Heavy Rain

You've probably all heard the hype surrounding Heavy Rain. That it has the best graphics in the history of everything, ever. That it revolutionizes storytelling in games. Perhaps you've even heard that it isn't even a game.

If you've any of this then you've heard correctly. Well, mostly correctly. Heavy Rain is amazing in many ways and not so amazing in other ways. It's a game that you will either love or hate, there is very little room for like.

Let's address the hype one at a time, shall we? And I'll make it as spoiler-free as possible.

Graphically, Heavy Rain is beautiful, for the most part. The main characters are as lifelike as anything I've ever seen. You could count the individual hairs on their heads if you had the time. I don't think graphics can get any better on consoles this generation. But I must stress that this is for the main characters only. The ancillary players look good, but not anywhere near as good as the main cast. And as good as the characters look, they animate very poorly in some spots, especially the hands. Objects are also animated poorly, paper and clothing is stiff like it's been starched when being manipulated by the characters. That's not to say that all the animation is bad, the important moments look as good as they need too.

The story of Heavy Rain is like a 2 or 3 star action-thriller movie. The plot revolves around a man trying to find his son before he is killed by the Origami Killer. You follow multiple characters, but they are all essentially doing the same thing. Ethan Mars is the father of the kidnapped boy, Norman Jayden is an FBI agent working the Origami Killer case, Scott Shelby is a PI hired by the families of the Origami Killer's previous victims, and Madison Paige is a journalist that gets sucked into the whole mess. The story could be a 3 or 4 star movie if the Madison character was changed or removed all together. The way she gets involved in the story is so contrived it's sickening.

This game earns it's M rating with violence, language, and nudity. But even if there were no bad language and no nudity and could have been rated T, I would suggest an M rating anyway. This is an adult story and some of the choices you make will shake your nerves and not in the 'zombie-dog-jumping-through-a-window' kind of way. And they aren't 'say-something-nice-or-say-something-mean' choices as encountered in Mass Effect. They are real choices that effect the outcome of the story and have devastating consequences on the characters.

The story-telling in Heavy Rain is revolutionary, if only because it's about something other than shooting bad guys or finding the princess. The characters have depth, real depth. You can understand why Ethan would do anything to save his son. You can feel how badly Agent Jayden wants to catch the Origami Killer. You get that working the same case for years has taken a toll on Shelby. They aren't just random space marines on a suicide mission to save the universe. Well, Madison is, but you can't have it all.

The great thing about the story in Heavy Rain is that it ebbs and flows with your decisions. You actions have real consequences and anyone and everyone can die. And if they do, the game compensates and keeps on going. There is no 'good' or 'bad' ending, just different endings. If you want two characters to get romantic you can, even if it makes no sense that, with hours left to save a child's life, people would be having sex. It's your call.

Not that I've played through and made every possible choice. That would be a monumental task since choices build on each other and once you've finished the game there is little motivation to play again. The story is tied up so tight at the end that there is nothing left to discover. The best movies always leave you with questions when they're over, it's why The Matrix is so great and it's sequels are so boring, they try to explain everything. Heavy Rain wants you to know everything, which is fine but it could have been so much more than it is.

As for what it is, Heavy Rain is basically an interactive movie. Such a thing has been promised before, but it really is the best description I can give. Instead of the usual left stick moves you and right stick controls your view, the camera is fixed and moves with you. Sometimes it offers multiple angles on the screen at once to simulate a movie. Unlike every other game created in the last 20 years, you hold a button in order to move. It's awkward, but works well enough the majority of the time. You don't have direct control over a character when the action picks up anyway. Critical action scenes are elongated QTE's so if you hate those you will hate this game. You have no direct control over the character, but instead must perform the action show on screen, be it a button press or shaking the sixaxis controller to simulate struggling against a foe.

Between action scenes, you can interact with the environment and hear the thoughts bouncing around in the character's head's. While calm you can easily see the choices, but when nervous or scared the choices for thoughts and actions bounce around erratically making it hard to find exactly what you want to do. It's a simple and very effective way to simulate actually being frightened. But don't take too long to pinpoint what you want to do or the game will make a decision for you.

Heavy Rain is a game that either lives up to it's hype or it doesn't, it's all in the eye of the beholder. I suspect that 'hardcore' gamers will dislike the lack of traditional gameplay, but what the hell do they know? Not much, because Heavy Rain is one of the best stories on consoles today.

9.7 out of 10

Good stuff

Beautiful graphics

Characters with character

Bad stuff

Objects animated in 1999

Madison Paige

Why?! stuff

Holding a button to move

Bordering on Perfection

This is my first serious review of anything since March, so don't be surprised if I wander a bit.

Onto the review!

Some of you might recognize these lovable killers already, as Borderlands has been out for a couple of months. But as I don't have the resources or desire to buy each and every new game that comes out during this time of year, I'll be focusing on slightly older games for now.

The story in Borderlands is as simple as it could possibly be, you're a mercenary on a Pandora, an inhospitable desert of a world. You're there because of legends of a mysterious Vault that contains untold riches. You learn all of this information in what is basically the only cutscene in the entire game. The introduction is one of the best I have seen, the music, No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant, is perfect for the setting, a bus in which the driver is telling you about the vault.

