The only bad thing I have to say about this game is the controls are not intuitive at all. While I get what they were trying to do here it just doesn't work too well. It's still playable and a good game.
So, first i will adress the controls which people are really complaning about. I played using an xbox one controller and although it can feel clunky sometimes, it is nowhere near to a point of impacting your gameplay seriously. Worst of worst you will get a little stuck because of the camera switch positions in small areas, and that its it. Also you have to remember it is a interactive movie, so things like that are to be expected in some degree (not that its an excuse).
The graphics are beautiful and really realistic, even for today standards. You can easily take some screenshots and think its real life. I remember playing the demo on the PS3 when it came out and how stunned i was, im getting the same reaction as before playing right now. It is really amazing what they achieved with this game regarding the graphics.
The characters are great especially Jodie and Nathan (Elliot Page and William Dafoe). They did an almost perfect job in the acting! But even the side characters are really well done, keeping the same level of quality as the main protagonists.
About the story i understand that some people may find it confusing since it keeps switching from past to future and vice versa, but now you can play it in the "right" order so thats no longer a problem. For me i think the story was great, very emotional and really outstanding from anything we had at the time, interesting from beggining to the end. It was really innovative and they did an amazing job as well.
I just wish we had a sequel since they leave it open in the end. The ending is epic and the future state of the game would be epic as well storywise.
Play, you wont regret it
David Cage's games are a weird thing. They're generally praised by people who don't really know better when it comes to storytelling, mostly because what makes them special is the amount of genuine player choice in them. There's no way to sugarcoat it: a game with good writing will usually have little in the way of meaningful choices, and a game with many choices will have its writing suffer.
This is generally the case for Cage's games. Lots of choice on what to do (the story will even continue if some characters die), with multiple endings available. This is great, but unfortunately the storytelling in these games tends to be preposterous. So when a game like this one comes out, where there's very little in the way of actual choice, most of it being on rails, you'd expect the story to be incredible. Unfortunately, this is probably his worst story yet.
Technically speaking there's nothing exceptionally jarring about the story (save for how disconnected some chapters are), it's just it's all been done so many times before and better. You can predict exactly what'll happen at every step because you've seen it so often. There's absolutely no effort at all put into the writing and it's a testament to the skill of the main stars that they can even make the painfully trite dialogue sound in any way engaging.
Heavy Rain certainly cheats when it comes to its story and characters, but at least it does SOMETHING. Beyond refuses to put the slightest effort. I can only recommend it if you have never seen more than three movies in your entire life (and even then chances are you'll still run into familiar territory here) or if you are a diehard Willem DaFoe fan and absolutely must have everything with him in it. Otherwise your money and time are better spent elsewhere.
I tried to like the game but it really is very bad. While it tries to make the story interesting, the fact that each scene is like a glimpse of what happened but not directly related to what was happening right before or after makes it worse.