A lot more polish and this game would have been the best new game since sliced bread.
Heavy Rain starts out with an architecture living the American dream. Working outta the house, beautiful wife and 2 great kids. He's life soon take a turn for the worse. After a tragic moment changes Ethan Mars finds himself trying to be a good dad. Unfortunately for him, the Origami killer has other plans.
The game follows the stories of Ethan Mars, Norman Jay den (FBI), Madison Paige (photographer) and Scott Shelby (Privet eye) as the investigate the Origami killer and try to stop him before he climes his next victim.
The game controls are unique to the game due to the cinematic camera angles. Think Dance Dance meets Resident Evil 2. For the most part it doesn't hurt the game but the problem is the frustrating controls at key events. Sometimes you'll find yourself trying to craw through a window and the game will prompt you to press and hold 3-4 buttons at a time. While that's hard enough, miss a key while your character is half way past in obstacle and they'll simply crawl back into the position they were in before starting the action and you'll have to start over again.
Another gripe I have with the controls is having to press 2 buttons to walk. There is no reason for this. It's not like a run button or an action button. It's kinda strange to have to press R2 and the analog sticks to move.
The graphics in Heavy Rain are a mixed bag of unforgettable and flat out bad. While main characters look fine for the most part (every once in again you might see their cloths textures fade out), There is a major quality different between main characters and none playable characters. While many games do this, Heavy Rain's NPCs are probably the most noticeable when it comes to quality of each. Inconstancy frame rates and lack of AA don't help much either. environment offer a mixed bag as will. While most look decent you'll see the occasional low res texture and pop ups now and again. Animations for the most part are great. There are some strangers ones here and there but you'll barley ever notice them. That being said, the main characters are by far the best looking characters on any console right now.
The main Reason you should get this game is the story...Matter of fact if you're getting it for anything else you probably don't know much about this game. Heavy Rain's story is pretty damn good. You'll get angry when your character has to do something humiliating and dangerous and you'll cheer when they get a little payback or stop in injustice. There are plenty of suspenseful scenes where time is a factor. You'll panic looking for ways out of bad situations and you'll worry about your characters dying. When you confront the Origami killer you'll be shocked and angry.
While the script is fine, the problem comes from the performers them selves. Heavy Rain take place in a nameless Philadelphia town and the characters are American. Most of the cast are actually French. This becomes a distraction because in some scenes they just can not hide their accent's and they come out clear as day, especially the kids. From a technical standpoint the dialog track don't have any affects to them. What I mean by this is rather you're in an empty corridor or a club it sounds like someone is speaking into a mic. There's no ambient dialog in some scenes and sound affects like shoe steps blear thought my speakers even in the most sound saturated places in the game.
All in all, Heavy Rain brings great elements to video games. A story that will never been emulated with any other style of game play and some of the best graphics on the PS3. The problem is that for every one of those achievements there's an equal if not greater problem. From the start of the game, you're required to download a 233MB update (a rarity for a single player game) and install 4 gigs of data. More then twice my PS3 locked up while playing. I'd suggest renting it because replay value is not very high and you can complete it in 8-10 hours.