Heavy Rain - The Full Report

Billed as an interactive drama, Heavy Rain is just that - not so much a game that you 'play' in the traditional sense, but a movie you participate in. It's exceptionally well constructed with high production values from top to bottom. The game 'looks' like the movie it's striving to be with great art direction, lighting and camera work, solid character design, animation and voice acting, some effective use of split screen, and a fantastic script and musical score. However, as well executed as it is, you'll never be fooled into thinking you're watching and controlling anything other than video game characters. I think we're still probably a couple of generations from that point. It's a minor gripe in any event because it's all about the story, and they don't get much more compelling than this.

Without giving anything away, Heavy Rain is a psychological thriller that at various times echoes films like Se7en, Mystic River and The Cell. It follows four principal characters involved in the investigation and hunt for a serial killer who has been murdering young boys. It's a highly emotional story and the characters, whom you play in turn, are so well drawn that you form a deep attachment to each of them. You genuinely care about their plight and physical and mental well being because it's ultimately 'your' choices and actions that determine their fate and that of those around them. And Quantic Dreams didn't stop with the lead characters. The secondary and bit players are fully formed as well, and it all melds together into an extremely believable whole.

I've never played a game that was based, in whole or part, on Quick Time Events. In fact, I'd never even heard of QTE's until I started reading up on Heavy Rain. With the exception of character movement, HR is entirely QTE based. Rather than dictating the action yourself, the action is dictated to you in the form of screen prompts, and your response and choices impact what unfolds within the story itself. If that sounds boring, well, it certainly can be at times. But it can also be thoroughly engrossing and exhilarating. Much has been made about how Heavy Rain drags at the beginning. While I found that true to a point, it wasn't long before I was fully engaged in the story. The preliminary scenes are used primarily to familiarize the control system and set the stage for what's to come. This involves some pretty mundane tasks which allow you to become accustomed to how the controller is used to direct events as the game progresses (and HR makes use of the WHOLE controller).

The control scheme is generally well implemented and results in the most realistic action sequences I’ve ever experienced, but it’s not without faults. While the prologue serves as a good tutorial, not every control is fully explained – there’s a certain amount of trial and error involved. That’s all fine and dandy when a character is brushing his teeth or shaving, but becomes more problematic at critical junctures later in the game when quick and decisive action can make the difference between life and death. I’m all for puzzles in video games, but when figuring out the control is one of them, it just feels cheap.

Heavy Rain also makes fairly extensive use of wireless motion control and, for the most part, it works well too. However, there are moments where it doesn’t react as you expect (could have to do with my seating position), and that can be very frustrating if not fatal.Finally, character movement is quite unorthodox, using the left stick to look/turn and the R2 trigger to move. There’s also a second camera that allows you to alter perspective. The relative lack of perspective and extremely limited field of vision (you can’t look up or down, for example) are guaranteed to have you yearning for a more traditional control mechanic at times. I don’t want to make ‘too’ much of the control issues because they’re largely sporadic. But when they do occur, it totally removes you from the sense of immersion that the game works so hard to create.

It’s worth noting that the game offers three difficulty levels based on familiarity with the controller. Even nicer is that it can be adjusted in game. I played through on the middle of the three settings and, even then, there were sections I found very difficult to navigate. There are only so many buttons these old fingers can press and hold at once!

HR relies heavily on presentation to create the illusion that you’re actively participating in a movie. It’s essentially an extended series of cut scenes, some of which involve you and some don’t, which are edited together in film like fashion. Load times between scenes are generally brief, providing a fairly seamless quality to the presentation, but a few scenes are simply too short and tend to disrupt the flow. Major sections, when you shift from one character to the next, require slightly longer loads, but I was usually ready for a pause by those points anyway.

The script is built on the foundation of a really good story and once it grabs you, it doesn’t let go. It’s all pretty tightly knit but, depending on how things develop, it can loosen up towards the end leaving you with unexplained character motivations and unresolved events. I suppose that’s part of the price to pay for a branching narrative that accommodates multiple outcomes. Through most of the game, though, the branching works spectacularly well. You will repeatedly question how a scene may have played out had you chosen or acted differently, especially if it results in the death of another. The game actually allows you to do just that by selecting individual scenes from the Chapter List, like a DVD. You can even save the new result if you prefer, though I can’t imagine why you’d do that as opposed to playing through the entire game a second time. And while I’m thinking about it, DO NOT watch the end credits if you plan to play again. There may be spoilers lurking in there depending on how the story evolved for you.

If you’re considering a purchase or rental of Heavy Rain, be warned that it can be a very passive experience. This is clearly not a game for the hardcore, action-oriented gamer, though the action sequences alone are almost worth the price of admission. There’s a lot of watching involved here, either in the form of true cut scenes or menial tasks that you’re presented (hitting a few golf balls, making a plate of eggs) to bide time while events and dialogue unfold around you. The game is also quite short so, unless you foresee multiple plays, a rental is definitely the way to go. In my case, there’s no question I’ll be playing through at least once more, and I’d like to explore the branching intelligence by playing some individual scenes beyond that.

In the end, it’s hard to rate a game like Heavy Rain. Its brevity, extraneous content and periodic control issues conspire to hold it back from greatness. However when it all comes together, which it often does, it feels truly groundbreaking to me. I’ve never played anything quite like it, and I want more. I hope this is a genre that finds its niche so developers will continue to nurture and expand it. The imagination runs wild at the possibilities as video game technology continues to mature and allows the likes of Quantic Dreams to bring the full scope of their ideas to life.