How far has graphics evolved with adventure? Game Podunk blogger, Rrquinta writes on the topic and brings in the discussion of Heavy Rain, Jurassic Park, and LA Noire to support her points. Read on for more.

Heavy Rain solves this dilemma by using button prompts (aka quick-time events, but don't let Cage find you saying that), creating highly dramatic, dynamic moments while still allowing for exploration (and more traditional point-and-click gameplay) in quieter moments. While Cage's system isn't flawless, the use of button prompts allows you to more seamlessly transfer the "point-and-click" experience to consoles (which often suffer due to the controller versus mouse setup), as well as creating tense, action-packed scenes when the story calls for it. The fact that you can fail, and even die, in these segments helps to increase the tension, especially since failure and death have permanent consequences on the story. I don't think all graphic adventures need to necessarily incorporate death in the same way that Heavy Rain does, but the system Cage created works very well for the story he is telling and the mood he is trying to convey. While I don't think Heavy Rain would have been a bad traditional graphic (point-and-click) adventure, as it is it created a nice hybrid of the more active "adventure" games we expect on consoles while still retaining some of the slower, quieter moments of exposition and exploration that characterize the traditional PC point-and-click title.

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