Game review: Heavy Rain

I may be late in reviewing this game, but I've been late in buying and playing it as well (having six months old twins will cut into your gaming time). So, as I was finally able to pick it up and start playing it, and having read a good number of previous reviews, I had very high expectations for what is touted as an interactive drama more than a game.

While I bought the game primarily for the missus, I was the first that really got my teeth into it - playing a good few hours all in all while she slept or was otherwise engaged. However, now it is proving impossible for me to pry the controller away from her whenever the time for potential gaming arrives (mostly when the twins have been put to bed for the night). None of us have as of yet finished the game, and as it gobbles up time in a pacmanian fashion (I just invented a word) I suspect we still have many game hours to go. So these are my impressions of the game for those of you who, like me, are late to get into it.

It's 18 for a reason; this is a game dealing with mature issues.

As this game is driven by its story and the way you shape it, I cannot reveal much about how the story progress, and thus this review will be about impressions and experiences with the game. While the game installs you are treated to a neat little time-sink to while away the tedium of watching the install bar crawl from left to right. Being a full blown geek I have always loved these kinds of things, and it brought my mind back to the original Command & Conquer on the PC which, as far as I know, was the first game to do something similar. C&C provided you with information screens during the install which let you familiarize yourself with the background story and various units while awaiting the install to complete. Heavy Rain provides instructions for folding an included origami piece yourself, and if done correctly and quickly enough, you should be finished earlier than, or at the time the installation has completed.

As the game opens you are stuck in the role of Ethan Mars during a sunny day at his and his family's home in the sprawling suburbs. This is the prologue, and while it seems daunting and perhaps a little tedious at first to go through the motions of waking up and doing the various morning toiletries with appropriate motions and gestures with the controller, it serves to familiarize yourself with the interface as well as set the mood for the game. Some reviewers have complained about the inclusion of "shake controller to towel off after shower" sequences, and "shake controller to brush teeth" operations, but I thought they were more than appropriate. I will even go so far and argue that these sequences are necessary.

A brief moment of family bliss

The game is marketed as an interactive psychological drama, and as such the characters in it are the most important aspects of the story (obviously in addition to the story itself). And in order for the characters to be believable, they need to have realistic lives, and that is what the toweling off and shaving sequences do. They add to the immersion in the game, and they provide an effective illusion that these are real people, with real lives and real life problems and obligations that need to be handled. There's only one thing, which I still maintain, that is a small let-down; the voice acting. This game has taken a lot of time and money to develop, and it would definitely have benefited from hiring in some decent talent to do the voice-overs. This is, however a small niggle, and it is one that you'll be able to overlook as the game sinks it's teeth into you and pulls you in.

Playing the game involves makings gestures with, or hitting declared buttons on, the controller according to available options shown on the screen. Some items are interactive, and these show an action icon whenever you are in position to perform it, requiring you to make a gesture with the right stick. Others relate to the way your character respond in conversations or to his own thoughts, and others still are so called quick time events, or "press X right now in order not to die" events.

Normally I would state loudly that I thoroughly hate QTEs, and that I hate them with a passion, but not this time. In Heavy Rain they are necessary, and they are the driving forces of the game as you will only have a limited amount of time to contemplate your response to certain events, and only a split second to contemplate your response to others. The game, however does not care if you find yourself regretting your reflex reaction to an event - it just plows on mercilessly, giving you no chance to go back to try again. Both I and the missus ended up shooting an innocent man in a reflex reaction, and we both would have undone that action if we could have, but the world of the game did not care about our bout of remorse and simply drove the story on, leaving us to our self-inflicted psychological trauma.

This is another of the game's numerous strengths as it breaks new ground in storytelling within games - it gives you no direct control over when to save your progress. Instead, it function by a well-known principle of checkpoints. You play through a certain segment of the story, whereupon you are treated to a loading screen and the game has saved as the new chapter opens. In some games the "reach next checkpoint to save" rule is nothing short of aggravating, and something that has quite possibly kept many from finishing certain games, but in Heavy Rain it is highly effective as a tool both for telling the story as well as keeping you invested and immersed.

You have to open yourself up to the game and world within it, and if you do you will form emotional bonds with the characters that will in many ways leave you feeling as if it is the game that is pulling you along, rather than you driving the game towards the end. There are not many games that are able to incite such deep emotional responses from its players (the scene when Aeris dies in Final Fantasy VII comes to mind), but this is one of them. You want the characters to prevail, you want them to come out on top and you want only good things for them - in spite of all their all too human flaws. But alas, the world does not work that way. The world can be a dark and scary place, filled with danger and people with nefarious intentions that hide in the shadows just waiting to sink a blade into your chest for a pocketful of change. The game will remind you of these things, but it will also show you that there are good things to be had in the world, that in spite of all the misery the sun still shines behind the clouds.

Playing the game you will alternate by playing it through four different people, who all have different stories to tell and different motivations, and whose lives will, or may, intersect. For instance, in my game I had two of the different characters meet briefly in a situation brought on by the main story, whereas in the missus' game this didn't happen because she had reacted differently to a certain earlier problem. These variations both gives the game replayability, as well as lending it a level of open-endedness in that you as a player can directly influence how the story progresses and how it will end. The main story behind always stays the same, but the way you navigate through it will be shaped by your actions and your inactions.

So what is the story in the game? Well, the characters all live in an un-named city that is being terrorized by a particularly clever serial killer dubbed "The Origami Killer". I can not say much more about this without revealing too much of the plot, so I think I will leave it at that. As the game deals with some very mature issues, there are instances of nudity and very coarse language, and as such, this is not a game for children. It requires a mature mind to fully grasp the story and the implications of that story on the simulated people within, thus this is one instance where the age rating on the box is appropriate.

People tend to be naked when taking showers.

However, the way the game deals with these issues and presents them, come about in a natural way. For example, people are usually naked when taking showers, and as such they are naked when showering in the game. Even the missus, who is usually the first to frown upon the use of gratuitous nudity in movies and games, found the inclusion here to be appropriate and natural. There is, for instance, one scene in which a female character takes a shower displaying a set of high-resolution boobs, but it doesn't feel weird or out of place as many people would probably want a shower in that very same situation. And then there is the language; people swear, it's as simple as that. Swearing is as much a part of everyday language as the words "dinner" and "mail", and again it is used in appropriate ways. It never feels contrived or tacked on for the sake of it.

In addition to all this, the game further adds to the characters by introducing such all too real issues as chronic insomnia, anxiety, substance abuse, domestic abuse and prostitution. By painting the player characters as normal, flawed human beings you will sympathize with them - you believe in the characters and their motivations because you either have first hand experience with the same issues, or because you understand them well enough to be able to identify with them. These are not the invincible action heroes we are used to seeing in games; these are people that could be your neighbours or your co-workers.

Anxiously I await my next chance to play further, and reluctantly I put down the controller as real life obligations claim my attention. It is a truly remarkable game that is, I will dare to say, the first of its kind, and one that belongs in the collection of anyone who owns a Playstation 3. And if you have not yet purchased a PS3, this is the excuse you have been waiting for. It is an emotional roller-coaster ride that will surprise, frustrate and sadden you.

How far would you go to save someone you love?