Heavy Rain Demo - My impressions

Having had the opportunity to download and play the demo of Heavy Rain advance of its demo release date I decided to share with my fellow gamers my impressions of the game.

A lot of people have been dissing the game saying its a lot of quick time events stitched together with great graphics, and that was my impression too. As a PC and console gamer I doubted whether this could really be called a game in the true sense of the word.Having played the demo it seems to me that it is a mix of both, and i guess you could call it "interactive fiction".

Call it what you want, but one thing's for sure it is different.

What drives the "game", so to speak, is the story. I think that's the developers objective here is to use the medium of gaming to tell a good and engaging story. Thus it seemed to me that the mechanics of gameplay are there to drive the story and to create a sense of immersion in the game world.

And it is this sense of immersion that seems to be Heavy Rain's key selling point.

In one fight sequence timing and pressing the on screen prompts on time to ensure you won the fight made it feel as if you were a part of the entire fight. For example you have to time the button presses, the stick movements, even shake the controller at the right time. This meant that physically I felt connected to the game world as it is, physically I felt as if I were part of the fight sequence.

So since this is a demo, what remains to be seen is:
1. Whether the story is good enough to keep players interested in the game (Very likely)
2. Whether the on screen prompts will grow to be tiring (Possibly)
3. Whether there is significant replay value (Doubtful)

Overall impressions? Looks extremely promising. Great graphcis (a la Uncharted 2 - if not better), intriguing story line. Looking forward to the reviews to see what they have to say.

Summing up, Quantic Dream are sure doing something different here. A breath of fresh air so to speak. So for all purposes I hope they manage to pull it off.

I urge all to download the demo (on PS3) of course, and to try it out. The demo is being released officially on the 11th of Feb, though there is a workaround - you need to go to a specific website and select pieces of evidence. The right pieces result in you getting the code for download. Just Google it.

The official game comes out on the 28th of Feb.