Heavy Rain Reveiw

I’m just trying to be a good dad. I know I really shouldn’t let him stay up late and his mother would kill me if she found out I let him have pizza for dinner, but hell, I want the little bugger to be happy. So when I tuck him up in bed and kiss him good night, and he turns to me and says “dad, why do you always look so sad?” my heart shatters. No really, it genuinely hurts me hearing him say this. Not the me as in I am the character Ethan Mars, but the me sat behind the controller, pushing buttons to select topics for conversation and wiggling the analogue stick to open cupboards. Heavy Rain does this to you. It skilfully forces you to connect with your on screen son and later on, with other characters as well. This allows there to be an added dimension to the empathy you feel for the character you are controlling. Video games force us to adopt a role, make us become a character. A good game makes you care about the characters and what ultimately happens to them. What would Modern Warfare be without Captain Price? Yes, it would still be a superb game, but would it still have the same emotional depth? Heavy Rain beautifully crafts a relationship between you and your on screen character, whether that be the central character Ethan, or any of the other three playable characters.

There are four playable characters, each of them on the trail of the Origami Killer. You will alternate between their stories frequently as you play through the games series of chapters. This adds to the whole, ‘feels like you’re playing a movie’ cliché, as the action switches from character to character, a technique used in film making to pace a complicated plot. It works well, you’ll never find yourself board of playing as a particular character and just as a startling revelation is made, the action will switch to another character, leaving you desperate to return to that story thread.

So who are these characters? My personal favourite was Ethan Mars. It is his son who has become the Origami Killers latest victim and he has to go through a series of tests to reveal to location of the slowly drowning Shaun. Think of it as Saw, with a little less gore. Ethan’s story is by far the most compelling and offers the player the best use of morality ever implemented in a game. , more on that later. He’s also ruggedly handsome and does the whole sinisterly troubled thing terribly well.
Then there’s Norman Jayden, an FBI agent investigating the Origami Killer. He has these super high tech sunglasses which allow him to analyse crime scenes, identifying finger prints and blood stains as he goes. This adds another game play style into the mix and keeps the game from seeming too repetitive. Jaden has an interesting (and often volatile) relationship with his partner Blake which allows for some heated moments where you’ll find yourself getting genuinely angry.
Scott Shelby is a private eye hired to investigate the murders. He develops a truly heart warming relationship with one of the victims mothers as she and him pair up to find the killer. Finally, there’s Madison Page. I connected the least with Madison. Perhaps this was something to do with the secrecy surrounding her intentions. It is not revealed until towards the end of the game why she is so intent on helping Ethan. Or maybe I’m just jealous that she get’s it on with Ethan. You know it could be both... which leads me nicely on to the adult themes presented in Heavy Rain.

This is an adult game worthy of its fifteen age rating. It’s certainly not the goriest of games and there is little swearing, but it does deal with adult topics and yes, there is that scene where Madison is forced at gun point to remove her clothing. Some may argue the nudity and interactive love scene is adult content for the sake of adult content, but the beauty of Heavy Rain comes in the way these scenes are executed. Never does the adult content seem gratuitous, it merely adds to the plot and depth of the characters, just like in a film say.

I have just watched my friend play it through and I can honestly say he had a different experience to me. The major difference between the way I played the game and the way he did was the way we approached the challenges. I had decided I would do anything to save Shaun. I would complete every task set to me however morally grey. My friend on the other have was for more open to the moral decisions the player is forced to make. This seriously altered the story and our endings were totally different. While Heavy Rain may be a short game (I managed it in eight or so hours) the replay value is immense. The endings available are so dramatically different from one another it really is worth playing the game through several times to see if not all, some of the endings. Alternatively watch a couple of mates play it through and laugh at their squeals of delight and panic.

Now on to the technical stuff, gameplay wise, Heavy Rain is unique. It plays like a series of set pieces governed by quicktime events, interspersed by sections where the player is in total control of the character. The quicktime set pieces evoke a true sense of panic, as the character can die at any moment meaning huge chunks of the game can be missed at the slip of a thumb. This adds to the pressure of the situation and creates some genuinely frantic moments. The parts where the player is in total control of the character can sometimes be frustrating. Use the left stick to get your character to look in a certain direction and then press and hold R2 to get them to move in that direction. These controls seem unnatural and can often lead to annoying situations where they just won’t bloody go where you want them to! Just look at the damn bookcase! No don’t walk away from it! For god sake! This is the only fault I could find with the game. Graphically it is stunning. The city in which it is set feels fantastically organic and is beautifully rendered in sinister greys and depressing browns. The musical score is set to good use, building tension effectively and the voice acting is the best I’ve ever heard in a game.

Invest yourself emotionally in Heavy Rain and you will be rewarded. Allow yourself to become involved and care for the characters. Open your mind to a totally new style of game play and accept it for what it is and you wont find a purer example of a stunningly written or superbly executed game on the PlayStation. Heavy Rain: a truly unique gaming experience.