Narrative junkies rejoice!: Heavy Rain provides one of the most unique experiences and... everybody should check it out.
Heavy Rain follows the journey of four characters on a quest to catch a serial killer known as The Origami Killer. He is known as the Origami Killer because his "calling card" is an origami animal placed in the hands of each of his victims.
The game itself isn't perfect, although some aspects of it almost are. The visuals are fantastic. The characters are all shockingly lifelike and the animations are all fluid and realistic (except for an awkward sex scene(or "love" scene if you wanna be politically correct)). The facial animations and subtleties are especially noticeable in between chapters. As the game loads a new chapter, it displays a character's face, simply looking around, maybe twitching a little bit. The eyes on the characters are amazing. The environments, lighting, and shadow effects all function extremely well. The weather effects are very nice as well, and they should be, as rain plays a major part in the story. I have not seen any game with better visuals than Heavy Rain.
The voice acting, for the most part, is great. Three of the main characters have consistently believable voice acting. The one main character that stood out as a poor actor for the beginning of the game was Ethan Mars. After the beginning, however, he forgets it all and catches up to the quality of the other actors. I can't totally blame the actor who portrayed him, though, because the script isn't the most well-written. Most of the children that work their way into the story are poorly voiced and their dialogue is written very unrealistically. Some of them even have way-out-of-place French accents that can easily distract and annoy. There are a few points in the story where the written and spoken dialogue come together perfectly and really drive the scene, but it doesn't happen as often as it could have. My theory is that David Cage, who originally speaks French, wrote the script without realizing his imperfections.
The gameplay isn't particularly deep. It consists of moving you character, and contextual actions. Most of the actions involve moving the right thumbstick in a direction based on the action of the controlled character. An example would be moving the thumbstick down from left to right to rock a baby. Some contextual actions involve taking advantage of the Sixaxis by shaking the controller in a certain direction (or multiple). It works a lot better than it did in Lair, that's for sure. Ba-Zing!! And just because you're participating in quick-time events, doesn't mean the action is less exciting. There are plenty of sequences likely to increase your heart rate.
Although the gameplay lacks depth, it more than makes up for it in the narrative and graphical aspect. But if you expected deep or complex gameplay your standards are a little out of whack. The story is interesting, often moving, and almost constantly thought-provoking. The mystery at the core of the story is injected into the mind of the player very effectively.
If the premise of this game intrigues you at all, play it. It is a unique experience not to be missed, and its imperfections are all perfectly forgivable as it was a risky concept from the beginning. I only hope that this can lead to more similar story-focused games in the future (with young characters who DO NOT have French accents).