Okay, so.  Heavy Rain.  Best game I’ve played in a really long time.  In fact, if I had to sum it up, it’d be the game I’ve been hoping for … well, forever.   I love murder mysteries, and I love puzzlers, and I got my fair share of both from it.  I found the controls ideal for the experience they were trying to convey with the exception of the movement controls which could be somewhat frustrating (and reminiscent of Resident Evil <4).

That’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s faults, however.  First, right off the top, is the voice acting.  The accents of the voice actors were not well disguised at all, and I found them incredibly distracting.  Most of the main characters were okay but the secondary characters were really off.  I suppose this is a very North American complaint and I bet a lot of Europeans feel the same way when North American developers butcher their accents.

Second, eh… there are plot elements that really bother me.  I can’t really get into them in a lot of detail, but the biggest problem I have is the identity killer.  I didn’t find the choice of killer made a lot of sense.  There wasn’t nearly enough foreshadowing to allow you to figure him out earlier without a lot of leaps of logic.  There were several places where they could have dropped clues to at least hint at their identity but instead it all came together rather fast.  Beyond that, I just didn’t LIKE the choice of killer although I realize that’s an aesthetics choice.

I hope this game is a financial success so that we might see more experiments like it in the future.  I would play nothing but games like this if I had the choice.