Heavy Rain Review (PS3)

Let me start by getting one thing out of the way: Heavy Rain is more of an interactive movie then it is a video game, at least what we typically describe as a game.

Now with that out of the way, let me also state that I truly liked this game.  Imagine taking the arcade game Dragon's Lair and fusing it with one of those old "Choose Your Own Adventure Books";  throw in a pretty engrossing story and you've pretty much got the basics of Heavy Rain. 

For those not old enough to know about Dragon's Lair and its gameplay, it pretty much consists of quick flashes on screen that the player much react to in order to advance the story.  In Heavy Rain, there will be these Quick-Time Events (QTE's) in which you must move the right stick in a specific motion, or tap one of the face buttons or shoulder triggers in order to have your character respond accordingly.  Besides these QTEs, the rest of the gameplay has you moving your character around the environments, reacting to certain objects and making choices based on either the situation you're in, or what character you're responding to.  Now when I heard about the gameplay consisting solely on QTEs, I was a little skeptical.  I don't really enjoy having to react to an on-screen prompt during the flow of action so I didn't know whether or not Heavy Rain would be for me.  However, I feel that given the situations you're put in, this game excels at giving you a reason to get into these QTEs.  When you're in an apartment and getting attacked by knife wielding lunatics, the screen may flash triangle to have you dodge a slash, and if you mess up, you may end up getting stabbed.  That's okay James, I'll just reload my data and continue from my last save right?  That's where you'd be wrong my friend.  In this game, there are no continues.  You have no lives; no do-overs.  Every choice that you make, affects what happens to your characters.  You may well make a mistake and possibly kill off a main character.  The way the story unfolds is up to how you play it.

We've seen many games use these quick button presses during sequences (Resident Evil 4, Shenmue, God of War), but they've mainly been short distractions during scenes where we could not truly control the action on screen.  While these can be fun, if done right, the scene better be pretty compelling to have me wanna deal with these.  Heavy Rain's story is definitely compelling enough.  The easiest way to sum up the plot is that there's a murderer known as the Origami Killer and you control four individuals having intertwining stories revolving around finding him.  During these four characters stories, you're thrown into problems that must be resolved on the fly.  Do you decide to risk your life in order to gain new information about the killer? Or do you play it safe and wait for a new opportunity to show up, giving the killer precious time to escape?  Mix in a soundtrack that perfectly sets the mood for the situations and you're guaranteed to be wiping sweat off your controllers when you put them down.  I'm not exaggerating, this game is one of the few games to truly make me that tense.  Don't get me wrong though, there are some very genuinely sweet moments in this game.  For example, you may need to gently tuck your child in to bed, or rock a baby as she's slowly falling asleep in your arms.  These scenes help you to relate to the characters and shows you that a game can tug at your hearts strings in more ways then one.  Throw in an unpredictable ending (at least mine was based on my actions) and you're definitely given one of the best stories I've played through in years.

The graphics are run in 720p and are some of the best graphics I've seen on any console to date.  The character models are eerily realistic and pretty much mirror the people they're based on.  Have a look:

The Heavy Rain directors also chose to have some of these people voice their in-game characters.  While I enjoyed most of the sounds and characters, some of the voicework was a little sketchy.  Some characters sound truly realistic, while others sound very detached and scripted.  For example, the children often sound like robots, whereas Scott Shelby helps convey what his character is feeling at key moments in the game.  Oftentimes its not too bad, but sometimes when the characters interact its hard not to get thrown off at some of the bad voiceovers.  The same can be said with the graphics.  Sometimes the graphics are so fluid and beautifully rendered, that its hard not to feel like you're watching a movie and at other times the characters move so unrealistically that its almost humorous.  But of course, I'm nitpicking and I'm not the only one who notices these flaws.  They don't really take that much away from the game and during my first playthrough I didn't really even notice.  The games camera angles, the ridiculously detailed facial animations, and the (sometimes) great voicework do their job in making you feel like you're part of their grim world.

I played through this game in practically one sitting, over 10 hours in the span of a day.  I was so compelled to continue the game, that no matter how late it had gotten I was still wide awake, wanting to see what would happen next.  This is definitely the perfect game to play in front of others in that the story is entertaining and surprising.  My girlfriend was watching and actually sometimes yelled out at me to choose path A or move quicker.  While I didn't entirely enjoy having her help make a tense situation, even more tense, I did enjoy the fact that she felt involved.  Sometimes the scenes ended with both of us just staring, jaws dropped at what we witnessed.  Other times, we both were racking our heads trying to make a choice on how to handle what was thrown at us.  However you play the game, I doubt that you'll come out of it feeling as if you didn't get a great experience.  And that's the best way to sum up Heavy Rain: It's a gaming experience. 

SUMMARY

Pathetic:

Some voicework sucks

minor control issues

quick-time events not for everyone

Very Nice:

Great and compelling story

Beautiful Graphics

Worth multiple playthroughs to see different outcomes

Perfect for backseat gamers

FINAL GRADE: A

ONE OF THE BEST GAMING EXPERIENCES IN YEARS.  NOT FOR ALL GAMERS, BUT DEFINITELY WORTH A LOOK.  IT GAVE ME A REASON TO PLAY MY PS3 AGAIN RIGHT?  SO ITS GOTTA BE GOOD.