Flash Flash Revolution - View Single Post - March 2021: 31 days game review challenge

**Hateandhatred** · 03-8-2021, 10:37 PM

March 8th

Today's challenge is: You hate, but everyone likes.

Today's pick is Heavy Rain.

*Cracks knuckles*

I've played a lot of really shitty games, and I honestly love those. My personal threshold for “so bad, it's good” is quite reasonable, so it doesn't take something infinitely jarring for me to appreciate general incompetence, and it also works even if the game is part of a franchise I cherish. Then there's a level above, where the game sucks, but I don't really care because it's just “ meh” suckage. And there's not a whole lot of room in between for me to truly hate a game. It has to insult me personally in one way or another, and meet critical success with the general population. If a game sucks and offends me by the way it sucks, but everyone agrees it's a shit show, then I don't really care.

When Heavy Rain was released, everyone praised it like it was the definitive cinematic game experience out there. I wasn't super excited about it, but I still committed to the platinum. I think it was MikeShinoda12345 from FFR who took a look at my backlog and told me to play this one, because he “heard it was really good”. And DEAR GOD did I not have fun.

It pretty much ticked every checkmark of everything I'd consider shitty that's not the funny kind of shit. The controls are easily some of the worst I've ever experienced in a game like this one (for the sake of being fair, I've heard from people that it was considerably more playable with the PS Move, but I haven't tried to play it with that, and I dunno why the fuck this is compatible with it other than for the broken QTE sections). I legit did the trophy for the driving part on the wrong side of a highway by holding my controller like a toilet plunger and vigorously/furiously shaking it on the vertical axis in order to get one of the QTEs to register. I also got stuck for HOURS trying to make turns in the vents with the glass shards. I also got stuck in stairways a few times, among other issues. If I had clipped through the walls and fell to my doom out of bounds or something, that'd be funny, but all of my issues were more frustrating in nature.

Then, there's the cast. I can't say who of the main characters I dislike the least. They're all horribly designed and completely unlikable, and also devoid of any believable human traits. I happily forgot all of their names. Between the dad who's completely unrelatable and whose focus made no fucking sense through the entire game while he should be the one character whose emotions should speak to the player, there's the fat cop (he's the killer, I'm not even sorry about spoiling that) who was given about 10 personas too many (origami killer, rain killer, flower killer, kid killer, jigsaw and so on), who was intended (I assume?!) to make us feel a bit sympathetic towards his pains (it made no fucking sense), and who turns into James Bond for absolutely no believable reason near the end of the game, then there's the NSA “smart guy” with his fucking sci fi glasses that are completely unecessary for him to do his job, like why would you use something that can kill you in 20 minutes to solve a kindergarten puzzle? The game also tries to sell that his logic is top tier by comparing him to his brawny police colleagues, but everything is rushed out and does a garbage job at convincing anyone ever. Finally, there's the girl, who has tits and really nothing else I'd say. I probably dislike her the least, after all.

Now, the visuals. I'll concede that the textures and models are fantastic for their time, but like most “AAA titles” of this era, everything is just multiple tones of gray, and thus completely lifeless outside of the loading sequences where they do look really fucking good. Grass is green, for fuck's sake, that's not a hard concept to grasp. The “great models” are further ruined by the animation. I know a lot of people will disagree with this, but I thought the animation was jarringly bad. It wasn't like watching the Sims go on with their lives, where they don't try to make them look like real humans, but this definitely tried and failed brutally. The fight scenes were probably the worst, and I dunno how they could try to sell any of this with a straight face. It's kind of ironic, since this game came at a time when people were most divided on whether great graphics meant a great game, and this game is a big reason why I started believing it did matter a LOT, except for most people, it was thought of as a success, and for me a massive failure. Colors first, textures next.

Finally, the story (I'd talk about the music or audio engineering or whatever, but I can't talk about it since it was such a forgettable experience in that respect). I'd describe this game as like, brainstorming, but having to keep EVERY idea, because I'm pretty sure that's what they did. The general outline was probably to have a cast of people involved with a crime, and you'd have to figure out who is the culprit as well as watching every character tries to solve things on their own end. This is alright, but 90% of how they expanded from there shouldn't have made the cut. I'm guessing they didn't really care, and thought this approach would give their game a rather unique feel? That, or they just opened a “attention grabbing for dummies” book and tried to cover everything, then tied them to random stunts and elements happening in the story. I honestly felt like it was the latter scenario, and I felt deeply insulted that these events that kept happening were supposed to fool any human being with half a brain. Hell, horror movies do that all the time, and they don't fail at being simple thrill rides, you don't have to think too hard about them to enjoy them, but this invited you to think at the same time, and that's why it sucked so much in my eyes.

And no, it's not just that I can't handle this kind of game. I've done more than a few visual novels, and I think Life is Strange is a masterpiece of the genre. I've done at least one Telltale game, and even though it wasn't my cup of tea, I appreciated its distinct style. Heavy Rain is as far away from those as you could get, however.

