(review) Heavy Rain

I bought Heavy Rain on a whim, after it being recommended to me by the ASM at work. I had heard a lot of good things about the game beforehand, though I was a little hesitant on buying it due to it's notoriety for being theatrical based and your whole interaction with the game was quick-time events (plus, someone had told me it was a horror game which is an instant no for me). Besides this, the storyline for it was said to be fantastic. After playing a few games lately that were quite hard pressed for storyline (namely Rune Factory 3 on DS and Pokémon Rumble Blast for 3DS), I felt like a change. And Heavy Rain was a fantastic change of direction.

The game starts quite slowly, taking you through the usual tutorial section at the beginning of every video game ever, introducing you to one of the four main characters, Ethan Mars; stay-at-home, architect dad who has a wife, two sons and a really nice house. After you get through the somewhat overly tedious tutorial, the game doesn't waste time on getting into the story, already reaching tragedy at about 15 minutes in (depending on how long it took you to do that tutorial), his eldest son dying in a car accident and Ethan himself winding up in a coma. Fast forward two years, you find out that Ethan was stuck in a coma for six months afterwards, now experiences black outs, separated with his wife, lives in a dingy apartment (you never see that nice house again ): ) and is currently seeking therapy so he can rid himself of the guilt of the death of his first son and be a proper father again with his youngest. When he finally starts to connect one day, his son is conveniently kidnapped after Ethan has one of his trusty black outs and you learn that the kidnapper is a known as the "Origami Killer", a mass murder who targets little boys who go missing then turn up dead three to five days later.

You also follow the story of three other characters along the road as well; Norman Jayden, a drug addicted FBI agent called into the case who dons a cool pair of sunglasses that makes looking for evidence about 5000x easier, Scott Shelby, an asthmatic, semi-overweight ex-cop who now works as a private detective and is investigating the current case of Shaun Mars (Ethan's kidnapped son) and Madison Paige, a journalist who suffers from insomnia who is also investigating the case but gets wrapped up in a way she did not expect.

The gameplay is extremely simple; walk around and interact. Not exactly rocket science but it works quite well for this game. Whatever it lacks in general gameplay it makes up in its extremely intricate storyline which can change direction at any quick time event. You'd think quick time events would be simple and easy, but no, those bad boys can get quite challenging when it comes to fight scenes. Interaction is optional between your usual Playstation controller or if you have the Playstation Move patch update or the Move Edition (like myself), the Playstation Move controller is usable. It doesn't really matter which you choose, I found both options worked well. If I had a choice though, stick with the usual controller if you're not confident. A few times I found myself shaking the Move controller vigourously only to discover that I was holding the controller the wrong way. Walking gets awkward at times, the character in play often walking into random walls as the camera changes randomly as you walk into each new section of a room. They seem to lack proper brakes, often walking a little more even though I let go of the analog stick.

The graphics and voice acting were quite fantastic, the face models communicating each emotion effectively. I checked out the actors who their faces were modelled off and wow, what a fantastic job the designers did. The whole theatrical feel about it, the quick time events, it feels like a movie. And that's the whole point of it!

It's a great game for those who are just starting to get into video games as the gameplay is extremely easy to understand and the compelling plot seems to come straight from a 10 hour episode of CSI. Even if you don't want to play, it has that pull-me-in effect that games like Bioshock where you just want to watch it because it looks so cool. Definitely pick it up if you see it around, it's worth the $25/$30.

A sketch a day keeps the doctor away

Sketching, from personal experience and what I've read, is probably one of the healthiest things you could do. A doodle here and there, illegible scrawl that you've slowly drawn whilst on the phone, that scribble in your diary while you're waiting for something, it's all practice that add towards the real thing. Of course, doodles can always turn into something more than you thought it was. Sketching is a good cure to art block as well, I find. Even if it's just nonsense, it stretches the creative muscle.

These were my initial sketches of Oakley, which I did on a whim. This has now turned out to be something I look back to often for ideas. True, I have changed a few things, but I still use it as a size ratio... thing. I did draw over some screens of Xam'd to try and get a perspective, but I wouldn't consider that cheating since that's the kind of body type I wanted.

Usually, I'm super terrible at feet, as you can see in one of the next sketches. This one though, the lower half seemed to turn out better than the upper half, as well as that super dodge sketch up in the corner. I seem to use Disgaea covers to help with postures since they have such cool postures with the many gazillion characters on the front.




I did these at work since the store I was at was totally dead for many a length of time. That sketch of Errol seemed to turn out really well, but there is some disgusting crap in the corner up there in the right. Adeline, was a little too busty, but I redid her sketch later on tonight on the computer. I very much based her design off Lisbeth from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Lisbeth is such a strong character, I couldn't resist giving her a shot at my own. I'm going to be using this character in Atlantis Arising as an Atlantean who can spin web from her fingers. She's practically spiderman! I also redid Errol/Atom/Errick below as well. His design is based off two of my best male friends, Sam and Dom, in which he has Dom's punky personality and hair but Sam's Welsh heritage, though in some cases, Errol can be extremely polite and quiet, which isn't really Sam or Dom at all.

My favourite sketch-turned-awesome has to be my greatest painting so far, one I did after deciding to draw my crappy avatar from Gaia Online. I don't actually play that weird site, I just remembered how much time I used to spend there. But, it started as a sketch, then I slowly coloured it and it just... went really great. I wish I used more than one layer, otherwise I'd post the guide lines I used. Even if SAI had a feature where you could record as you draw! That would be cool.

Keep sketching away kiddies, you'll never know when you'll make something awesome.

Also, I've already broken 200 pageviews and on my way to 250. Thanks guys!!

Expanding outwards: part II

So, I gave backgrounds a shot again. This time though, I'm not sure if I'm going to finish this, restart it or just not do anything altogether. The idea was to have this graffiti ravaged background then have a singular guy (Errick is his name) walking towards the far left. Since backgrounds are definitely not my forte, I'm kind of slowly spending time working on this. I might finish it... eventually. My only concern is that the realism of the texture and the poster cross with the cartoonism of everything else might be too much of a clash. But I'll keep trying. The hardest part will probably be getting Errick's walking posture right.

For a fun fact, I'm trying to pull inspiration from this image. Ry-Spirit is one of my favourite artists out there and his style is very unique. I met him at Brisbane Supanova in November last year and bought a poster from him, which he even offered to sign for me. It is now stuck quite proudly on my wall.

If there was anything that I had the most amount of fun on while doing the above image, it has to be the poster. It took me like fifteen minutes, but I really liked it in the end. There was probably more I could add to make it seem more like a band poster, but I kind of wanted to pull off the amateur look since real bands don't put posters up in streets.

Speaking of bands, one of my favourite, Angels & Airwaves are going to Soundwave this month, which I will be sadly missing out on due to my tight-assness and hesitancy. I did get to buy a cool coat and shirt from the Panic! at the Disco store and hopefully, when I can nab some money off my brother, some shirts off the AvA store, as well as LOVE the movie!