If you’re a fan of Seven or other serial killer thrillers, you will love Heavy Rain. In Heavy Rain, eight children’s deaths have been attributed to the Origami Killer so far, each found with an origami figure in their hands. You play from the perspective of four different characters surrounding the investigation of the killings — Ethan Mars, an architect; Madison Paige, a journalist; Norman Jayden, an FBI agent; and Scott Shelby, a private investigator. The story verges on thriller and horror cliches at times and the final reveal of the serial killer and their motivation did not have the desired impact. Nonetheless, each scene and the ride to the end will have you on the edge of your seat. This is the result of both the tense atmosphere created by the music and environments, and the control scheme that pulls you into the scenes.
Norman Jayden under pressure to decide.
During conversations, general reaction descriptions float around your character along with the corresponding buttons you press to pick each option. Much like the conversation scheme in the Mass Effect series, you choose these general responses, instead of the complete dialogue your character will say. In many scenes, especially later in the game, you must make conversation choices very quickly or you will lose the opportunity to do so and events will move forward without your input. For the most part, the conversation system works magnificently and allows you to quickly progress through conversations fluidly to lend a cinematic feel to conversations. However, in certain scenes, the conversation options tremble and move quickly to reflect the tension in the scene. Occasionally, this made it difficult to see the options available.
Ethan Mars preparing to throw a deadly boomerang. Or playing in the park. It's all about perception.
When you come across something in the environment with which you can interact or an action or fight sequence unfolds, prompts appear on the screen to show how you must move the right control stick or what button you must push. Certain prompts indicate that you must move the control stick very slowly, push a button repeatedly, or push and hold a series of several buttons simultaneously. Buttons and motions are not assigned to specific actions, so you must pay very close attention. This control scheme is perfectly designed to make the action sequences and fights intense and engaging. As the game progresses, some of the scenes require faster reflexes and more complicated sequences of button presses. Not the type of game you want to play lying down or when you are exhausted.
The glaring weakness of the control scheme is how you actually move your character around. You make Heavy Rain’s protagonists walk by holding down the right trigger and pushing the left control stick in the direction you want to move, in a sort of modified old-school Resident Evil tank style. It is clear that the control scheme was chosen because the game automatically changes the camera position for cinematic effect while you walk through the environments. For the most part, it works. However, sometimes the camera angle will suddenly change right as you are pushing the control stick to change directions, resulting in your character walking in a different direction than you intended. When you push the control stick to the correct direction, often in the opposite direction, your character will have a jerky animation as he or she turns. It’s disconcerting when your character starts moving in the wrong direction because of the camera change, and the clunky animation when you change directions completely pulls you out of the moment. It’s not a deal-breaker by any means, and the well-executed remainder of the control scheme, the great storytelling, and the innovative game design well outweigh this flaw.
The innovative aspect of Heavy Rain’s game design is that when you fail an action sequence or fail to convince a character to help you because of what you say, the story moves on. This includes when you do not achieve the specific objective that was the focus of a scene. You might not obtain a piece of information that may or may not be pivotal later in the game when you must make choices based on everything you know up to that point. In certain scenes, the character you’re playing can be harmed or even killed. Yet the story moves on. This gives rise to numerous endings and promotes several playthroughs. You can either play the entire game again, or you can jump into particular scenes from your last completed playthrough. I have gone back and played scenes where I knew there was some information I missed because I had failed a sequence or made certain conversation choices. There was some significant information that I had missed that completely changed how I had viewed certain events the first time through. I already have obtained about six different endings. And there’s still more I want to explore. That is the reason to play Heavy Rain. You feel the weight of your conversation choices and action sequence successes and failures. And you actually want to go back and fail where you previously succeeded just to see what happens.
Norman Jayden evaluating evidence. Thrilling.
At first the one mar in gameplay appeared to be the sequences involving Norman Jayden. These often equate to scanning the environment with high-tech glasses that allow you to see blood spatters, air particles, thumbprints, etc. in the environment, or searching through the data you have collected. However, given that these sequences give you a reprieve from the often more intense sequences, they actually were a welcome change that kept the sometimes intense pace of the story in check.
The voice acting of the main four characters is very strong and believable, which is important given the focus on the story. However, the same cannot be said of many of the side characters you will encounter. Some have strange, effected accents that sound more like cartoon character voices and, as a result, pull you out of the moment. Thankfully, you are only exposed to the worst ones for brief periods of time, and the main supporting characters are strong enough that this fault does not prove detrimental to the overall experience.
Scott Shelby in trouble.
Like the voice acting, the graphics are not consistent. The character and facial models are very strong, especially for the four main characters. However, while certain elements of the environments have a great amount of detail, other items or textures in the same environment will be very rough and lacking in detail. The environmental elemental that held up strongly is the rain — both the rain itself and how it interplays with the rest of the environment. The rain splashes and runs down car windows, the rain slowly dampens characters’ clothes, and the rain causes very detailed ringlets when it hits standing water. The developer, Quantum Dream, did well by focusing on this graphical aspect of the game because it is one of the essential elements that creates the eerie atmosphere keeping you at the edge of your seat with anticipation.
I have to admit. I was very skeptical of what I thought was going to amount to a sequence of quick time events. However, the story and execution of a varied control scheme that pulls you into the individual scenes raises Heavy Rain to an experience that melds the video game world and movies and has you coming back over and over again to see what you might have missed the first six times around.
Rating: 