Thoughts On HEAVY RAIN

No, I have not played Heavy Rain. I have played the demo but that gives me little room to give it a review, however, I will give my thoughts on it from my limited perspective.

First: Gamers seem to go ga-ga over stuff like this. There is a group of gamers that love to see games like Heavy Rain, in other words, Games that focus heavily on story and present a gritty or "mature" attitude towards gaming because the feel like it validates gaming as a legitimate art and hobby. Some gamers love to be able to point at a game like Heavy Rain or Shadow of The Colossus and say; "See, see games are deep and profound and should be more accepted as art and not just as nerd media." Personally I love games and I don't care how legit the appear to be to the maintstream or the artsy media community. If you do, I have nothing against that but be careful not to accept something sub-par just because you are eager for the idea it presents.

Second: Nearly all of the reviews I have read on the game mention little of the gameplay. The bulk of the reviews gush over the great story and mood of the game. Most of the reviews look like movie reviews. My friends I want more than a movie when I pay $60, I want a game. One that I can replay or at least invest 10-15 hours in. There are plenty of games out their, Shadow of the Colossus as already mentioned among them, that have great story and have better gameplay then Heavy Rain. Does Heavy Rain have a great story? Probably, but did it need to sacrifice gameplay to do that? No. It is utter nonsense to accept a game's lacking gameplay mechanics because its story is so good. In a video game story cannot make up for the primary component of a game, the game part. If this game were $20 then yes, I'd be all over it, but $60 for a great story and some prompt button mashing to fight or even climb up a hill, really? Have we let our standards drop so much? I suspect that we haven't and for this reason I suspect the game will sell "okay" but not make any waves because gamers still want games, not interactive story discs. But, again, I have not played it, so I could be totally wrong.

Games can evolve and they can have great story and they can have great gameplay. And for that price tag on games we should expect that.