Heavy Rain - PS3

Heavy Rain for the PS3 was detailed for the first time today. But while there’s no doubting that the game looks great, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Can the actual playing experience ever match up to those gorgeous visuals? If Sony’s great hope for the PS3 this year is LittleBigPlanet, with its lead character of Sackboy being touted as the face of the Playstation 3, then next year seems to be all about Heavy Rain. The Quantic-developed title was officially unveiled, complete with release schedule and gameplay footage, today at GC 2008 in Leipzig.
The game looks sweet as a nut, I mean really beautiful, with stunning human faces and jaw dropping backgrounds. The demo shown at GC 2008 was of actual in-game footage, although it looks to play just like one long cut scene. Check it out below.

The game is scheduled to be released late in 2009, so there is still a massive amount of scope for improvement, but even so, the gameplay mechanics seem to be in place and on first look, they are nothing but some very basic QTEs (Quick Time Events).
Don’t get me wrong, QTEs certainly have their place in gaming, but if that’s all there is to a game then they can become very dull, very quickly. I first experienced them in Shenmue on the Dreamcast, but they have also been used in many games since, notably Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit), Quantic’s last game.
The QTEs is Heavy Rain also look decidedly simple, with just the four main buttons used to control your character’s choice of action. Choice seems to be the keyword bandied about by David Cage, the writer and director of the game, during his unveiling of the game.
Heavy Rain essentially sees you becoming the main character, the director and everyone else in between as you play out the story in the way you see fit. Every decision you make can have a moral and meaningful impact on the storyline.
So graphically, I haven’t seen anything finer all year, and I also like the idea behind the game, with a mature storyline putting the gamer supposedly in the hot seat. I’m just not sure whether the gameplay is going to work for me, and I worry that we’ll end up feeling more like passengers on a train rather than the driver of a car.