Heavy Rain was a great game from beginning to end. Indigo Prophecy was a great game for most of the game, and the last few parts of the game sucked.
-
If you come across those that don't like Heavy Rain, you always hear that Heavy Rain doesn't have any gameplay. While it's true it lacks in the gameplay department, it clearly has gameplay, even if it is in confined locations that the game itself progresses you towards as well as a series of quick time events. People don't say Snatcher, King's Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc, doesn't have gameplay. Those games follow the exact same premise except they don't lead you automatically towards the next event. Heavy Rain is streamlined to where you don't have to keep going around in circles until you find the next location. Heavy Rain is also more detailed that if you do something wrong, it just affects the outcome rather than ending the game. In Police Quest 3, your first assignment is to bring in a naked guy in a park. You can shoot him at the very beginning which looks cool, but it's game over unless you club him in the stomach and cuff him. So Heavy Rain has its flaws, but it's a unique game in itself.
The other gameplay portion is the QTEs. Depending on how the game does it, I'm not really a fan of QTEs, however Heavy Rain is one of the games that does QTEs very well. First off, the gameplay is entirely comprised of QTEs. Whether it's using the right stick to open doors and pick up items, or it's repeatedly press between two buttons to get a character to run up a small hill, it's all you do during gameplay, during action sequences, etc. The other thing about the QTEs is that what's happening in the action and what you're required to press during a QTE is usually what you'd expect to press if you were to do this same action on another game. Not always, but usually, and because of this it sort of gives you the feeling that the actions you're taking are your own.
The storyline is amazing, though. The way the story develops, since you're the one in control of the characters and determining their fate, you care about these characters quite a bit more than you might have if you just saw it all in a movie.
Heavy Rain might be an easy game, but it's an amazing game. It'd be nice if Beyond Two Souls is as good and we don't just praise it on how great the graphics are, but from what we've seen, if that's the gameplay, it doesn't look very good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KssKxul4VD4