So I finally got the demo to download and played through the stupid thing. First off, and not to sound like just another douchebag blogger type that's desperate for cheap attention, but I honestly believe that anyone who gives this any sort of positive review when the final thing hits must have been paid off by Sony. It's that wretched.

As previously noted, what we have is Shenmue, but done all serious and pretentious like. The demo kicks off with you as a detective looking for answers from a woman concerning a series of murders. Right off the back, the game immediately shines; Heavy Rain is essentially an interactive movie, which itself is not a bad thing, contrary to popular belief (I for one really enjoyed Dragon's Lair, still do) except that it's the most brain-meltingly boring thing ever. If the action was exciting enough for the player to not mind that he or she isn't doing much, all can be forgiven, but not here.

The real key to this nonsense/madness is how you're supposed to press buttons to initiate the most meaningless of actions. As also previously mentioned, the actual visual prompts for these are nicely done, easily the highlight of the entire game. If this game does one thing right, it's the interface. But instead of rotating the right stick, then hitting the X button, and then hitting the L2 trigger to, say, defuse a bomb, you're picking up a tissue box or using an asthma inhaler. No joke. But aside from the banality of the actions is the overall inconsistency. In my mind, it's either all or nothing; if you need inputs to do the certain menial of tasks, than EVERYTHING should require interactivity. I have no idea why some actions require involvement while others do not; why do you need to manually open this door and not that one? At least I never encountered an action that made me pissed for not being involved, due to any inherent level of excitement, because once again, everything is excessively tepid.

As the private eye, you have various options to choose from while conversing with the aforementioned woman, to get that vital piece of info. Unlike, say, a BioWare RPG, in which each possible option is distinguishable from a narrative viewpoint, everything here is for the most part completely random. And while some might complain that the BioWare way makes things too obvious, at least you have a sense as to what the hell is going on.

Actually, there are some instances in which it is clear where the conversation is headed, but way too obviously, more so than in any BioWare title. Instead of coming up with amusing lines of dialogue, at one point the available options are A. BE NICE or B. BE A JERK. Splendid.

Ultimately, everything is way too vague and cryptic, and coupled with the dumb things you have to do in order to get things moving, one gets the serious impression that the creators believe they are honestly storytelling and game making geniuses, which is beyond aggravating and insulting.

There actually is some action that does make Heavy Rain feel like a legitimate game, which is a fight scene between the detective and some jerk-off. I enjoyed how, unlike most Quick Time Events, if you screw up, it's not totally game over; you'll have a black eye but can continue the fight, but after too many bruises, then you'll have to start over. But it just drags on, and rather low energy, to the point that it too became tiresome. Again, without any sense of urgency or consequence, I had no real inceptive to put up a strong front; feels like asking someone to fist fight after a long nap.

What else? Well, given the limited amount of interaction, you'd think the thing would at least blow everything else out of the water on a visual level, and that's imply not the case here. The game features motion captured actors to, I'm guessing, get the (dismally boring) story across, but everyone is such an atrocious actor that it completely backfires. Each person moves way too much, in a manner that screams "there's a real person here!" It's somewhat the reason why 2D animation is still preferable to 3D, there no need for extra tricks, you don't need all these nuances to get the idea across of a person eating a burger, you just show the basics and trust the viewer will recognize what's going on. But the voice work is twenty times worse, with lines delivered either ultra wooden like or totally slurred. If also feels as if the actors has zero to work with and are trying to fill the blanks themselves, which is what actors do when the script sucks and the director has his/her head stuck up their asses.

The whole thing feels so ridiculous that one assumes that it's just one big joke, but I think everything here is dead serious. Which is simply... wow.