10. Heavy Rain
Very few games come to the absolute beauty of Quantic Dream's 2010 hit Heavy Rain. Without a doubt, the devs focused highly on detail. Unfortunately, the only details they seemed to focus on were the graphical ones. Heavy Rain gets so much hype for being such an incredible game. GameSpot gave it an 8.5 out of 10, IGN gave it a 9 out of 10, and MetaCritic gave it an 87%. Clearly the so-called professional critics were not in their element while they were playing. And if they were, they were so enthralled by the sheer beauty of the presentation that they forgot to pay attention to the story. Let me start off by saying that perhaps the most irritating thing about Heavy Rain is the hour-long loading screens. Between scenes, the player has time to put down their controller and play a game of chess just to wait for the next 'chapter' to load. This, for one, is one of the most time-consuming and frustrating aspects of the game. That's putting it nicely. Secondly, the game is packed to the brim with split-second decisions that are supposed to feel epic and thrilling, but instead leave the player wishing they had just killed off the character. While significantly more common but debatably less irritating than the loading screens is the famous
Press X to Jason routine in the mall. The repetition of three forms of "Jason" not only irritate the living hell out of virtually every player, but the unnecessary scene in itself takes away from the significance of the storyline. Jason did not need to run away from Ethan in the mall in order to get hit by a car. The scene is irritating, long, and redundant, and it essentially becomes completely predictable - just as the rest of the story. The character relations are so generic and lifeless. For such a beautifully illustrated game, I found myself highly disappointed by the lack of emotion in characters - both visually and audibly. At no point during the game did I see any form of human expression cross any of the characters faces, and their voices were all flat and monotone to the point that it sounds less convincing than an episode of
The Bold and the Beautiful. Not to mention the fact that it is obvious the entire game that Detective Scott Shelby is the origami killer. It would be
too obvious for Ethan to be the killer with how much they set it up. It was bait that I did not fall for. Without a doubt, the sheer visual impressiveness is not nearly enough to make up for the gaudy yet predictable storyline, horrid acting, and poor character animations. Heavy Rain is a game that receives so much more hype than it remotely deserves.