When prompted to get off the bus you choose your character, Roland the Soldier, Mordecai the Hunter, Brick the Berserker, or Lilith the Siren. Each have different specialties and excel with different weapons. Brick is best with explosives and has the berserk ability which turns him into an unstoppable force that punches the crap out of everything. Roland is best with assault rifles and shotguns and can summon a turret that can be used for cover and upgraded to restore health and ammo. Mordecai is best with sniper rifles and revolvers and can use his pet Bloodwing to go after enemies behind cover. Lilith has no real advantage with any weapon type and her Phasewalk ability makes her invisible and extremely fast for short periods.

After you choose your character, you are introduced to the driving force behind the game's "story", the Angel. A mysterious character that helps those that seek the vault, she will guide you through the entire game. And that's pretty much the entire story. You'll meet some other people and do missions for them, but they don't really interact with you in a meaningful way.

But the beautiful thing about Borderlands is that it doesn't need a story. Even if there was nothing except missions handed out by a stick in the ground the game would still be fun as hell. You don't need an expansive tale of intrigue and deception to find joy in shooting stuff to see what it might drop. The comparisons to Diablo are 100% on the mark. If Diablo was set in a futuristic world with guns it would be called Borderlands. Granted that Diablo does have a bit more story, but it's still a background element to looting.

And looting is something that Borderlands does right. I think it might be even better than Diablo's looting system. Having played the game for many tens of hours, I have yet to see the same gun twice except for special drops from certain bosses. There are several different types of guns: repeater pistols, revolvers, combat rifles, machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and alien guns. Assault rifles and machine guns fit into one category but they are different, assault rifles have smaller magazines and are generally more accurate while machine guns have large magazine and faster fire rates but sacrifice accuracy. And there's more too: each gun can have different elemental effects: fire, shock, corrosive, and explosive. Each element is suited to a specific task. Shock takes down shields, corrosive eats away armor, etc. And if, or rather, when you find a super-rare there will probably be a funny little sentence that makes reference to a piece of pop culture. But it's not only there for fun, that flavor text gives you a hint of what special powers the gun might hold, be it regenerating ammo or increasing the magazine size to ridiculous proportions to always immolating your enemies.

But besides weapons, Borderlands has RPG-lite offerings too. As with Diablo, each character has three skill trees. Each character has a tree that effects their action skill, e.i. Roland's turret, Mordecai's Bloodwing, etc. and can specialize in two other areas. Roland can improve his damage delt or he can become a field medic utilizing the much talking about healing bullets. The game works out so that you can't get to the top skill in all three trees by having a level cap of 50. You don't start getting skill points until level 5 when you unlock your action skill. This wouldn't be a problem except that once you have completed the game you can start Playthrough 2 with your acquired skills, guns, and money and harder enemies. If you want to get some of the better items you will have keep playing, but you'll probably get to the cap not long after starting Playthrough 2 leaving you to play through the rest of the game with almost no real gain except the chance of finding a better weapon. I hope that with one of the downloadable add-ons the cap is raised.

What is there besides looting and lite skill building you ask? Simply put, Boss Fights. The regular enemies don't usually pose much of a challenge as long as you haven't strayed too far from where you're supposed to be, but the bosses are almost always amazing.

That pic up there is of an actual boss. That's right, you have to fight that big ol' thing. Bosses aren't always as awe-inspiring as that bad boy up there, but they are almost always a challenge. And not just the main storyline bosses. The side missions offer some of the craziest fights in the game. Including a couple of Godzilla ripoffs that are fantastic.

The only boss that is really disappointing is the final one. In fact, my main problem with the whole game is the ending. The last boss is incredibly anti-climatic. I barely broke a sweat facing it alone. I won't ruin the ending, but it sets everything up for Borderlands 2 which is fine, but I wish they had gone about it in a satisfying way. I'm not saying it's as bad as Halo 2 but it is an extremely unsatisfying ending.

But that's just the single-player game! The real strength of Borderlands is the ability to go online and play with up to 3 others. It's not strictly coop or competitive, but a mix of the two. Everyone gets the same amount of experience and money, but only the quickest get the guns. And the guns get better the more people you have. The game scales difficulty as you add or subtract players in order to keep things challenging. You can get around this if you want, as long as you have a friend with a high level character and some free time. And if you feel that someone is being an asshole, you can challenge them to a duel. Duels aren't really all that fun as at higher levels they are over in a matter of seconds. The games greatest strength is it's downfall when it comes to duels. The overpowered weapons are great for mowing down hordes of bandits and taking out enormous bosses, but they suck as a 1 on 1 weapons.

Overall, Borderlands is an amazing game. From a loot system that ensures you'll always be surprised to bosses that are truly daunting I'm sure you'll find something to like about it. It's not perfect, but it's not far off.

8.8 out of 10

Good stuff

tons of guns
big time bosses
kickass multiplayer

Bad stuff
no story at all

Why?! stuff
level cap