Quantic Dream’s highly anticipated new game Heavy Rain promises to immerse players in an innovative and engaging new way. However new doesn’t necessarily mean good, so is Heavy Rain really worth diving into?
Well first of all Heavy Rain is an incredibly refreshing and unique game. Its story is told through four different characters whose lives are interwoven thanks to the Origami Killer a deranged psychopath who kidnaps and drowns kids. Heavy Rain’s story is brilliantly told through many different devices including outstanding writing that creates believable characters that you feel deeply connected to. Unfortunately while the game’s writing is very good the voice acting isn’t the best. The main characters manage to pack a lot of emotion into their performances but the game is set in Philadelphia yet some of the characters sound European, which can break the incredible immersion the game creates.
The games characters and environments are incredibly well detailed and help draw you into the world due to how believable and lived in it all looks. The level of detail really shows what the PS3 can do when used properly. This is easiest to see in all of the characters faces that look incredibly life like and capture every emotion perfectly. In fact the loading screens are close-ups on the main character’s faces so you can see how detailed it all is.
Heavy Rain also has a very unique game play style, consisting almost entirely of QTE (quick time events) which is all about hitting the buttons on the screen at the right time. QTE isn’t anything new; it’s been in a bunch of games ever since Resident Evil 4 did an amazing job with it back in 2005. Now this may sound annoying but when button presses aren’t being thrown at you randomly in a cutscene and you’re prepared for them it’s actually a lot of fun. The action gets incredibly intense, every event has many different way of playing out since every mistake you make branches the action off in a new direction rather than forcing you to repeat the action over. There are no do-overs rather than letting you try again if you fail to many QTEs depending on your situation your character will die permanently, bringing you from four characters to three, to two, to one, and if you fail again game over which means starting from the very beginning. Personally I love this addition and I think everyone playing the game should be aware of it because it adds a whole new level of tension when you screw up and hit the wrong button and don’t know weather or not your character is going to live. Another thing that Heavy Rain does remarkably well is all of the choices that it forces you to make. I love making decisions that influence what will happen next I think it helps immerse players and is a lot of fun like in games such as KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Fable. However in Heavy Rain you have to make the decisions quickly you can’t sit there and think of what outcome you would prefer, forcing you to give a more honest decision. Plus unlike those other games where you have to decide what to do in order to save the world this is much more relatable and you can really imagine what you would do in the situation, how far would you go to save someone you love?
Heavy Rain does have some miner gripes with it aside from the voice acting however. The search for the Origami Killer is to linear. By that I mean the game is all about trying to find out who the killer is but all the evidence you find and conclusions your characters come to are mandatory you can’t find some hidden clue that most people would have missed and you can’t decide to take the investigation in the way you see fit and try and interrogate suspects outside of the ones the game forces you to. This isn’t a huge deal because of how well the story plays out in the end and the fact that too much freedom can take away from the narrative, but it still would have been nice to be given just a little bit more freedom. Also it’s a very dark game with a lot of mature content, don’t play this with your family around.
Heavy Rain is a refreshing and innovate game full of terrific storytelling and intense gameplay. Heavy Rain is a message to all of the companies out there that think that motion control and 3D equal immersion; this is how you really immerse players. While Heavy Rain isn’t perfect if you’re a true gamer and have a PS3 you owe it to yourself to check this one out.
Score: 4/5