*Deep Breath*

Now, it's 2021. It's a little bittersweet to lash out like this at my most hated game of all time, since with time, people have taken a fresh look at the game, and it sort of devolved into meme status. With the SHAUN and JASON memes, and the videos which further exaggerate the characters' animation (and those are genuinely hilarious). If this was the response back in the day, I still wouldn't like it, but I could totally appreciate its cult game status. Kinda like Marauder Shields at the end of Mass Effect 3. Therefore, before ending this mini review, I'll just list my top 6 (I wanted to do 10, but I wasn't able to find 10 things) positive things to say about this title, in no particular order.

- The game originally came with a small piece of paper, and you could learn to fold it into various stuff with the game itself. Honestly, I thought it was a really, really cool gesture, and by far my favorite thing about this game.
- The QTE section with the electrical wires was surprisingly well done, and had probably the best QTE sequence I've ever seen in a game. How they'd make you twist your hands around, like a mini game of Twister, was a superb idea, and I'd like to see mechanics like that in other games.
- The loading sections with the close up of the models' faces, as mentionned before, looked really good and were fun to look at. I'm a bit worried that they made the loadings even longer, but they were impressive anyway.
- The “Prologue” with Jason at least gave me high hopes for the rest of the game. It wasn't anywhere near as great as the one for The Last of Us (and nobody is holding it up against that juggernaut of a prologue), but it was the only time in the game I could feel actual anguish along with the main character. The ending was ridiculously convenient and dramatic, but hey, it was alright.
- Of all the cheap thrills in the game, and despite talking shit about the character herself, dangling the female character's tits in front of me was probably the only welcome one. The shootout in the mansion, the “cut your finger to get a clue”, the driving against the traffic, the escape from the rooftop, or the dumbass fights left and right, they really didn't work. The girl actually fulfilled her “traditional gender role” and didn't feel too out of place, as sad as this may sound. I'll just say that I'm glad that Quantic Dreams had the COMMON COURTESY of giving this attention grabber up. Bonus points for also showing high levels of gratuitous man ass, gotta be inclusive.
- The scenery in the STUPID VR glasses looked SO MUCH BETTER than anything else in the game, and I especially liked the mountain and fall backdrops.

And that's about it for today. Longer than usual. And yeah, I know it may seem like I gave this title an unfairly tough time, but I'll add that this is how it goes if I get into a title with my expectations raised too high. I'm not a gaming hipster, but I usually try to avoid top rated games for a while for this reason. But in this case, I feel like it was well deserved.

Out on PS3, PS4, and PC (3 systems too many).

