Heavy rain combines a gripping storyline, great presentation, and immersive game play to create a great overall product.
Gameplay: Most of the gameplay involves moving the player character around an environment to discover clues. It sounds boring but its made to be very immersive as you can go to the bathroom, look at a picture, or brush your teeth. There are many conversations that occur in the game and you can choose to be nice about an issue or be a complete jerk. There are many life and death situations in the game, and there are no continues, so if a player dies, they stay dead in the game- making the experience very nerve wracking. The controls leave a little to be desired for as they are similar to the classic Resident Evil "tank controls". They are not as bad, but they still are sort of annoying to deal with.
Presentation/Graphics: Heavy Rain is heavily reliant on its presentation to help immerse the player in the environment. You will play in locals such as: A sunny backyard, crowded shopping mall, dingy apartment, and even in a virtual reality environment. All of the areas have fantastic and really sell the idea. The characters all look very well done, this is one of the best looking PS3 game on the market.
Sound: The voice acting is actually very good, which is key for a heavy story based game. However, they are all European actors, and sometimes their accent carries through. The music is not very memorable, but it is not bad by any means, I just wished they used music in a more effective way to help me connect better with the story.
Replay Value: Relatively Low, There are multiple endings and story situations you can do drastically differently but the game is not too long and once the main story is over it is not something you want to play through again because it is a relatively methodical game. It isn't boring but it takes a lot of patience to go through the same situations you cant choose an outcome for. There are some bonus unlockables, making-of featurettes, and art gallerys to unlock also. Trophy support also keeps track of progress.
Overall: A great game, it is similar in vain to games like Indigo Prophecy (same development team). So if you like those kinds of games then this will blow your socks off. If you have not bought it yet, the price should be less than 60$- which is hard to recommend buying at that price. While the game is good, and the first play through is the best, repeated play throughs can get repetitive.