Zero Punctuation: Heavy Rain

[blindthrall]

snip

I was going to take him to task, but you beat me to it. Yatzhee has really gotten the fanboys' cocks in a knot over this one.

I don't have a PS3, but I'd heard the story was excellent, so I read a walkthrough. If Heavy Rain was a movie, it would be decent, but hardly groundbreaking. It's just like too many other serial-killer race-against time stories. It's not a bad example, but it doesn't hold a candle to something like Silence of the Lambs.

A proper plot hole, to use the biggest example in the last few years, is the watchmen movie. The plot starts off with Ozymandias murdering the comedian to protect his plan to achieve world peace. Which gets Rorschach investigating, so on, so forth. Except there was nothing the comedian could've discovered. Then when the only possible explanation (ozy told him) only raises even more glaring questions (they barely know each-other, why wait to kill him, why tell him at all, etc), you have a plot hole.

I take it you never read the comic. The movie's biggest sin is that plot hole, because there was a ton of background material associated with it. In the novel, Ozymandius constructs a dead Elder Abomination and teleports it into the middle of New York using a reactor he'd been developing independently of Manhattan. The point was that Earth would believe a massive alien being had somehow intersected with our plane of reality, and the world powers would join together to make sure it couldn't happen again. The inspiration for the story was a Reagan quote "it would be great if there were otherworldly invaders, so humanity would be forced to work together..." Blaming it on Manhattan makes less sense(Manhattan is still alive-could the world do anything to him?) and makes Ozymandius more evil(and easier for audiences to hate him)by betraying a friend. The Comedian was hired by the government to find out where all the scientists that Ozymandius recruited had gone. Comedian saw the Abomination, and pretty much turned into a gibbering mess before he could tell his superiors. Ozymandius still deemed him enough of a risk to kill. Instead of a story that made sense, they kept Night Owl II's impotence scene.. Good decision there, Snyder.

And Ozymandius was never openly gay in the book. The most the comic says on the subject comes from Rorschach as he's digging through Ozymandius's files.

"Possible homosexual. Must investigate further."

 

[adragonofgold]

1- Nice try with Heavy Rain to "change" what a video game is, but needs a bit more work. 2-Thanks to Yahtzee for doing what he does every week. 3-Ever consider going way back to old school games for some mini reviews? And by old school I don't mean Atari or ColecoVision.... because that would bring back lots of painful childhood memories...

 

[Sprogus]

Great video as always. I still think that if they marketed Heavy Rain as an interactive movie instead of a game people wouldn't have as big a problem with it.

 

[Grahav]

"Weird black thing found dead. No one cares."

That was funny.

At least the game gets better.

 

[samsonguy920]

Cheers! Excellent review, with quite the semi-spoiler. Though it doesn't surprise me that that detail stays the same. The creator/wannabe writer is horrible at making a plot.

 

[Zing]

Perfect review hahaha.

Exactly what I thought about the beginning. Fahrenheit's opening gripped you and pulled you in, heavy rain made it so you had to "stick it through" the shitty part of the game.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Glad to see that even through all the outrageous hype there is at least something decent buried in there. Still, I don't have a PS3, and I wouldn't be buying this game even if I did because of the pretentious attitude of David Cage. Contrary to popular belief he's not the first person to try and inject emotional content into a game.

 

[spinFX]

The responses to ZP are always funny. You can tell people just fast forward to the end and get the last line and go "hurr hurr very funny Yahtzee". The video length and just people's chances of watching the video right as it comes out show that people don't even watch the video before responding. What is the point? I think most people are not going to read your pathetic 1 line response.

Heck no one will even read my response so why am I bothering...?

Anyway, sounds like Heavy Rain is not for me, I'm glad when PS3 exclusives come out and suck. Makes me glad I have an Xbox 360. I just wish I could play God of War III, inFamous and Uncharted. Seems like they are the only 3 exclusives worth my time. Really come to think of it Xbox is just as bad. PC gaming for the win! Get most of the console games, with better graphics, modding etc, but that is a tale for another day.

 

[mchoueiri]

game looks amazing and looking forward to picking up real soon after I beat FF 13 and God Of War 3

 

[IreneDAdler]

Great video as always. I still think that if they marketed Heavy Rain as an interactive movie instead of a game people wouldn't have as big a problem with it.

I doubt it, to be honest. I think the gameplay mechanic is probably one of the stronger points of this title. My main disappointment with Heavy Rain was how absolutely shitty its plot and writing were. SamElliot'sMustache sums up my opinion of the plot very nicely. Marketing this game as an interactive movie would have drawn more attention to its story-telling component, and more people would have complained about the lack of quality in that department, rather than giving it a pass because the gameplay was good.

 

[Bunnybeater]

"Non-standard Game Over"?

I hesitate to ask, but is it possible that Yahtzee...is a fellow troper?

 

[Tele-screen]

I'm glad to see someone come down from the "don't want to throw out any spoilers" pedestal long enough to give me an honest assessment of how it all ends up. Basically what this review told me is that it has absolutely zero replay value for me.

 

[BGH122]

-snip-

My, my! Witty and logical, is that allowed?

Welcome to the Escapist.

I bought Heavy Rain at the full whack and it wasn't really worth it. I can see that it'd be great to play as a rental, but that's all. It takes about eight hours to complete it properly and it has zero replayability.

 

[beema]

This is the first game in a while I've actually played before seeing the ZP review.
Not Yahtzee's funniest I must say.
The game definitely had a lot of flaws, but it more than made up for them in its uniqueness and how VERY engaging it was.
I think the criticisms of the dull parts of the game (going through characters mundane daily routines) are far overblown. You spend a very minute portion of the game actually doing stuff like that.
He does make a really good point about replayability though. You can get different outcomes, but really, the whole interest of the game is finding out who the killer is (which turned out to be a massive disappointment I must add).
For me the most disappointing thing was the ending that didn't make a whole lot of sense (mostly to do with who the killer was, and the plot holes it entailed).
Other than that it was a pretty rewarding experience. Sure the plot and characters are mostly over-baked stereotypes, but this is a video game we are talking about here...

 

[NeoShinGundam]

The "Higurashi no Naku Koro ni" games are interesting in that the murderer is a different person in each ending. In at least one of them, YOU are the murderer (or at least become the murderer). However, the games are Japanese with no 'official' english translations. This makes them a little difficult to do a Zero Punctuation on.

For me, what totally shattered the sense of immersion was Norman Jayden's super detective powers. They were ridiculously cool, but zero-percent believable. If technology really worked like that, an episode of CSI would only take 15 minutes.

 

[Well YOUR FACE]

That was a good review quite funny but I think yahtzee is wrong, Heavy Rain may be slow placed but that is the point of it, it makes you get into the character's, and just to say this is every decission you make does make a difference there are over 7 endings. Also this is the only review that thinks it's a bad game this was a fail yahtzee.

 

[doctorwhofan]

1:43 = Cabury Cream Egg THank you Yahtzee. And the TARDIS isn't half bad either.