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Heavy Rain

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Number17:
Does it matter that it still sucks?

JD:
I'd play the fuck outta this game if it were on the pc

Alex C:

--- Quote from: KvP on 28 Feb 2010, 19:14 ---Any gamer who dismisses QTEs is full of shit, real talk.

--- End quote ---

I'd say I don't dismiss QTEs so much as I dismiss the context many use them in. Most games that do quick time events badly fail at it because they have little regard for the context. For example, I was fine with the QTEs in GOW1. But when they sprang 'em on you at the end in the middle of a pseudo cinema, I found it annoying and not much of a "bonus." Still wasn't a bad game though, which is why I was never really down on QTEs as many people are.

jhocking:

--- Quote from: KvP on 28 Feb 2010, 19:14 ---There's no better way to pull off a "cinematic game" than Quantic Dream's approach.

--- End quote ---

Which just calls into question the advisability of doing an overly cinematic game.

Well actually there's a good reason for companies to keep making really pretty looking games, but that reason has nothing to do with how good they are as games. Really pretty looking games sell well, so companies keep making them. But they're boring as games; whatever interest they have is due to the novelty of their lush graphics (witness the incredible success of Myst, an incredibly boring game) or the fact that you're basically watching a movie.

Saying "gaming boils down to pressing the right button at the right time" is technically correct I suppose, but that is as reductionist as a statement can get. There's a big difference between pressing a random button at random intervals and, say, analyzing the layout of dozens of buildings and troops on a big map before choosing one of a dozen different things to build or destinations to target (ie. an RTS game.)

The awfulness of cinematic games with QTEs has been established for almost my entire life; refer to number 29 on this list:
http://www.develop-online.net/features/699/50-games-every-developer-should-play

And actually, thinking about that gameplay video it occurs to me this game might even have the worst kind of QTEs, instant death. That was truly the bane of Dragon's Lair, the fact that you would constantly die due to missing randomly timed button presses and have to start over with the whole tedious sequence. The gameplay video you posted included several points where the character narrowly avoids getting knifed in the chest; does that mean if you missed the button press you'd be dead and have to repeat the sequence? god I hope not

KvP:
Nay, the death of a particular character does not stop the story. I suppose if all 4 controllable characters die that's the end of the game, but the game will play out differently based on whether or not you can pull through with the characters.

I suppose it comes down to what it is you want from your games. Heavy Rain is appealing to those for whom narrative virtues trump gameplay virtues. The whole point of Heavy Rain is the narrative, and choice / consequence variation. That strategy games aren't part of the "the right button at the right time" lineage (and they certainly aren't, I wouldn't dispute that) is beside the point, as the sequence in question doesn't really lend itself to RTS gameplay. It lends itself to fighter gameplay, which has more or less always been "the right button at the right time". How else would you have set up that particular in-game sequence? Include traditional "beat-em-up" gameplay? That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense, as the whole point of the sequence is that the character is supposed to be relatively helpless and only surviving by the skin of her teeth. Gamers are going to be at least competent, most will probably be supremely competent, and thus trying to set up a real-time fighting element to the game will either be prohibitively difficult, or so easy that it will serve to create an even greater disconnect between the character and the player than you would normally find (most games get around this problem by having the main character lack any sort of weakness or fault). Plus it wouldn't be a fraction as interesting, visually. Quantic Dream has absolute control over the game, which is something that you have to accept going into it if you're going to enjoy it.

Ultimately, anybody who can make something like the first few hours of Fahrenheit deserves to be heeded. The problem with that game was that it started off as an experience that was literally unparalleled in gaming before it devolved into a super-condensed mythological clusterfuck. Everything that I've heard suggests that Heavy Rain is the game Fahrenheit should have been. I could give a fuck that it's not Madden or whatever.

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