Heavy Rain continues to be one of the standout PS3 titles of 2010. We loved it, slapping it with five stars in our review back in February. Now, after being updated with PlayStation Move skills, the cinematic PS3 title has been billed as one of the games to show off the potential of Sony’s new controller. But how do the new controls rate? Read our spoiler free Heavy Rain for PlayStation Move review to find out.
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Before we begin, this review is based on the new PlayStation Move controls. For our full Heavy Rain review click here. For those who haven’t seen our earlier review, Heavy Rain is an immersive story intertwining the lives of four people in a story centring on the Origami Killer – a serial killer with a penchant for drowning young boys, before dumping them with an origami figure.
Gameplay in Heavy Rain takes the form of playable scenes of each character as you take turns to dive into each part of their connecting stories. Like the original version of Heavy Rain the controls focus heavily on gestures, only this time you can use the Navigation Controller mostly for making their character walk, and the PlayStation Move wand for gestures and action scenes such as pushing, pulling, defending yourself and more. Not got a navigation controller? A Dualshock 3 pad works too, though you’ll find it more fiddly.
For the most part the gameplay comprises simple gestures: pulling, grabbing and reaching indicated by a white box or circle with arrows indicating the direction you’re required to hold down the trigger at the back of the wand move the wand in. The controls take a while to get used to and initially frustrate as you try to deduce exactly which direction you need to guide your hand, as we found on occasion when trying to work Heavy Rain’s private investigator Scott Shelby to use his asthma inhaler.
Check out our Top 5 Best PS3 Move games here
Hitting the start button on the wand takes you to an explanation of the gestures but sometimes a bit of trial and error is the only way to really understand how they work. Fail a gesture and you get a red circle or square indicating so. It doesn’t hint to you where you went wrong, instead leaving you to figure it out for yourself. It’s not ideal but you’ll figure them out eventually.
A lot of the time, the PlayStation Move controls in Heavy Rain work fine, but it’s the sequences where you have to combine multiple gestures that can grate. One such scene in particular, where one character is attempting to escape from being tortured is one we found particularly annoying.
You’re asked to press something like the PlayStation Move button, triangle, T, and circle, and then do a downwards movement while shaking the wand, followed by an upwards movement to end the sequence. With actual hand gestures replacing those on a pad it’s even easier to mess up one of the last two actions in the sequence, meaning you’ll have to restart that part of the scene.
Where the PlayStation Move comes into its own a little more is in the fight scenes. Here you’re allowed to make mistakes without immediate scene ending reprisals. One involving female reporter Madison Paige in her apartment is particularly chaotic, getting you to swing the wand as if you’re actually swinging punches at the bad guys. The actions are still dependant on waving the wand in a particular direction, but because those directions mimic actions you might use in a real fight it feels realistic enough as the action happens so fast you don’t have time to think about what you’re doing.
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PlayStation Move also slightly alters the way you engage with Heavy Rain’s characters. When talking to a character you’re typically given a choice of responses. With a pad this meant pressing X, Square, triangle or circle. With the wand you have to physically point a cursor at the dialogue options as if it were a mouse. It’s hardly a major complaint, but it’s still quicker to choose via joypad.
PlayStation Move combined with Heavy Rain won’t be to all tastes. It’s one of those games where, if you’ve already cleared it with the pad, going back to it with the wand will feel slightly laborious. As a result we wish we hadn’t already cleared it with the Dualshock 3 so that we could have played it without any preconceptions. All that said, If you’ve got a copy of Heavy Rain, and PlayStation Move, by all means give it a shot with PlayStation Move - you just might love it.
Heavy Rain for PlayStation Move does have its minor annoyances, making for a stop start experience, but learn the controls and it’s clear to see that Sony and Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dreams are clearly onto something. What was said in our overall Heavy Rain review still stands. It’s still one of the best story-driven gaming experiences out there. Whether you plan to use PlayStation Move with it or not, we urge you to get it anyway.
Heavy Rain has made our Top 5 list of best PS3 Move games, which is why we’ve given it our Recommended rosette. Check out more Top 5s here and find out more about how they work with our Top 5 guarantee.
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