Heavy Rain was lauded critically at launch but later on I saw the sentiment popping up quite frequently that David Cage was a hack and this game too was a comedic disaster. Unsurprisingly for me, having finished my first Quantic Dream game, I can say it falls squarely in the middle.
As a murder mystery junkie, this plot was right up my alley. The brown and grey tone with constant rain created a suitable backdrop for the mystery. The murderer's motivations feel reasonable and there are enough red herrings for the player to question a lot of characters. Till the midway point at least cause it starts giving such obvious hints as to who the killer was that it becomes a "why dun it" instead of "who dun it". This is no Fincher movie but I found the story to be quite competent for the most part.
The real issue that's holding the plot back is that the characterisation is paper thin. Not only it is really weak but the only female character is written so poorly that it almost feels misogynistic. What's baffling is that characters have optional inner monologue you can listen to but it's never anything but the most obvious thought. You could describe everyone in a single line and that's all there is to them, they only exist in the moments to serve the scene they are in and push the plot forward. There are no themes to be explored or character arcs to be had. The detective character is hurt by this the most since his role is mainly using a scifi gadget to do sleuthing and navigating office politics with a corrupt cop. It sounds interesting but the sleuthing part is boring and the theme regarding corrupt cops isn't explored. I won't write about the gameplay separately so here I'll mention that I'm really not a fan of fixed camera movement in any game and whatever cinematic view achieved by that is undercut by stupid clunky controls. However the contextual actions that helped characters do a wide variety of mundane tasks was a pretty decent design choice helping in grounding them in the world. The action sequences and Saw type scenes were also quite tense due to how the quick time events were set up. The threat of characters actually dying added to it.
Overall, alright game and worth trying if you like narrative driven adventure games.
As a murder mystery junkie, this plot was right up my alley. The brown and grey tone with constant rain created a suitable backdrop for the mystery. The murderer's motivations feel reasonable and there are enough red herrings for the player to question a lot of characters. Till the midway point at least cause it starts giving such obvious hints as to who the killer was that it becomes a "why dun it" instead of "who dun it". This is no Fincher movie but I found the story to be quite competent for the most part.
The real issue that's holding the plot back is that the characterisation is paper thin. Not only it is really weak but the only female character is written so poorly that it almost feels misogynistic. What's baffling is that characters have optional inner monologue you can listen to but it's never anything but the most obvious thought. You could describe everyone in a single line and that's all there is to them, they only exist in the moments to serve the scene they are in and push the plot forward. There are no themes to be explored or character arcs to be had. The detective character is hurt by this the most since his role is mainly using a scifi gadget to do sleuthing and navigating office politics with a corrupt cop. It sounds interesting but the sleuthing part is boring and the theme regarding corrupt cops isn't explored. I won't write about the gameplay separately so here I'll mention that I'm really not a fan of fixed camera movement in any game and whatever cinematic view achieved by that is undercut by stupid clunky controls. However the contextual actions that helped characters do a wide variety of mundane tasks was a pretty decent design choice helping in grounding them in the world. The action sequences and Saw type scenes were also quite tense due to how the quick time events were set up. The threat of characters actually dying added to it.
Overall, alright game and worth trying if you like narrative driven adventure games.