There are many examples of this, but here are a couple of my personal favorites. Some of the writing sounds stilted, out of place, and utterly foreign. It’s not only the voice acting that could have used an American here or there, either. If your goal is high drama and you get laughter, you’re doing it wrong.
The obviously French voice actors had me laughing. One particular scene late in the game involves the death of a child, and ought to be emotional.
But those times where it is bad, it took me right out of the story. Still, for the most part the voice acting is serviceable, and even borders on good in some cases. If I were writing a dramatic game focused on French characters, I wouldn’t be knocking on Sly Stallone’s door to see if he was available. A game with weighty subject matter and heavy storytelling absolutely demands believable voice actors throughout. If Heavy Rain were a 3D action/platformer with scant story sections thrown in for flavor, I could live with it but the crux – the absolute heart of Heavy Rain is the narrative. I realize that this still might not be enough reason to forego French voice actors for Americans. The problem with this approach to Heavy Rain is that it’s set in Philadelphia, and every character is American. I fully understand that Quantic Dream is a French studio, and therefore I can’t necessarily fault them for employing French voice actors almost exclusively. The QTEs were a lot better than I expected, but it’s not the kind of gameplay that will draw me in again and again (like fighting Big Daddies, for instance.) I applaud the inclusion of so many different epilogues and endings, but it’s not enough to provide the game any real longevity. I’ve literally seen everything the game has to offer, and once was more than enough. I just wanted to get through it and see the new ending.īeyond the problems with the immediate replayability of Heavy Rain, I frankly don’t see myself compelled to fire this game up again in 2 years the way I am with Warcraft III or Half Life 2.
Heavy rain black character windows#
I often found myself ignoring the story-heavy interludes, and even allowed many response windows to time-out in the interest of speed. With Heavy Rain, I was in a rush to just get it done. I don’t have to pay as much attention to solving puzzles or figuring out bosses or whatnot, and I’m given the freedom to explore the world and gameplay in different and interesting ways. Normally I relish a second playthrough of a great game.
The QTE-heavy playstyle worked just fine for my first journey through the game, but fell woefully short on successive playthroughs. In some ways this fear was unfounded, as I found the QTEs engaging and oftentimes quite exciting. I feared that a game driven almost entirely by quick time events wouldn’t be challenging or interesting enough for an entire game. You would think that replaying Heavy Rain would be worthwhile, with all the branching paths the story can take both on the level of individual scenes and the overall narrative, but doing so is just not nearly as enjoyable the second or third time around. You don’t replay these games just for nostalgia’s sake, either, you play them again because they are FUN every time you boot them up. I played my way through Half Life 2 recently for the 5th time, and I’ve toured the world of Rapture in Bioshock 3 times, and I expect to do so again soon. A high level of replayability is a trait shared by every gaming masterpiece.
0 kommentar(er)
