I like a good video game. Back in the day I was a Manic Miner master, a Jet Pac genius and a Sensible Soccer supremo.
Nowadays my tastes are more simple. It’s mostly just football but with odd Grand Theft Auto style distraction. There’s nothing quite like driving a car through Times Square … on the pavement knocking down pedestrians as the cops foolishly try and catch up with me. It’s escapism. And seeing as I can’t drive like that in real life, when I very often want to, my PS3 will have to suffice.
Anyway, as last week was kind of a quiet week I thought I’d get something new. I have grown a little weary of playing online football especially when the minute you go more than 2 goals up against some little cunt they always quit the game.
I had seen ads for this game called Heavy Rain and had heard that it was a fantastic new concept blah blah blah. It looked quite interesting. You go through the game making choices which impacts on the story. It certainly sounded different so I bought it.
Worst. Mistake. Ever. And I include in that the time I had to look after Stinking Pete’s infant nephew and I left him with the two bar fire and the plugged in hairdryer to play with at bath time.
The concept is this : There is a serial killer who is killing serially, as they do, and you play four different characters in the game. An FBI guy, a private dectective, a crap bastard who keeps losing his kids (one of whom has been taken by the serial killer), and some woman whose relation to any of it is still a mystery to me.
It switches between them as the story progresses. But here’s the thing. It’s mostly like watching a film or a TV show. Every so often you have to do things by pressing combinations of buttons. For example, you are the FBI guy and you need to collect evidence with some kind of magic glove. To climb a slippery slope to follow tracks you have to press and hold O then Square, then R1 then L2 and so on. Rivetting stuff.
So you do some stuff, there is sometimes a bit of searching or trying to find the right thing to do before you go on to the next scene, move the right stick up and around to control the character, when the game tells you to, and that’s about it.
It becomes tedious very quickly but I thought perhaps there was something I was missing. It might get good. Everyone said it was good, maybe I just needed to give it time. Then came the moment when I realised this video game is an elaborate, expensive piss take. There’s a scene when the private detective is chasing up a lead and arrives at a house. He hears a baby crying, goes in and finds a note on the floor from the mother of the baby who has decided to kill herself. He saves her just in time. A quick Triangle + O + X + L2 and a few waggles of the right stick later you have cleaned up the wrists she tried to slit.
As you try and question her, choosing the various options the game gives you, she expresses concern for her baby who is outside in the sitting room crying. To move the story along you have to attend to the baby. What do babies generally need? No, they don’t need you to run down a load of pedestrians with your car as the thuddding clunk of their skull off the bonnet gives you curious pleasure. Nor do they need a quick one-two followed by a Cruyff turn before chipping the keeper in the last minute to win the league.
Babies need feeding. And changing. The game requires you to feed the baby, change it’s poo filled nappy, before ever so slowly moving the right stick to rock the baby to sleep. Whoever thought up this game is a genius. I mean, it’s utterly shit, but I read last week it sold over 500,000 copies in the UK. That’s half a million hardcore gamers rocking a baby to sleep after changing its crappy nappy.
I can’t explain just how fucking terrible this video game is. My copy is back in the box and will go back to the shop. I’ll lose some money as I trade it in for something less crap, like Pong on one of those old Colecovision systems, but I can live with that. There’s no nappy changing in Pong. There’s no heating up milk for a fucking baby.
Congratulations to the makers of Heavy Rain, they have played a huge practical joke on the world. I’m sure they’re laughing their very rich, 500,000 copies in the UK alone, arses off, but if this post can serve to save one guy or girl from wasting their money on this piece of shit then it will have done its job.
Heavy Rain – worse than Crystal Swing. Remember that. Tell your friends.
To spread the word rotate the right stick slowly in a circular motion holding L1, X and O. Cunts.
my mate got it and loves it.
i’m more of a point and shoot man though, i do hate having to think, analyse, sneak around, that’s all bullshit, point agus shoot pour moi merci
Don’t have any games console any more (I’ll be back some day)but I used to hate getting a game like that. All cut scenes and ‘mysteries’. What a load of balls.
On my PS2 I ended up mostly just playing the Gran Turismo series(best driving game ever), Medal of Honor series (I love sniper work, slowly sighting on on some German having a fag in a watchtower, crosshairs on the cheekbone) and bouts of football with mates.
Shite new game – hate that.
Your mate is a deeply disturbed person then, machine.
SG – yeah, surely the point of a video game is to do stuff you can’t do in real life. Nappy changing, give me a break.
I like shooting people in the head or running them over. You can’t even kill the baby like a British nanny.
Shows how wrong you can be – I’d assumed it was about heavy water & nuclear reactors/weapons/annihilation!
