Heavy Rain looks pretty bold

At CES, I got a chance to briefly play Heavy Rain, the much-anticipated PS3 title I've blogged about before (as far back as 4 years ago!).

The section I played reminded me of some of the 'detective' portions of Batman: Arkham Asylum, mixed with a Shenmue style big-world RPG. From what I gather, the clues assembled during these portions are sorted through in a 'Minority Report' style environment for the character, making a modernized version of the Impossible Mission solver (you youngsters may need to look that one up). The game looked very polished but in the section I played, not very remarkable beyond it's prettiness.

Today though, I got pointed this clip: Heavy Rain Video Game, Japanese Special Presentation Doc on GameTrailers and wow. I have to say I'm impressed even after four years of waiting.

I don't know if it's going to succeed where games like Shenmue fell short, but thank goodness someone's trying. Go Quantic Dream!

Heavy Rain (of Incentives)

dIn an interview up on GamesIndustry.biz, Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream's CEO Guillaume De Fondaumiere makes some comments on the effects that Quebec's game development incentives had on the French games industry:

[referring to the French games industry downturn from 2000 through 2005]

"...we've been hit by the distortion of competition - primarily from Canada, from Montreal, which as you know is a French-speaking province. The fact that they created a tax credit worth almost 50 per cent, this has had a big impact in France, and a lot of our creators, developers and programmers went to Canada, so I think we lost more than half of the community to Montreal in those days."

He later goes on to say that France's institution of a similar - but smaller - system helped stem the bleeding.