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sjhillsa said:
I agree, Uncharted 2 is more of a movie, as it plays out as one from the opening sequence to the very end of the game. I read Heavy Rain 'important' decisions and outcomes are only influential from about 75% of the way through the game. Still interested in the title, but will probably pick up HR when it comes out on budget.


This is mostly accurate...  There are one or two earlier scenes where a character can actually die because you failed a QTE, but it's only one or two with one specific character, and those are balanced out by the fact that later scenes are still pretty much "on rails" with you only "interacting" because if you dont' walk over to the door or press the down arrow, the game just sits there.  But, really, outside of maybe six scenes total, your interations with the game ammount to viewing the "alternate/deleted scenes" menu in the special features of any other movie you own.  Yeah, it doesn't look exactly the same as when you hit every button, but it makes no real difference in the story.  Even the much-vaunted "22 endings" are really just a handful of short segments (epilogues) that, for the most part, only depend on what you do in the very last scene.  A certain character can die in the first segment where he can, and it only has minor impact on the story 1) you dont' get to ply as that character anymore and 2) someone else takes their place in a QTE at the end with no real impact one way or another (like, it's not harder for the other person or anything like that) and you still get the same "this person died" blurb during the news report summary, and then one scene about them being dead (which is the same no matter when they died).

Heavy Rain is pretty much just a B-movie thriller with the option to view the deleted/alternate scenes during the playthrough.  It's still just as linear as most games, and since the whole point is that "your actions change everything" and they don't, it's really kind of a failure.

That said, the first play through, when you're too wrapped up in "maybe this will happen!  I bet that person is the killer!" to notice all the flaws, and you're trying to hard to win every chllenge because you're afraid of what might happen, the game is really pretty enjoyable (until the plot starts revealing that every idea you had is better than the one they went with, and 90% of the things you saw that made you think "this should be interesting!" are just dropped without another mention).  I would really recommend anyone looking at this game to rent it over a long weekend, beat it, maybe check out the variations they can cause in a scene or two, then return it and play something with a bit more meat to it.