After solving the "Four Days" alternate reality game, Precinct 52 players were offered a code to play the demo for Heavy Rain - so I decided to give it a go.

Many people have decided to forgo the demo to save themselves from spoilers and for that reason I'll keep this post mostly spoiler free and speak to the gameplay and story telling ability the title offers.

The beginning of the demo is a tutorial which introduces you to the basic controls and movement system. To allow for movement separate from "head motion" the left analog stick controls where you look and the R2 button controls walking speed.

In the demo there's walking and slow walking, but presumably this could be the difference between walking and sneaking if required. Action controls involve simple button press and holds, single direction right analog stick flicks, or Mortal Kombat style quarter-circle forward to down right analog stick movements for anything more complicated.

heavy-rain-demo image

Usually the controls were pretty intuitive but sometimes a mistake really took you out of the "movie" experience. The controls sometimes made simple things (or even mildly difficult things) annoyingly hard to do or make you do things you didn't mean to. A number of these small mistakes took far too long to correct - ultimately forcing you to repeat your steps.

Fighting (yes, there is a little bit of rough and tumble action) consists of pre-determined Dance Dance Revolution-style (X, Left, Circle, L1) hit or miss quick-time events that result in choreographed fighting that is actually pretty exciting to watch and feel involved in. Options for conversation are assigned to different button presses, giving you the option to ask certain questions while leaving some unasked as you run out of time and the conversations end.

heavy rain demo glasses clues detective mode

The crime scene investigation part of the game introduced us to a nifty pair of sunglasses (Yeaaahhhh!) and a matching glove. After putting the glasses and glove on you can scan the area for potential clues. It's almost as if Wayne Enterprises went public with the bat-cowl's detective mode from Batman: Arkham Asylum. The matrix-green visuals include circles that highlight the clues and as you approach them. You then scan them with your glove, and subsequently perform DNA testing, toxicology, and other sorts of stuff that would make CSI Duquesne and her team jealous they didn't live in this day and age.

Overall the game made me feel like I was watching a decent movie, reading a choose your own adventure book, while playing Dance Dance Revolution all at the same time. Heavy Rain will definitely be fun for some gamers but I can tell it's a game designed around telling an in depth story through constant, high quality PlayStation 3 cinematics - during which you keep control of your character down to minute actions which may or may not have an impact on the story.

Heavy Rain is certainly very pretty, very original, and we all hope the story is going to be captivating but without gameplay polish throughout the whole game the movie feeling won't hold most players' attention - resulting in mostly just a slow paced game.

The demo is available now if you're willing to jump through the hoops for the alternate reality game - make sure to check out our instructions, otherwise the demo drops this Thursday, February 11th on the PSN.

Have you checked out the demo yet?

Heavy Rain comes out February 23rd. Find out how far you are willing to go to save someone you love.