There are going to be people who, if they give the game a reasonable try (not just the demo), are going to think it's a suckful game. It stands to reason that some reviewers are going to fall into this category.

If you want to see wide variance in entertainment reviews try Rotten Tomatoes for movie reviews. There are very few movies that ever get a 100% fresh rating, whereas if the same pass/fail criteria was applied to games there would be so many with a 100% pass mark, even if you set the bar at 7/10 for a pass (RT sets the pass mark at 6/10 for movies). In reality there is a great deal more uniformity in game reviews than other entertainment reviews. What that uniformity leads to is far too much emphasis on outlier individual scoress and overplaying the negligible differences in metascore (96 metascore means a game "wins" over a 95 metascore, ridiculous)

Heavy Rain in a rotten tomatoes system would be sitting at 97% (66/68 positive reviews BigPond Game Arena just gave it 4.5/10).

UC2, ME2, MW2 and Bioshock 2 would all be at 100%.

AC II (which has a higher meta score than Bioshock 2 and Heavy Rain) would be at 96% (3 low reviews out of 80).

Great point, and especially cogent given this games "interactive film" press.

Any game attempting to do what Heavy Rain does is bound to get such reviews.

Crappy site tries to get attention by under scoring some titles, but not enough to make it obvious.

wait, the discussion is slowing down

let's add another great review :

http://www.gamearena.com.au/ps3/games/title/heavy-rain/reviews.php?id=5062444

4/10

The Good bits
Outstanding graphics
The Bad stuff
Poor plot, terrible acting, terrible writing and numerous gameplay flaws.

I wouldn't put a lot of faith in those trophy sig cards since they don't automatically update.  I've had 142 trophies for months and mine still hasn't updated even though I've connected to the PSN many times.

He added that in well after I quoted him.

Let's not jump to conclusions and accuse people of things that they never did.

Okay, finished the game. I have to lower my rating about 15 points.

The plot takes a real nose dive in the second half, and invalidates some of the better moments in the earlier portions. That reviews points (I have to give them credit for avoiding spoilers) about utilizing every trope and cliche in cinema is spot on... The forced swerve was embarassingly poor in execution, there were countless pointless developments and dropped subplots that just Maguffined up the plot... The writing and plot get an F.

The acting remained inconcistent, though once the kids are out of the way, it was improved substantially, but those ciriticims DO hold true. C for voice acting.

The graphics were inconsistent with some pretty brutal glitches.... one happened at a very tense moment toward the end that wasn't even able to make me laugh anymore (earlier, I chuckled at this stuff, but a flying policeman during what was supposed to be a nerve wracking moment just killed it). Graphics get a B.

Somehow, despite getting to the point that I would have shut off a movie, despite being amess in plotting and writing, and despite giving lie to claims about every decision mattering and "22 different endings" (non-plot spoiler: it's 22 different possible 30 second vignettes and a HORRIBLE newscap summarry), I still enjoyed the experience enough where I'm going to replay it to see the varitions in the story, even though they're minor (I've seen a number of them), I would give the actual enjoyment a high B.

Overall, the game gets a 75. Great idea that deserved much better writing, acting, and attention to detail (some things my wife pointed out through her playthrough, like picking up the kids from school at noon on a Saturday, some more plot-centric points I won't spoil), and maybe another six month's polish to clear up all the bugs. If it weren't so engaging up to the utter fail of a finale, I'd have given it a 4 myself.

75

Did anybody post about the inflated scores this game got and complain about them by any chance? Given the game is sub 90 on meta I guess all those 100's are just fanboy reviewers too trying to bring the score up for site views too.

The hypocrsy of some fans is really sad. Its one review, EVERY big exclusive gets spoilers, deal with it. Its another reason why metacritic is flawed.

BTW epic fail by those people in here quoting Metacritic figures as some method to prove how good a game is. Perhaps when you do that, you don't do it in a thread created to cast doubt on the validity of those figures.

lol, is it really so offensive that I didn't know the specific way some guy edited his post as a way of responding or clarifying to you what he was saying?

I apologize!  It looked like a hilariously bad out-of-context quote, my bad if it was actually an ongoing conversation through edits.  It doesn't help that you never responded to him with an"oh, that wasn't what you were saying?  My bad" or something like that, once he edited his post.  That helps make it clear you aren't still annoyed.

    I do think people are using the thread as an excuse to attack eachother while at the same time insisting that you should let everyone (i.e. reviewers) have their own opinion and not argue with them about it.  Which always gives these threads a special kind of comedy.