9.5
Heavy Rain Review (PS3)
The goal of every story is to form an emotive connection amongst the in-game protagonists and the observer. When this bond does not exist between the two, you are impervious to the scenarios portrayed throughout the plot. This distinction is the difference between a game being good, and memorable. Throughout gaming history, this link is fleeting at best, but every now and then, such game comes along and a much deeper bond is formed. This bond is one in which the observer is less of a passive participant and more of an emotionally engaged accomplice.
Heavy Rain is one of those few games that can claim to have achieved this covenant feat. As Heavy Rain progresses and unveils itself, it is not uncommon to feel the strain on your heart-strings as Ethan Mars demonstrates to the Oragami Killer just how far he is willing to go to save the one he loves.
Ethans character transitions from euphoric family-man to depressed manic is done superbly.
How far are you willing to go to save the one you love? This is the central question presented in Heavy Rain and one that the protagonist, Ethan Mars, is obliged to answer in order to save his son. After witnessing his youngest son die in a tragic accident, you witness Ethan unwillingly leave his original euphoric life, to spiralling into a life of depression and anxiety attacks, as he feels his once impeccable life slipping out of reach. After losing his son, separating from his wife and moving into a dingy apartment, he has truly hit rock-bottom. All that is left to do is patch the relationship that he once had with his remaining son, Shaun – who at the age of 11 – feels shut off from the outside world after losing his brother. Just as things show a glint of resurrection, Shaun goes missing and is presumed to be the latest victim of the mysterious Origami Killer.
With its methodical build-up, it’s not a game that feels obliged to dazzle from its commencement. Your first hour or so is a deliberately-paced procession of control tutorials, domesticity and mild dramatic jolts that slowly, obscurely draw you into the astonishingly bleak atmosphere that the game offers. It might make for a slow start but submerges you into the universe and provides the foundation for the character development, which as reasoned above builds Heavy Rain’s extraordinary moments and emotional pay-offs all the more powerful.
The experience of Heavy Rain is essentially the same as an eight-hour movie – or more technically an eight-hour cutscene that you frequently take part in. Heavy Rain’s plot unfolds from the perspective of four loosely connected protagonists, who individually have different motives for unveiling the Origami Killer. Other than Ethan Mars, you also take control over overweight, alcoholic private investigator hired by the victims families, Scott Shelby; FBI criminal profiler Norman Jayden; and insomniac Madison Paige, who gets caught in the middle of the chaos. As these separate tales intersect, the identity of the Oragami Killer, and the salvation of Shaun draws ever closer.
On-screen quick-time prompts have you press buttons in order to interact with the corresponding action.
Undoubtedly, Heavy Rain shines thanks to its strikingly realistic presentation, compelling, edge-of-your-seat narrative and rounded, likeable cast of characters, but to pull off such intimacy Quantic Dreams’ augmented their game mechanics originally seen in Indigo Prophecy – which play an equally crucial part in your investment in the game.
If you’re not familiar with Quantic Dreams’ previous Indigo Prophecy, you’ll need an explanation of their innovative mechanics – as they have taken previous innovations and infused them into Heavy Rain with subtle refinements. As you control each of the four characters, on-screen quick-time prompts have you press buttons in order to interact with the corresponding action. Which includes, move the right analog stick in specific directions, shaking the controller, and hitting on-screen button sequences. These also span to quick-time events during cut-scenes, with similar liability. Each input is proportionally difficult to the task being performed, similar to real-life when a character is scared or stressed, the floating prompts tremble accordingly, making the task that more difficult.
First Day on the job an already has to decide in a stressed state whether to press X to calm him down or R1 to just kill him.
