So I don't know how many people have been following this new game from the creators of Indigo Prophesy / Fahrenheit, especially since it was announced to be PS3 exclusive, but I was somewhat surprised to find out about the gameplay.
It starts out by having a very bizarre control method for movement. You hold down a shoulder button to move forward, and then turn by turning the camera. What's even more bizarre though is the meat of the game. The demos shown both put the characters into rather tense situations, but what's most strange is that there are apparently no cutscenes in the game... everything that could be considered a cutscene short of basic character dialogue is done via a quick time event.
The E3 09 demo is a great example of this. One of the characters, an FBI agent, is investigating a lead in a junk yard owned by a man named Mad Jack. Apparently he sold a car to someone who the agent needs to find. The agent, who I shall call Pasty McActionhero gets out of his car after a short... slow time event... where the player pushes left to open the door, and heads over to mean Mad Jack who is operating a claw crane on treads. Mad Jack, a hulking black man whose apparently gone through massive lower lip extension surgery is rather unhelpful, refusing to answer his questions. Not deterred, our brave hero puts on his super evidence displayomatic sunglasses, and immediately sees a whole bunch of crap light up all over the garage Apparently there's out of place pollen in the air, and... blood all over the ground. Invisible blood. He follows the trail to the acid bath and finds himself a human skull. Just as he's realizing how much shit he's in however, the Goliath materializes behind him and points a big frigging pistol at his skull. He immediately explains that one of Pastey's cop friends asked too many questions, so Ol' Jacko had to take care of him, like Ol' Jacko do. He then suggests they go to the back room so that he can finish Pasty off out of sight... of whoever might be watching them in a junkyard in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain.
As they head to the back, Agent Pasty gets his first chance at quick time action, kicking the jolly brown giant in the shin and knocking his gun away. A drawn out fight scene ensues with tons of timed button presses, and lots of evidence that Jack seems to be no ordinary freakishly large racist stereotype... no, he's actually a slasher movie monster racist stereotype. However, he's still a racist stereotype, and as such, it only takes a few bullets into the fall near his head once Pasty gets ahold of a fire arm to convince him to talk. He gives a bunch of information and pasty starts to read him his rights, only to have his vision suddenly begin to blur. No, he isn't concussed. He's apparently addicted to some drug he needs to take for his super CSI vision goggles to work or something. Anyway, a whole bunch of buttons start appearing on screen which the developer explains represent Pasty trying to shoot up in the middle of the arrest, but he fails, and collapses. Jack delivers a corny one liner or two, then knocks our valiant hero out cold.
Agent Pasty awakes to find himself hand cuffed to his vehicle's steering wheel, and fortunately for him, Jack decided to go for the low budget bond villain approach. The screen splits with the top part showing the inside of pasty's car and the bottom showing how close it is to the massive spinning blades of the junk yard's car destroyomatticmabob. Being a resourceful sort, agent pasty starts flailing the analogue sticks and shaking the controller in order to somehow get himself free. This doesn't seem to have much effect until he remembers he has a spare gun in his glove compartment, and through the magic of action movie physics, manages to get it out, and into his hands, then shoots the chain of his cuffs just as the car is dropped into the destroyomatticmabob and scrambles out through shear button mashing force of will, flopping to the ground in exhaustion. As usual though, Jack decides to take a page from the Jason Vorhees book of oversized villain...y, and teleports out of the crane control cabin to somewhere out side of agent pasty's view, only to blind side him as soon as he realizes what has happened. The black behemoth then proceeds to beat the living crap out of agent pastey in a QTE of epic proportions. It goes on for over two minutes with Jack making all sorts of stereotypical black bad guy one liners like "You think you bad? You think you bad?" and chuckling like an idiot as agent pasty's attacks seem to simply bounce off. At some point the crane starts driving forward on it's own for no apparent reason. This however marks the downfall of the ebony colossus, as agent pasty, using his superior white intellect tricks Jack into standing in front of the crane's tread and not move for a few seconds, allowing it to crush him to death. Thus the superiority of the white race is once again proven.
At least that's the message I got from the video. I remember reading that in indigo prophesy the female cop had a black partner and that every time he appeared on screen funk music would spontaneously start playing no matter how inappropriate. In other words, as far as I can tell the writers in this company have some serious issues with black people.
So yeah... Heavy Rain, the heavily racist, heavily QTE laden psychological action/drama.
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Topic: Heavy Rain (Read 3086 times)