03-8-2021, 10:37 PM	#20
Hateandhatred "The Quebec Steparatist." Join Date: Feb 2011 Age: 33 Posts: 1,943	Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge March 8th Today's challenge is: You hate, but everyone likes. Today's pick is Heavy Rain. Cracks knuckles I've played a lot of really shitty games, and I honestly love those. My personal threshold for “so bad, it's good” is quite reasonable, so it doesn't take something infinitely jarring for me to appreciate general incompetence, and it also works even if the game is part of a franchise I cherish. Then there's a level above, where the game sucks, but I don't really care because it's just “ meh” suckage. And there's not a whole lot of room in between for me to truly hate a game. It has to insult me personally in one way or another, and meet critical success with the general population. If a game sucks and offends me by the way it sucks, but everyone agrees it's a shit show, then I don't really care. When Heavy Rain was released, everyone praised it like it was the definitive cinematic game experience out there. I wasn't super excited about it, but I still committed to the platinum. I think it was MikeShinoda12345 from FFR who took a look at my backlog and told me to play this one, because he “heard it was really good”. And DEAR GOD did I not have fun. It pretty much ticked every checkmark of everything I'd consider shitty that's not the funny kind of shit. The controls are easily some of the worst I've ever experienced in a game like this one (for the sake of being fair, I've heard from people that it was considerably more playable with the PS Move, but I haven't tried to play it with that, and I dunno why the fuck this is compatible with it other than for the broken QTE sections). I legit did the trophy for the driving part on the wrong side of a highway by holding my controller like a toilet plunger and vigorously/furiously shaking it on the vertical axis in order to get one of the QTEs to register. I also got stuck for HOURS trying to make turns in the vents with the glass shards. I also got stuck in stairways a few times, among other issues. If I had clipped through the walls and fell to my doom out of bounds or something, that'd be funny, but all of my issues were more frustrating in nature. Then, there's the cast. I can't say who of the main characters I dislike the least. They're all horribly designed and completely unlikable, and also devoid of any believable human traits. I happily forgot all of their names. Between the dad who's completely unrelatable and whose focus made no fucking sense through the entire game while he should be the one character whose emotions should speak to the player, there's the fat cop (he's the killer, I'm not even sorry about spoiling that) who was given about 10 personas too many (origami killer, rain killer, flower killer, kid killer, jigsaw and so on), who was intended (I assume?!) to make us feel a bit sympathetic towards his pains (it made no fucking sense), and who turns into James Bond for absolutely no believable reason near the end of the game, then there's the NSA “smart guy” with his fucking sci fi glasses that are completely unecessary for him to do his job, like why would you use something that can kill you in 20 minutes to solve a kindergarten puzzle? The game also tries to sell that his logic is top tier by comparing him to his brawny police colleagues, but everything is rushed out and does a garbage job at convincing anyone ever. Finally, there's the girl, who has tits and really nothing else I'd say. I probably dislike her the least, after all. Now, the visuals. I'll concede that the textures and models are fantastic for their time, but like most “AAA titles” of this era, everything is just multiple tones of gray, and thus completely lifeless outside of the loading sequences where they do look really fucking good. Grass is green, for fuck's sake, that's not a hard concept to grasp. The “great models” are further ruined by the animation. I know a lot of people will disagree with this, but I thought the animation was jarringly bad. It wasn't like watching the Sims go on with their lives, where they don't try to make them look like real humans, but this definitely tried and failed brutally. The fight scenes were probably the worst, and I dunno how they could try to sell any of this with a straight face. It's kind of ironic, since this game came at a time when people were most divided on whether great graphics meant a great game, and this game is a big reason why I started believing it did matter a LOT, except for most people, it was thought of as a success, and for me a massive failure. Colors first, textures next. Finally, the story (I'd talk about the music or audio engineering or whatever, but I can't talk about it since it was such a forgettable experience in that respect). I'd describe this game as like, brainstorming, but having to keep EVERY idea, because I'm pretty sure that's what they did. The general outline was probably to have a cast of people involved with a crime, and you'd have to figure out who is the culprit as well as watching every character tries to solve things on their own end. This is alright, but 90% of how they expanded from there shouldn't have made the cut. I'm guessing they didn't really care, and thought this approach would give their game a rather unique feel? That, or they just opened a “attention grabbing for dummies” book and tried to cover everything, then tied them to random stunts and elements happening in the story. I honestly felt like it was the latter scenario, and I felt deeply insulted that these events that kept happening were supposed to fool any human being with half a brain. Hell, horror movies do that all the time, and they don't fail at being simple thrill rides, you don't have to think too hard about them to enjoy them, but this invited you to think at the same time, and that's why it sucked so much in my eyes. And no, it's not just that I can't handle this kind of game. I've done more than a few visual novels, and I think Life is Strange is a masterpiece of the genre. I've done at least one Telltale game, and even though it wasn't my cup of tea, I appreciated its distinct style. Heavy Rain is as far away from those as you could get, however. *Deep Breath* Now, it's 2021. It's a little bittersweet to lash out like this at my most hated game of all time, since with time, people have taken a fresh look at the game, and it sort of devolved into meme status. With the SHAUN and JASON memes, and the videos which further exaggerate the characters' animation (and those are genuinely hilarious). If this was the response back in the day, I still wouldn't like it, but I could totally appreciate its cult game status. Kinda like Marauder Shields at the end of Mass Effect 3. Therefore, before ending this mini review, I'll just list my top 6 (I wanted to do 10, but I wasn't able to find 10 things) positive things to say about this title, in no particular order. - The game originally came with a small piece of paper, and you could learn to fold it into various stuff with the game itself. Honestly, I thought it was a really, really cool gesture, and by far my favorite thing about this game. - The QTE section with the electrical wires was surprisingly well done, and had probably the best QTE sequence I've ever seen in a game. How they'd make you twist your hands around, like a mini game of Twister, was a superb idea, and I'd like to see mechanics like that in other games. - The loading sections with the close up of the models' faces, as mentionned before, looked really good and were fun to look at. I'm a bit worried that they made the loadings even longer, but they were impressive anyway. - The “Prologue” with Jason at least gave me high hopes for the rest of the game. It wasn't anywhere near as great as the one for The Last of Us (and nobody is holding it up against that juggernaut of a prologue), but it was the only time in the game I could feel actual anguish along with the main character. The ending was ridiculously convenient and dramatic, but hey, it was alright. - Of all the cheap thrills in the game, and despite talking shit about the character herself, dangling the female character's tits in front of me was probably the only welcome one. The shootout in the mansion, the “cut your finger to get a clue”, the driving against the traffic, the escape from the rooftop, or the dumbass fights left and right, they really didn't work. The girl actually fulfilled her “traditional gender role” and didn't feel too out of place, as sad as this may sound. I'll just say that I'm glad that Quantic Dreams had the COMMON COURTESY of giving this attention grabber up. Bonus points for also showing high levels of gratuitous man ass, gotta be inclusive. - The scenery in the STUPID VR glasses looked SO MUCH BETTER than anything else in the game, and I especially liked the mountain and fall backdrops. And that's about it for today. Longer than usual. And yeah, I know it may seem like I gave this title an unfairly tough time, but I'll add that this is how it goes if I get into a title with my expectations raised too high. I'm not a gaming hipster, but I usually try to avoid top rated games for a while for this reason. But in this case, I feel like it was well deserved. Out on PS3, PS4, and PC (3 systems too many). __________________ Last edited by Hateandhatred; 04-13-2021 at 09:10 AM..