Jeff and I took some flack last week over the Leipzig wrap-up video we posted, specifically our lack of research or general uninformedness (Is that a word? Doubtful, but I like it) regarding Heavy Rain. That's the sorta-interactive adventure game from Quantic Dream, the people who did Indigo Prophecy. We sort of characterized it as a simple story-driven adventure propelled mainly by QuickTime Events, Shenmue-style. For the record, you'll also be able to, like, walk around and stuff.
Anyway, in swoops Kotaku's international man of intrigue and purveyor of weird video game t-shirts Mike McWhertor with a report on what the game plays like and how exactly you drive the game's investigative reporter around. Drive? Yeah, you're going to be hitting the R2 trigger, gas-pedal-style, to move around, and steering with the analog stick. It sounds like there are a lot of context-sensitive actions that involve analog controls, depending on where you are and what you're doing in the environment. As I expected, the QTEs only seem to be really important in the action sequences. I like the Choose Your Own Adventure feel of the story, in that the various scenarios can play out with different endings depending on what kind of actions you take.
Heavy Rain seems like a weird exclusive for Sony to pursue. Sure, Quantic Dream has picked up a lot of cachet among critics, as Indigo Prophecy has slowly been codified in the last few years as part of the games-as-art movement. It's not exactly the kind of game you'd expect to move PS3s off store shelves, though. Maybe it's enough to have an innovative, cerebral game exclusively on your platform to get people talking--kind of a badge of honor. Here's the Heavy Rain video from Leipzig.
What's your interest level on this one? If you're not a PS3 owner already, do the unique aspects of Heavy Rain tempt you to become one?