Quantic Dream seems to have done a great job of bringing the adventure genre to this generation, as Heavy Rain feels more like a cinematic murder mystery than the adventure games we’ve been seeing from Telltale Games for the past few years. While those games make good use of the classic style of controlling adventure games, Heavy Rain lets you take on any task with just quick time events that help to eliminate the chance of having a clunky fighting engine when it’s time for some action and the need for menus and text boxes to relay the story to you. This time, it feels more like a movie experience that has enough control and decision-making in it to let us decide what these characters should do.

We got our hands on the Heavy Rain demo a bit early to see if the brief snippet of gameplay helps to convey whether Quantic Dream has accomplished their goal. We’re definitely interested in seeing more, but since we don’t get to see much more than an initial look at what two of the main characters in the game, Private Detective Scott Shelby and FBI Agent Norman Jayden, are doing very early in their investigations. Since we don’t want to spoil any little details you may get from the demo yourself, feel free to try a few of these suggestions to see a bit more of the demo.

1. Don’t pay to learn which apartment Lauren is in.

Scott Shelby doesn’t mind greasing a few palms to make his work a little easier, but let him do the dirty work for once. Just go upstairs and knock on every door to hear or see what kind of people may be living next to Lauren.

2. Explore Lauren’s Apartment

As soon as she lets you in, you don’t need to walk up to her and start talking about the investigation. Just have a look around the apartment, particularly the bathroom, desk, and refrigerator just to get an idea that there’s more to her than you thought. Also, you can have Scott look out her window behind her bed after you’re done talking to her, though you as the player aren’t allowed to look out the window.

3. Learn to take a punch.

After a brief asthma attack, you notice a shady character forcing his way into Lauren’s apartment and decide to check in on her after you hear a scream. If you decide to put yourself in harm’s way, you don’t have to win it without missing a beat, so let Scott take a few punches, earn some bruises, and hobble off with a limp after the fight is over. If you really don’t want to fight, you can just go down the steps after the shady man enters her apartment and do nothing to help her.

4. Watch the news reporter for some quick info.

Despite being the FBI agent, you can check out what the news reporter has been able to gather about what is going on before heading in to check out the crime scene. Then walk up to the crowd next to them and see Norman step into the rain puddle before you move on.

5. Don’t be afraid of getting a little dirty.

As you investigate the scene with your high tech tools, you’ll see a muddy hill past the railroad tracks you may want to climb up. Once you get up there and see what is up there, don’t follow the prompts to get down safely and let the guy with the high tech toys get some mud on his jacket and pants.

The only issues with the Heavy Rain demo is that we can’t really see any of the consequences of these actions, so there’s no impact to anything you can do in the demo compared to any actual playthrough of Heavy Rain. You may have issues with the walking, which is done by holding down the R2 button to walk forward and the left analog stick to steer the character if you need to turn. It’s a bit clunky at first, but for the purposes of the game and as a deliberate pacing tool, it works just fine for us. If you like what you see or skip to this part of the article because you’re on a media blackout of the game, you only have less than two weeks until you can get your hands on the game since it will be out on February 23.

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About This Author: Chris Selogy

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