Epic Games has managed to convince another developer to work closely with us, probably by throwing a wheelbarrow full of dollars at the developer. In this case, to release the ports of his PC games. The effect is that Heavy Rain recently debuted in their store. The task for today is to check how Heavy Rain defends itself after more than nine years, and also to test the quality of the released port. I won't keep you excited, because to be honest... I haven't been so disappointed in a long time.
As a big Quantic Dream fan, I volunteered to recall the story of the Origami Killer from four perspectives: Ethan Mars, a father suffering from the loss of an older son in an accident that a younger crop is kidnapped two years later; Scott Shelbe, a private detective looking for a young victim; Norman Jayden, an FBI agent also working on a case; and Madison Paige, a journalist investigating the disappearance and murder of children.
The story of Heavy Rain as it is, I think everyone already knows, even if not in detail, not at all. It is strong. There is no shortage of brutality, twists and turns, a harsh climate, difficult questions and good dialogues. Once upon a time, the game introduced a revolution in many fields. The creators have taken it as a point of honor to establish a new quality in terms of storytelling, cinematic experience of the game, showing and generating real emotions or animation, especially face animation. This has been achieved in many fields, although almost a decade has passed since then.
I have mixed feelings about how Quantic Dream's production is "getting older". I won't surprise anyone if I write that Heavy Rain is no longer as impressive as he was in 2010. On the other hand, he is still able to attract attention in many fields, especially in the field of animation: movements are natural and emotions on faces are very well reproduced. The textures or density of objects, effects and the like look much weaker. The whole looks quite mediocre and sterile: I have already forgotten about the painful limitations associated with the games from the previous generation of consoles.
You can feel bad news not only through the quality of graphics, but also through many gameplay solutions. What's best in Heavy Rain has already been used to a large extent and became a standard in the industry, and some solutions died of natural death, like a strictly quick-time-event gameplay (until recently there was an open-air museum called Telltale Games, but it also died). You can also see the tricks that the creators use to create the impression of decision making in the player. The first time you could be fooled, but over the last decade we've seen these tricks too many times.
The not so good visual impression of being exposed to the title (despite the fact that we get a refreshed version, with the possibility of setting a higher resolution, with a higher frame rate) is aggravated by absolutely scandalous optimization. I watched the game in high settings literally through a couple of scenes, because any attempts to maneuver the settings ended up with more and more spectacular crash. Eventually, in order to play relatively stable I had to dramatically reduce the resolution and set everything to a minimum, and let's add that I have a pretty decent PC and took care of all the updates. The recommended requirements given by the manufacturer are scandalous, considering what Heavy Rain offers in terms of graphics.
As far as the transfer of control is concerned, there is no more philosophy here. It was not a great art to develop solutions that would adapt the production of Quantic Dream to the mouse and keyboard. We move the WSAD buttons, make gestures by pressing and holding the appropriate buttons, occasionally use spaces. Generally speaking, the broadly understood "experience" of the game is identical to that of the PlayStation family of consoles. The downside is that the PC version does not include The Taxidermist DLC.
Heavy Rain is currently available at a promotional price on the Epic Games Store, but frankly speaking, even for those tens of zlotys it's not worth it. This production, due to its great and revolutionary title, has fallen a few points down, becoming a work of art for today's average, possibly able to function as a history lesson. If you need to make up for it, it's better to invest in the version for PlayStation 4 that was released with Beyond: Two Souls. At least you won't feel like a category 18 customer.