Pleasant ambient electronic soundtrack and excellent pixel art. The game has a number of different modules that provide different graphics and music and some small tweaks to gameplay, though it's ultimately a bit simple and repetitive. But that simplicity makes it a good game to play casually. I've been playing it on TV with my wife about once a year on various formats since release. We'll pick a different module each time. A run through most modules will take between 5 to 10 hours depending on how efficient you are.
Heavy Rain was a cutting edge graphical showcase when it released on PS3 over a decade ago, but even then it was minimally interactive and, much worse, badly written. Like all of David Cage's games, it has pretensions of being a movie, but between the robotic animation of the mundane in-game tasks that make up most of its gameplay, the extremely uneven vocal performances, and the ludicrous turns of events the game expects you suspend disbelief for, it boils down to an amateurish mess even if you evaluate it purely as a story experience. Heavy Rain also deserves special mention for being a complete failure as a mystery story, committing the cardinal sin of outright lying to the player and changing the rules of how its internal monologue system for investigation and dialogue works in order to hide its ridiculous twist.
