At a glance...

Heavy Rain review

How far are you prepared to go to save somebody that you love? The plot of Heavy Rain revolves around the twisted and demented Origami Killer, a murderer who abducts young boys. Four days later they are found, dead, drowned in rain water with an origami figure in their hand and an orchid left upon their chest. The killer is becoming notorious, and has already claimed many lives, and now another boy has been kidnapped. Ethan Mars is his father and will do anything to get his son back. Ethan is one of the the main characters of the plot, along with: Scott Shelby, a retired cop now private investigator hired to look into these killings, Norman Jayden, an FBI profiler brought to find the perpetrator, and Madison Paige, an insomniac photographer who seems to get dragged into the whole debacle. These four characters are who the players both control and develop the story with.

The plot itself is one of the main defining characteristics of the game, which is more accurately described by the developers, Quantic Dream, as an interactive drama. The interactive drama genre is defined by the having to make decisions in the game which affect the remaining plot entirely. Some video games claim that they have different endings that are affected by some decisions that the player makes, but none have such an effect on the ending, or the player themselves, as much as Heavy Rain. There are over 20 endings in the game, all of which are quite different, due to the fact that some decisions can have one or many of the main characters injured, put in prison, or even killed. There are no game over scenes if any of these events occur, the game just continues until the plot unveils and captures the Origami Killer, and retrieve the captured young victim safely. During the game, there are certain plot points that demand your decision to go a certain direction in the plot, for better or for worse, and some of these events can be difficult decisions, but we'll refrain from spoiling the surprises.

The game and the interactive drama begins with Ethan Mars, in his home on a beautiful sunny morning. The visuals of the game are very striking and impressive; the character models have obviously had a lot of work on them, and the animations of said characters have had a long time of motion capture footage, around two thirds of a year's worth. The facial animation can dazzle any gaming enthusiast, and brings an even more realistic and believable look to the game. The very next-gen visuals and the interactive drama go better together than apple crumble and custard (or maybe ice cream for you custard-phobes), and thus push the standard that Heavy Rain sets even further forward. Texturing of high fidelity meshes are of high resolution, and rarely was a misplaced low resolution texture seen. The game's visuals were very polished, as if more than enough time had been spent on them. A very nice touch was in the loading screens between scenes, a distinct close up of the upcoming controlled characters face was shown, as if Quantic Dream was boasting their expertise in facial modelling and animation.

While taking the role of Ethan Mars in the epilogue to the story, the player is introduced to the very unique and innovative control scheme. Most of the time the character the player controls will simply walk around and interact with items, and occasionally get in some 'quicktime event'-controlled happenings, such as fights or chases. These sequences involve particular button presses or jabs of the analogue stick. Again, there are usually choices in every interaction, especially with people. Will you give your son a play-sword fight or have him ride on your shoulders? The amount of choice is in abundance throughout the game. When you approach an object or a person you can interact with, the options float around your character's head, and the stability of the floating options indicate the impact that they have on the character's psyche, such as helping your son with homework would have a smooth moving icon, but removing an appendage would have an erratic option thats almost blurry with its crazy movements, and sometimes can be a little hard to read. This sometimes adds to the fun though, and if you ever take too long to make a decision, especially when time is critical in the story, a decision may be made for you, so be quick on that button press! Other times when the character is performing a complex action you may need to actually press and hold a combination of buttons, which can be challenging physically, depending on the complicated action. This made it even more entertaining, having to use both my hands in a formation like a twister game, and when I ran out of fingers to use I ended up using my face on the controller. It was intense. The other kind of control is tapping the button as much as possible until the action is complete. The prompts for actions are very unique and are in the gameplay itself by appearing in a simple square on the item, thus not cluttering the screen with a fancy HUD.

The overall plot was extremely compelling, and I won't spoil it for you by revealing details. It took about 10 hours to complete, and I believe I missed a couple of scenes due to the actions I took. The game made a large impression on my emotions, making me think about many of my actions before I took them, one of which had me pause the game simply to take time to ponder the dramatic decision and consider the repercussions. The presentation of the brilliantly conceived interactive drama genre was impressive, except that Quantic Dream probably released the game a bit too early, leaving some odd glitches in the gameplay. Such random events can occur that can throw off the player, and even force them to restart the console as a remedy. Such random glitches often included the sound completely going silent for an undefined time, or the player facing odd directions. Once as Ethan was walking up some stairs, he then turned 180 degrees, but instead of walking down the stairs, he walked vertically upwards on some invisible stairs, through the ceiling into an oblivion somewhere between the ground and first floor. The replayability factor is also very small, with even the developers recommending a single play through so as not to ruin the whole experience. It is probably wise to not revisit the story for at least a few months after the first play through, but it must be played at least once.

Ratings

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