Heavy Rain, after being revealed in 2006, has finally been released. Many criticize it for its lack of game play, while others stand behind its innovation and realism. Does this murder mystery have what it takes to satisfy the gaming public, or is this game only meant for one type of person? Read our Heavy Rain review below to find out.
Heavy Rain is not one of the industry standard video games. It’s an action game, but you never shoot, platform, or race; instead you control every action taken in the game using quick time events, that aren’t really quick time events. What these controls are, are on screen prompts asking you to use the right analogue stick, or six-axis controller to simulate the action on screen to perform it. For instance, if you’re character is pushing an object, the prompt would be to “button mash” the “x” button. If your character is sitting down in a seat, you would push the right analogue stick down, but the speed at which you do so represents the animation speed as well. So if you push the stick straight down quickly, your character will sit quickly, and if you push the stick down slowly, your character will sit dramatically slowly. You control every aspect of the game. Some prompts are timed, and the time you have to perform them are always different, you may have three seconds to hit up for a jump, or a millisecond to jump out of the way of a car.
Most of the controls actually play out like the action you’re taking and work quite nicely to that effect. The best thing about these sequences is that you can miss prompts. Let’s say you’re in a fight and pick up a bottle, the prompt to throw it would maybe be pushing the right stick right. If you miss the prompt your character might just get hit before throwing the bottle or they may miss. You will never miss a prompt and watch the game rewind until you hit it perfectly, like God of War or Resident Evil. There is no Game Over. You may lose a fight and wear the scars for a few chapters through the game, and your loss may come up in conversation later in the game. All the little details look like they were cared for by the developer.
The game also utilizes a split screen to show your surroundings.
There are a few parts where you will be punished for losing these events, and these are death scenes. In Heavy Rain if a character dies, the game will continue on without them, changing the story and the ending since you are without information for half the game. This is an extremely cool feature where you can play through this game so many times and never get the same exact story. Different combinations of characters die, little choices you make in the game all add up, failed quick time event scenes can haunt you until the end and prevent you from obtaining certain information.
The choice system is not like anything in games as Mass Effect. In Mass Effect, you know the outcome a choice will have, where every conversation has an evil, neutral, and good choice. In Heavy Rain you have at the maximum four choices at a time and they all provide different outcomes. You may offend someone and end the conversation abruptly or you may be able to smooth talk someone so much, where you learn new information. You will rarely be able to look at the choices of dialogue and sort them in your head as conversation flows and you say what’s on your mind, not what will get you enough karma points. The fact that these small decisions only affect the little things as well is a great way to drive people away from staying on “the dark side” for the entire play through.
The thought system.
There is also a system implemented in the game called the thought system where if you are stuck at any time, or just want to know what your character is thinking you can just hold down L2 to see a list of your characters thoughts. Their presentation, like the speech system can become distorted or blurry depending on your characters stress level. You can pick certain thoughts to cool them down, or if you screw up you could end up freaking them out a lot more than they already were. This system is extremely helpful, as it really is the only objective screen in the game.
After all the good, there are bad aspects of Heavy Rain’s gameplay, and that is the controls. Now you have to hold R2 in order to move your character, and use the left stick to direct them. According to the developers this is to untie the character from the camera and to allow you to move the characters head. I was just a little confused at the decision to prioritize moving a characters head over a comfortable control scheme. I’ll admit moving the head is cool for a bit, but why not tie it to the right stick since it’s not used? Although you get used to the controls, they still screw you over at some parts of the game.
Also, the investigation part of the game allows Jayden – the FBI agent – to collect evidence and analyze it to get hints at the killer’s identity. All you have to do is walk over every inch of the crime scene and keep hitting R1, then while analyzing the evidence, hit analyze over every piece of evidence, then geoanalyze it. If you do that, you will succeed. There is also one part where I missed a huge piece of evidence, but apparently a satellite in the sky was able to take a picture of it anyway. It really felt like a lot of parts held your hand and made it okay to fail. This kind of took away from the whole, the game is in your hands feeling. My last complaint, is the beginning of the game is very slow and I’m not sure why I have to find water and cook eggs half way through the game when these were objectives used in the beginning of the game to teach me how to play. I was very offended when I cooked a girl eggs and she didn’t even eat them.
