You play as multiple characters and control many of the choices and possible survival of these characters (think Until Dawn but not slasher horror). For those who haven’t ever played Heavy Rain, this is a must play experience.
Quantic Dream upped the resolution from 720p to 1080p and improved other graphical touches here and there (shadowing, lighting, multi-thread rendering, etc).
I have to say, Heavy Rain holds up to the test of time in almost every aspect, and in other aspects it’s even better than some of the newer releases.īack in 2010, Heavy Rain was one of the most gorgeous games for the PS3 and I have to say with all of the improvements made with this remaster, it’s graphics hold up to many current PS4 titles. Heavy Rain was a favorite of mine when it was released for the PS3 and it’s a title I was eagerly awaiting a potential remaster for. So I’m going to try and refrain from repeating myself here, check out that review if you want my opinion on the current gaming atmosphere. Now in my review for Beyond: Two Souls ( here) I went on a bit of a rant about the current state of video games and the publishers taking advantage of the consumer with constant rereleases of older gen titles. Playing them in reverse order makes me miss some of the improvements made to Beyond: Two Souls but that doesn’t diminish the great story of Heavy Rain. Beyond: Two Souls should have been the second remaster released in my opinion because it improved on many aspects of Heavy Rain. This past November we saw the remastered release of Quantic Dream’s follow up to Heavy Rain Beyond: Two Souls, which now after playing both, was a kinda weird release strategy. Six years later it’s making a 1080p debut on the PS4. Originally released for the PS3 back in 2010, Heavy Rain really took the interactive drama adventure game genre to the next level. Now it’s time for the second part of Quantic Dream’s remasters for the PS4: Heavy Rain. You’re too busy filling in the blanks that shouldn’t be there to focus on the larger mysteries that are supposed to be driving the story forward.Eat, sleep, remaster, repeat. When you reach that point of familiarity and you know what you’re supposed to be doing then the game comes into it’s own as an interactive drama, but prior to that the confusion can sour the experience. Ethan is a father looking for his son, Scott is a PI hired by the families of previous victims, Jayden is a new FBI profiler in town and Madison is the one who has to bandage everyone's wounds. You learn that the Origami Killer targets young boys and drowns them over a period of days in rainwater, with each of the four protaganists tied to him in one way or another and desperate to save the latest victim. It’s baffling.Īs time wears on though, the threads entwine and the feeling of being a fish out of water lessens. When he shows up at a crime scene players have to start investigating the murder and looking for clues before they know who the Origami Killer is, what they should be looking for or who exactly they are playing. FBI profiler Norman Jayden enters with similar abruptness.
The opening acts of the game are full of moments like this, where you’re shown things without context and are left wondering.
The result is that you’ve had a twenty minute segment of the game that doesn’t mean anything and you’ve sat through protracted and needless nudity before you even know the name of the girl in question or what she has to do with the game at all. Some more stuff (which we don’t want to spoil but which isn’t ultimately important) happens, then it’s the end of that sequence. You pop into the shower and are treated to some hi-res nudity, complete with ‘waggle the controller to towel dry’ moments. A load screen drifts by and suddenly you’re controlling a scantily dressed girl in her apartment. The first time you get to play as photographer Madison Paige, for example, there’s no intro whatsoever. It takes an age to find out some of the information required to be comfortable with the game. That’s especially true in the early hours of the game, where the plot is slow to get going and the four player characters are introduced without context. The control system might sound silly and prove not to be, but the story sounds enthralling, but often falters. The game’s story doesn’t quite hold up quite as well.