Unlike other games that make extensive use of quick-time events, Heavy Rain does not track your progress in terms of success and failure. There is no right or wrong way to play – thus, no matter what your outcome is, the game will keep chugging forward and adapt to the consequences of your actions. Though the overall narrative framework is unyielding, your performance throughout the game can have a variety of effects, ranging from subtle changes in how a scene plays out to much bigger adjustments, or even entire events being missed. No matter what happens in your play-through, the adaptive plot of Heavy Rain becomes a personal well of your decisions. If you were to try calming the crazed gun-man rather than psycho-analysing him first, it may result in a clue being missed, or ultimately the unnecessary death of a main character.
If a character were to get killed off, how does that directly effect the story? That is the beauty of Heavy Rain, depending on your choices the immediate story will be altered and change depending on the choices you make. Though, if a protagonist dies this does mean you could miss out on vital clues regarding the Origami Killer – which may result in you not suspecting the actual killer at all, consequentially making the ending more of a plot-twist.
This unconventional control scheme does a fantastic job of grounding you to the characters and their emotional states. Your in-game actions approximate how people would react instinctively, and the often short amount of time you have to react to new situations mirrors real reaction times. It is not all detective work, and clue-hunting, though; there is plenty of action to be found in the form of brutal and violent brawls, heart-pounding chases, and deadly gunfights, or even psyching-out in a battle of wits – but even such mundane tasks as brushing your teeth or adding antiseptic cream to your third degree burns (after walking through a maze of electricity, of course) are surprisingly engaging, and help to strengthen your bond with the characters.
Madison only dances/dresses like a slut in the interest of saving Shaun, believe it or not - 'cause without spoiling too much, the well-being of Shaun is very much on the line.
You will often find yourself participating in one of the game’s frantic scenarios – be it a fistfight, a police chase, or escaping from a burning building – the character is dependent on your quick-time success to survive. But unlike in similar titles, you fail the sequence if you miss a certain button, only to see a “Game Over” screen until you eventually succeed. Heavy Rain’s action scenes unfold seamlessly according to not only what you do but also what you don’t do. Realistically, every character isn’t going to escape from a car sinking into a river, or evade a gun-shot. When you do miss a button press, your character exhibits a movement onscreen to suggest he is losing the fight, so the course of the action sequence feels like it’s being written as you play through it. The game conveys these failures fluidly and convincingly, and I was on the edge of my seat as I scrambled to try to make it sure my character didn’t peril at my expense.
I questioned myself pretty earn on in Heavy Rain, Why am I doing this stuff? What’s the point of making a character brush his teeth, urinate, or pick when Shaun goes to bed? It was around the time I piloted Ethan over to the fridge that I hit on the answer. Presented with the choice between drinking a beer or a carton of orange juice, I made my decision rather swiftly, I performed the analog stick action to pick up the beer. Then I was confronted with another action to make him actually drink the beer. I stared at it for a couple of seconds, before putting the beer back down, and drank the OJ instead. Then I thought, maybe Ethan stopped to consider his distant, emotionally fragile young son was sitting on the coach, in clear view of his fathers actions, and thought better of drinking around him. Then I wondered: Would the scene have played out differently if I had chosen the beer? Did I just contribute to the development of this character in some tiny way through my own actions? I’d like to think I did.
Another evident theme throughout the narrative is “morality”, which is one of the selling points of the game: “Make choices. Face consequences”. The game unloads a great number of tough either/or decisions on you that most people would loathe to even ponder, let alone make. Is the life of your child worth more than the life of a stranger? Is it worth more than your own life? Would you like to just walk away from the trail faced? Forgive a lover’s betrayal? The game flings these sorts of scenarios at you frequently, and each choice has dramatic effects on how the story plays out, even if the effects aren’t immediately obvious at the time. The game forces you to make them in a matter of seconds, and then live with whatever the consequences may be. That immediacy adds to the game’s gritty realism as I felt I didn’t have time to think each option through efficiently, making the answer chosen more of a impulse reaction rather than which would get the best ending. I even got sour feeling of satisfaction/regret when it became evident what the consequences of my decision’s were.
I even got sour feeling of satisfaction/regret when it became evident what the consequences of my decision's were.