The story of Heavy Rain is a very wide one that plays out like a very long Hollywood murder mystery movie. There are four aspects of the story told by four playable characters.
Ethan Mars
Ethan Mars is a regular family man when is world is torn apart after a terrible loss (this time is used as a tutorial level). Two years later a serial killer named the Origami Killer is plaguing society and his son is kidnapped by this killer. Ethan then goes through the story in a Saw-esque movie, where he has to complete tasks to save his son in a demented Jigsaw fashion.
Madison Paige
Madison Paige is a photographer who is basically thrown into the story when she runs into one of the leading characters a good way into the story and basically spends her time helping track down the Origami Killer.
Norman Jayden using the ARI to investigate Mad Jack's.
Norman Jayden is a FBI profiler sent to town to help local law enforcement profile and capture the Origami Killer. His portions of the game include a lot of investigating like mentioned above in the game play section. The investigation methods are laid out to where a child could figure them out and feels too easy. Also, when you think about it you spend a lot of his time doing the investigations where you only need two pieces of evidence collected at the end of the game to find the killer. It felt pretty weak.
Scott Shelby
Lastly Scott Shelby is a private investigator who was hired by the families of the Origami Killer’s victims to find the killer. He spends time interviewing these family members and following his own leads on the killer.
All four characters are essential to the story and do meet every now and then which is a very cool thing for the game to do. However, there are three parts of the story that fell flat. Despite having a great last scene, the epilogue is very short and weak only showing five second clips of the characters after the story ended. There is also one part of the story, tied to Ethan that just disappears halfway through the game and feels very weird to have left. Once you finish the game you’ll realize what I mean, it’s a huge part of the story in the beginning and it just vanishes. This is unexplainable and makes no sense at the end. Lastly, what many people call a plot hole, I just call weak. And you will also know what I’m talking about when you beat the game. They rely on a camera angle for a twist basically.
The graphics in Heavy Rain are amazingly realistic.
Heavy Rain looks and sounds amazing. There are no prerendered cut scenes, as the whole game looks and feels like one. As I was playing through the game I had a few people ask what I was watching. After I beat the game, eight of us watched a friend play through the game like we were watching a movie, and it sure felt like it. Heavy Rain is what it is, an interactive movie and it sure passes at it. There are a few times where characters feel out of place or voices sound plain off, but other than that, the game looks great and sounds great. The game is convincing and is extremely gripping.
Heavy Rain was a great experience and I am sure that I will play through it many more times. The graphics were amazing, the story was massive and unbelievable for a videogame, and the quick time events were fun to play and watch. But one thing it lacks are longer chase and fight scenes. Most of them last a minute or less and they are very rare. This was a huge downer for me as I felt the best part of the game, and even of Indigo Prophecy were the chases and fights and it was a shame that they were so short and scarce. Also, with these action sequences, they weren’t really difficult. One thing they should have done was make more prompts, during scenes it didn’t really get difficult or confusing. It would have been great to have scenes where you were just hitting so many buttons in a huge fight. Also, the game itself only really lasts about 6 – 9 hours to finish and it feels weird that I can say x to x hours since it’s basically a movie where you control the action, but my on my friend’s playthrough he kept everyone alive and took 8 hours to beat the game. I can’t imagine how short the game would be if characters were to die.
Heavy Rain will provide gamers and movie fans a great, deep, movie like experience.
Heavy Rain is a very interesting and fun game and has its flaws, but in the end is a gem that everyone should at least try. If you don’t get pulled in then don’t play it, but chances are you will and will have a lot of fun with this game. In the end, what you get is what you get, and that’s a fantastic story filled with choices and emotion. Sure it’s not the traditional game, but it’s a stepping stone into the evolution games may take in the future and it shows their huge potential. Also, with DLC announced to expand the Heavy Rain universe, I for one am excited to see this game evolve over the next year or so.
Score: 9/10
Heavy Rain was developed by Quantic Dream and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released on February 23, 2009.
