I am only a few chapters into the Heavy Rain experience, but I wanted to offer a quick comment or two. The opening stages/chapters are slow going, but they are necessary to introduce you to the backdrop story and of course the awkward controls. Yes, I still find the controls cumbersome, and they take away from the immersion factor. The quick time events are interesting, and add to the intensity; I just hate holding down the R2 button to walk. Seems so 1996 Resident Evil-ish.
IGN (UK) recently posted an article a couple of days ago offering various opinions from their contributors; spoiler free and worth a read. I thought this opinion summed up my experiences so far in the early stages of the game.
Heavy Rain is so well-put-together and finely produced that it’s guaranteed to suck in even the most skeptical PS3 owners right off the bat. It’s an adventure game at heart — there’s no doubt about that — but don’t let that turn you off. While the adventure genre has been effectively dead on consoles for a very, very long time, Heavy Rain puts a new spin on things. This is no point-and-click, read-read-read bore-fest. Heavy Rain exemplifies what adventure gaming should be in 2010.
It is worth noting that the Heavy Rain metacritic user scores (6.6 based on 566 votes) are significantly lower than the critic ratings (88 reviews). Heavy Rain is definitely not for everyone. A rental may be in order for some; so for this jaded gamer is enjoying the experience.