Along with a number of positive Metacritic entries, Famitsu clearly enjoys Drowning Nose aswell!

Heavy Rain (PS3, Sony): 10 / 9 / 8 / 10 - (37/40)



Hmm, wasn't quite as much of a drowning nose as I remember. I sorta like this cover even.

Well it has to have been hard for Jim Sterling to decide whether to score it against the positive buzz from the PS3 folks or against the negative buzz of the 360 folks. Jim is a chronic against the grainer, and I think the polarised preconceptions about Heavy Rain are exactly what landed it a "safe" score, as opposed to Dynasty Warriors getting high nines and Assassin's Greed 2 munching on a 4.5.

I think he depends on people not actually checking out his reviews to maintain a modicum of credibility.

Although it's hard to miss his recent anti anti-Sonic freakout where he defends the abysmal Sonic 4 trailer.

Me too, I expected there to be much more polarized opinion. I think it's a very divisive game and I have to say not all of the time I spent playing it was positive. That said, it's one of the most interesting releases of recent times so I intend to play through it anyway.I don't think Sterling does "safe". I expected this game to get scores right across the board. I certainly think 9's are a bit excessive based on the few hours I've spent with some scenes. I need to read the Eurogamer review properly because I didn't expect such a high mark from them. Edge will be interesting.

Sterling tries to never do safe, which is exactly what puts Heavy Rain inbetween the two extremes. I mean I wouldn't push this reasoning too far before aknowledging that I'm generalising a bit, but Jim usually provokes with his writing and his review scores, and there's no way to provoke with a Heavy Rain score but to go for the sorta lukewarm medium.

I'm sure if conceptions about it were all positive, it would've been munching 4s with AC2 in his review, and likewise if it had gotten enormously bad press he would've driven home his point with high 9s to provoke a reaction.

I am actually a fan of Dynasty Warriors myself, but the only reason anyone would give those decidedly unambitious, unpretentious and fairly under-achieving games the scores he consistently slaps on them would be to childishly make a point.

Destructoid does sortof lean towards that way of conducting its reviewy business across the board though, with Dante landing a similarly stubborn 9.0 when they're in fact just trying to say it's not as horrible as people make it out to be.

I suppose it's a way to review things, but it gets a little weird when you gloss over their "personality" as a site and just look at metacritic numbers.

Personally I don't put too much stock in review scores and I find I'm able to predict them readily enough before they come out (granted I'm fortunate enough to play some games early) but increasingly I find them utterly meaningless.

I sometimes read Dtoid's reviews and sometimes don't. I have no idea how you give Dante's Inferno 9 out of anything mind. It's the very definition of a well executed rip-off of another game, devoid of imagination and somewhat questionable with it's approach to the source material yet alright-ish enough if you've never played God of War. Maybe their scale went up to 15 that day.

What I will say about Heavy Rain is that they improved it a lot between the Eurogamer Expo and what I played earlier in the year. At said Expo I found it horrifically transparent at times. The demo is a stark improvement. I still maintain however that when it's subjected to extended play (i.e. not trying to smash through it as a "review" in this uniqely busy Q1) there will be as many who find fault with it as there are who are swept away with it.

I just imagined that would be more apparent from initial reviews. The cynic in me has a theory but I need to read more opinion on it first :)

Well it's a product of mindset I think. I found myself completely lost in the woods of my own reasoning when I tried to form an opinion of Uncharted 2 while bombs of hyperbole were raining down all around me. At some point I just couldn't for the life of me find my way back to a sense of actual perspective.

There are so many ways to look at games now, especially something as hopelessly hard to define based on established values like Uncharted 2 or Heavy Rain, as I find them fairly comparable in terms of their nigh-on abandonment of typical mechanics driven games, entering this kinda new world of SUPER context driven games where you mostly just poke at what's happening rather than dictate it.

So it needs a new (or does it, AAH WOODS ALREADY) measurement where you kinda take a step, or twenty, backwards and look at the new beast it's become and then judge it on the merits of that.

I've heard people throw around the R word (revolutionary!) in regards to Heavy Rain, and between it and Mass Effect's dialogue elements (not played 2 yet, mind!) that may not be far from the truth. It's a game that exclusively shifts its weight over to that style of progression, and that is bound to come with a plethora of problems, but to a lot of people the sense of "release" (lacking a better term) that comes from a game even attempting to do those things will bring a feeling of euphoria that WILL gloss over problems.

When that happens, whether you on a minute level can find issues with it or not becomes largely unimportant, especially when it's a game of this nature, a game so far removed from conventional variables like "responsive controls" or "level design".

But yeah that totally enforces your point of it being divisive. Some will be thoroughly glamoured by what it attempts and what it gets right, and others that just don't get that sensation are likely to have a hissy fit and stamp the worst numbers they can get away with on it.

It's an exciting game for the very reasons it's being heralded by its most vocal supporters though, whether those things are flawless or not is ultimately of lesser importance I think.