to see the thoughts and judgements from one character to another.

There's plenty of choices to make here, and those choices will guide you down different paths leading to several different endings, so I think it's definitely a game you'll want to go through a couple of times and see what drastically different outcomes you can find.

This game is definitely worth a visit, though I can see how the gameplay would not strike a chord with everyone who plays it, but in that case, I'd recommend watching a video of it, because the story is still a thrill and worth checking out. Speaking of...

Cinematic playthrough here: https://youtu.be/XDKLhCXhXq4

Heavy Rain gets some flak for uncanny facial animations and awkward voice acting, which sure, it does suffer a little for, but it's a pretty incredible and innovative game. The game relies almost entirely on quick time events as the main gameplay, but does it in an intuitive way that almost feels natural, despite not having played QTE-heavy games before. I think this speaks to the thought that was put into this game from the developers and the level of care given to the game. The story starts fairly slow; there's an entirely-too-long sequence where you play as Ethan just schmoozing around his house, living it up, doing various mundane shite. I will say that it illustrates the importance of exploring your surroundings and showing that not every action is going to be highlighted for you, but in my opinion, it drags on too long and this tutorial section could have easily been translated into another section. Once it picks up however, you're quickly put on an in-game timer of a handful of days to unmask the Origami Killer, and the stakes remain high for the rest of the game. You take control of four characters who are all tiptoeing around the same overarching storyline, and will occasionally cross paths in their pursuit of the truth. These sections were always interesting to see the thoughts and judgements from one character to another. There's plenty of choices to make here, and those choices will guide you down different paths leading to several different endings, so I think it's definitely a game you'll want to go through a couple of times and see what drastically different outcomes you can find. This game is definitely worth a visit, though I can see how the gameplay would not strike a chord with everyone who plays it, but in that case, I'd recommend watching a video of it, because the story is still a thrill and worth checking out. Speaking of... Cinematic playthrough here: https://youtu.be/XDKLhCXhXq4