Hate those cunts who quit when you go a few goals up! whoo it pisses me off!
the lack of character highlights how spoilt these cunts are!
How many deaths make a killer a serial killer? (there’s no punchline, I was just wondering)
3 i would say christy.
If you want good storyline in future try Bioware games, they always work for me.
Modern Warfare 2 is consuming a ridiculous amount of my time lately and the multiplayer is bloody good fun. You just have to get used to 14yr old Chinese kids calling you a noob/tard all the time.
Heavy Rain actually got some mixed reviews, so I decided to steer clear of it. A better choice might be Unchared 2, pretty much unanimously game of the year last year. Great single player, great multi-player.
Getting a bit bored of Fifa mself at this point unfortunately :/
Thanks for the heads up Twenty – sounds extremely shite.
I remember plying Max Payne on the old Xbox there’s a sort of tightrope scene with a baby crying in the background, nearly dove me mad!
if things that are expecting to be blasted into oblivion are not runing directly at me in a video game, I quickly loose interest. And if you cant ‘esc’ past bloody story line bits then I just turn it off and start buying stuff instead….its more fun!
You learning a new language, Twenty? No Galaxians and Asteroids anymore?
I became too good at them, SoS. At one with the game, and all that.
Sam – exactly. I want to kill things.
That’s why I never got on with Splinter Cell – all that creeping around when all you really want to do is machine gun everyone.
I quite like creeping and a bit silenced sniping, I have to say. Don’t think I played Splinter Cell though
tried to install splinter cell on win 7 64, and it spat it back at me!
“I remember plying Max Payne on the old Xbox there’s a sort of tightrope scene with a baby crying in the background, nearly dove me mad!”
Heh, Div, I remember that. Very strange. Pointless too.
Sniping is cool.
I got this game too and I’m also bringing it back except I’m going to return it, on fire, down the throat of the cunt who sold it to me. it’s so shit.
Oh yeah, sniping is the best part of any FPS.
If it loved you it wouldn’t do that SAm
Solitaire suits me fine, for those tedious moments when the WiFi has a coniption.
I think I saw a clip of the game on Channel 4 News last week. Doesn’t the female character have nice knockers and wears a tight white t-shirt?* If so it’s a good game. Obviously.
* If the above is right can you find out if she’s single? and/or has sisters? A mother? Even a granny? thanks.
I stopped playing games after jet set willy came on the seen .. I though there was nothing to beat that.
Oh hold on ..during my intercert I got completely fucking addicted to Prince of persia on the PC
Jump through the mirror ..who would have thought … fucking thing cost me an “A” in Honours Irish
Even a pixelated lady in a tight t-shirt doesn’t make the game ok, Itchy.
The Splinter Cell series is brilliant. Can’t wait for the newest one “conviction” which is out next month.
I’m normally a straight up shooter type game fan myself, but have to admit that Mass Effect won me over with it’s story mode (and getting to shoot and shag aliens)
They’ll never top Leisure Suit Larry.
Gorf. The one and the only. Every villain since has been based on Gorf.
‘Tough luck space cadet. Try again’.
Metallic-sounding intergalatic wanker.
There was a spectrum game around the time of the yuppy craze …twas called “how to be a complete bastard”
yeah leisure suit larry was a goldie …
I was actually discussing “retro” games with my buddy in the pub on saturday night. I recently downloaded an emulator on my computer so i could play some of the classic old games that i remember with such fondness, like Golden Axe, Streets of Rage etc. Turns out that they’re actually all shit. It was an upsetting revelation.
I understand that revelation.
All your Spectrum faves right here – http://www.zxspectrum.net/
my mate said that it’s the sort of game where you have to go off and think about what to do next, like go off for 15 minutes and consider what to do. like that was a good thing. im going to stop hanging around with him.
You should. Because next thing you know you’ll be hanging around public toilets with him.
The worse bit was waiting for the fuckers to load from cassette only for the game to crash just when you thought it had finished.
Two of the best arcade games…..
Battlezone:
Tempest:
Battlezone:
Oops sorry double post…..
I loved Battlezone. And there was a Star Wars game you sat into which was well cool.
Assume everyone knows about Mame?
I am playing this right now
what ever happened to pong?
Spent a fortune and remember having to queue to play the games in pubs when they first came out. But I’ve never tried one of these home console things.
My last ambition is to be a real serial killer.
Hhm I was just thinking what is all this about video games – they’re all crap. Then you mentioned Battlezone and I had one of those suppressed flashback memories thingies (or whatever). I used to be well addicted to that…
Great article. I see your point but I actually quite liked it – i liked the concept.
On the subject of folk quitting when behind, have a listen to the track Bad Losers On Yahoo Chess, by the hiarious Half Man Half Biscuit.. apt..