Though Heavy Rain’s involving story is its greatest strength, it is also can be seen as a weakness in terms of the game’s replayability. Clocking in at an emotionally intense, yet satisfying 8-10 hours, Heavy Rain is full of branching plot points and permutations, but for some it can be hard to actually go back and play through the game differently once you’ve completed it. Your story – the one that you got so caught up and made based on your decisions – has already been told; leaving you strong relationship with the characters you bonded so closely. Replaying it differently and making characters act differently makes the story seem unauthentic. For the most part the chapter-select screen allows you to play through some of the “what if” scenarios to see how they play out, but scenes are rarely as impactful the second time, you already know what what will happen – taking with it that nervous sensation you felt when a character was in danger. After all, unlike other games and movies – you know the characters you’ve grown so close to can very well die based on you being sub-par.
Just like movies, though. People like to come back to them months, or even weeks later to once again me emerged in the world they create. The same can gladly be said for Heavy Rain.
Replayability aside, there are some plot niches. Albeit very minor, but things that I kept asking myself throughout. Things such as, depending on your style of play you are told Ethan is having blackouts due to anxiety. Which conveniently how his son is so easily kidnapped – but after having 2-3 blackouts in the first few hours of gameplay – they are never to be seen or mentioned again, despite Ethan’s levels of anxiety being extremely high. The second, is Scott Shelby, despite being an overweight, retired man who is overly dependent on his inhaler to control his asthma – he still manages to win a handsome amount of brawls and chases – all without his inhaler, which too isn’t seen after the first few hours of play.
The only other fragment worth criticism is the control scheme may at first seem distorted to some players. As you move by the tilt of your characters head, which is controlled by the left analog stick. But to physically move, you have to hold R2 down and navigate through the direction the character is looking. Once familiar with this scheme, you will find it works for the most part – leaving you open to access the interact buttons freely. Though, at times the walking mechanic does seem clunky as you try and navigate through a busy environment or occasionally getting trapped around corners, though the latter was only present when the camera toggles back and forth through viewpoints. For a game like Heavy Rain, though – I couldn’t imagine the control scheme any other way – once refined, of course.
Hi I'm Madison Paige, these are my breasts, and I just hit a guy with this lamp because he got too touchy.
Heavy Rain was subject to a lot of criticism for it’s mature imagery involving Madison Paige. While being dubbed as a game only 18 year old should be playing. The game features a lot of frontal nudity, which some class as unnecessary. From a critical standpoint, the nudity in the game is far from unnecessary – it demonstrates the vulnerability and helplessness Madison portrays as a character. With the nudity, comes the underline of bonding and the understanding of the character. If they nudity projected was smutty in anyway, my views would be different – but if you are looking for pornographic images, Heavy Rain does not offer it.
All these shortcomings that the game faces, don’t extract anything from the magnificent narrative the game has to offer. Heavy Rain is generally a beautiful and fantastic-looking game. The visual design of the various environments is outstanding, from graphically luscious home of Ethan, which causes a synaesthetic feeling of a welcoming home, to the painstaking amount of detail that went into constructing each locale is incredible. Character models are hyper-realistic – particularly in how they move and interact – and in many ways, they emote just as well as any real person would. Finally, an excellent orchestral stirs up your emotions in just the right way, at just the right time; and the great French-esque voice acting completes the human element to round out the experience.
Though it suffers from its share of technical problems, Heavy Rain is nonetheless a bold and visionary step forward in the medium of interactive storytelling. It can proudly place itself atop the pedestal as one of the best games to bridge an emotional relationship between protagonist and observer. Heavy Rain is far from the quick-time-event-powered movie that it may appear to be at first glance. Every action you perform or decision you make – from the simple and mundane to the important impulse clicks – brings you closer to the realistic characters you manipulate, and fight with all your might to do justice. Their stories become your story, and their hardships become obstacles that you feel compelled to help them overcome. No matter which decisions you make or how your story plays out, Heavy Rain is a passionately personal experience that should not be missed by anyone.
ENHANCE!