I just grabbed the frankly enormous Heavy Rain demo from PSN and honestly?  My feelings about it are mixed.  My very first impression was that it’s a very good looking game, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise, all the screen shots and trailers have been simply gorgeous, if a little uncanny valley inducing.

Having now played the demo, I have two main criticisms; firstly, for a game so forward in its thinking, it is curiously backward in it’s design.  Fixed camera angles and a movement system that wouldn’t have looked out of place in 1996, gives the game an unwelcome retro feel.  It game has a walk button for heaven’s sake, and I can’t really figure out why.  The left stick is only used for movement, so having to press R2 every time you want to actually move seems superfluous.  It’s the same kind of system as the ‘3D’ movement of PS1 games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, a movement system we haven’t used in years. It feels clunky and awkward and it’s going to take some getting used it.

My other complaint is that the game is incredibly fiddly.  I knew there would be Quick Time Events, and they’re much less intrusive than Heavy Rain’s spiritual predecessor Fahrenheit, but there sure is a hell of a lot of them.  For example, in the second section of the demo, you have the chance to climb a muddy hillside.  The climb is split into three sections, each with about six different button presses, which is one thing, but there’s also a bunch of a button presses you need to do to get back down.  Want to open a car door?  Make a quarter circle from 12 o’clock to 9 o’clock; and don’t get me started on the fight scene in the first chapter.

However, this complaints aside, Heavy Rain is still a game I’m likely to pick up.  The idea of hunting down a serial killer form a variety of viewpoints really interests me, just like it did when Fahrenheit did it.  Hopefully it won’t go weird like in the same way.