Heavy Rain

Recently released as a PS3 exclusive, Heavy Rain is an innovative thriller with the style of a film noir. You play as Ethan Mars, his life has been torn apart by the loss of his wife and son. Now, the only son he has left has gone missing and a notorious criminal who is known as the “Origami Killer” is suspected of kidnapping him. This killer is known for drowning his victims over time in rain water, and sending the fathers of the children through torturous tasks to save them. Ethan is given a box of clues by the killer that may help him find his son if he is quick, and smart.

I feel like Heavy Rain is something we have not really seen in the gaming world. The entire game is an interactive story where you use nothing but QTE the whole time. They’ve gone the lengths to make the QTE make sense however, if you’re opening a door then you may be using a quarter circle motion, or if you have to break down a door, you slam your controller in the air as if you WERE beating down a door. This adds to the immersion. Sometimes I felt like they loved their immersion a little TOO much, the first section of the game was a blur, since I didn’t care to sit down and make Ethan take a shower, brush his teeth, do his work, spin his kids around, watch TV, and the list goes on. Once you get into the action it’s smooth sailing though. Later on in the game, the QTE gets very involved, you’ll feel like you’re playing twister with your fingers and the controller as it forces you to hold down various buttons. I read on a forum that someone playing on hard even resorted to using their tongue to hold a button down… hopefully they washed it after.

A second unique feature, is that there are literally hundreds of choices you can make in the story, and they all effect your outcome. I know, I know, we’ve seen this in Bioshock, but they really take it to the max in Heavy Rain. Even missing just a few QTE moves in a fight can change  everything. Not only that, but if your characters die, then they stay dead (assuming you don’t try the event again,which you can.) It reminded me of goosebumps “Choose your own adventure” ah… nostalgic. All of the characters had a very human feel to them, everybody had their flaw. Director David Cage’s expert on the story; “Heavy Rain is about normal people who have landed in extraordinary situations. I wanted a much more personal story. The first thing that came to my mind, as a father of two little boys, was that the main theme should simply be a father’s love for his son. This is not a game about saving the princess or the world. It’s purely about a father’s love. The main story will revolve around four different characters, and we’re putting the spotlight on their perceptions. The question ‘what is good and what is evil’ is the key here, that will be just a matter of viewpoint…I believe heavily in moral choices, I’m going to use them A LOT. They’re not about being good or bad, but about finding the right balance”

The game itself is top notch, the voices, the characters, the story, everything. It’s one of those games you wont want to put down. Some may say that it pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable with high textured nudity and controversial situations but I feel it brings a realistic edge to things, and puts you on the edge of your seat. It is a very, violent, graphic game. Dismemberment, electrocution, torture, nudity, adultery, they are all elements in the game. There are situations that will make you feel uncomfortable, and that is part of the suspense. It wants to make you cringe, to feel what the characters are going through, do things so shocking that you feel it has left an after effect on you. This is what a great story should do, it should make you feel something. There were only a few things that disappointed me, one is that if you have a high attention to detail, and a good memory, you will know who the killer is within the first 30min or so. If you don’t notice the clue however, it’s very likely you wont see it coming. The game does not give you a motive for the killer until you are near the end, so before you know what it is, you’ll probably spend a lot of the game trying to figure out who and why… and the game knows this, because it tries to get you to make choices based on your assumptions, and they too effect your outcome. The second is that when I played it, the game crashed sometimes, and the sound would cut out randomly. I’m not sure if they’ve patched it yet or not but it’s a known issue.

There may be many different outcomes to the story, but the game’s director David Cage urges players to only play it once; “I would like people to play it once…because that’s life. Life you can only play once…I would like people to have this experience that way.” He goes on to say, “I’m fine with [reloading to avoid a bad result], but the right way to enjoy Heavy Rain is really to make one thing because it’s going to be your story. It’s going to be unique to you. It’s really the story you decided to write…I think playing it several times is also a way to kill the magic of it.”

I also suggest checking out the casting video here. All actors in the game are modeled visually after their voice actors. So it’s like people actually played a part in a movie. The video shows the range of the actor being able to start out normal, then going into a very dark angle, which is what Heavy Rain’s story does.