Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain has to be my favorite game of all time, awesome story telling, the atmosphere of the game is to die for. The storyline is absolutely immersive. Towards the mid-end of the game I felt like I was constantly on the edge of my chair. 1000/10.

Before it's release in March 2010 there was already a massive amount of buzz to the release of Heavy Rain, impressing at video games conferences, including E3 when it's film rights in 2006. This was a game that promised a truly interactive experience.

In an unnamed Eastern American city, the Origami Killer is stalking the streets. His modus operandi

is to kidnap young boys in the autumn and place them in a well until their drown from rain water: so they usually have about 3 to 6 days to live. In 2011 he continues and the games focuses on 4 characters. Ethan Mars (Pascal Langdale) is an architect whom oldest son died and lives a depressed live. He is distant to his younger son Shaun. But when Shaun is kidnapped by the Origami Killer Ethan has to go through a series of Saw like trials set up by the Killer for clues to his son's whereabouts. Norman Jayden (Leon Ockenden) is an FBI profiler sent to help the police with their investigation. He has to find clues and suspects as he battles against his police partners and his own drug addiction. Madison Paige (Judi Beecher) is a journalist who suffers from insomnia. She befriends Ethan and conducts her own investigation to help him, using her contacts and journalistic instincts. Finally there is Scott Selby (Sam Douglas), a private detective who has been asked by the victims' families to investigate the case. He asks the parents of the victims questions and suspects the son of a powerful millionaire. He is also befriended by the mother of one of the victims, Lauren Winter (Aurélie Bancilhon), who forces herself on Scott as a partner. They all race against time to save Shaun Mars and find the killer.

The big selling point of Heavy Rain is that the player makes their own way throughout the game, with every decision he/she makes will have an influence on the outcome. If a character dies in the game their stay dead, there are no extra lives. This is a game where you have to conduct actions for the investigation, sometimes, you it won't let you move forward until you do a certain task, but also miss things that could have consequences afterwards. The other part of the gameplay are real time action scenes where you would need to do the right command in the middle of say a fight or a chase scene. If it goes wrong then you character may die. The gameplay was very similar to Shenmue, one of the best games that was made for the Dreamcast; but there is more threat in Heavy Rain and some of the interesting aspects are hearing the characters' thoughts and taking a conservation in a different direction. The game also has multiple endings, depending what happens to the characters, on whether they live, are arrested or pick up enough clues. It a good reason to play the game many times over.

The other excellent element is the story, which could have worked as a film. It is dark, violence, but mostly has a good combo of down-to-earth realism to more over-the-top elements you would expert in a computer game, e.g. the electric maze. The tone is much like a film noir, with dark complex characters with interesting backstories, particularly Ethan's. Many cut-scenes in games annoy some people, but in this game they are important and it adds to the cinematic nature of the game. There is a great voice acting in the game. Langdale is the best as the emotional depressed but driven man who feels the guilt of loosing both his sons. Hopefully his live-action acting is just as good.

But there isn't complete freedom that is promised. There are still scenes that you are forced to go through and there is not much change in the outcome of some events. If the game was able to combine Shenmue's fights, Heavy Rain's multiple ending and storyline and the Sandbox environment of the Grand Theft Auto and other Rockstar games then you would have the perfect game: besides the Football Manager and Total War series.

Heavy Rain isn't your ordinary game, it's an intense, inter-active experience that guides you into four character's worlds. You have Ethan Cole, father of two, an architect who's living his American dream. You have Agent Jayden, an FBI investigator sent to investigate the latest killing of the Origami Killer. You have Madison Page, a journalist who disguises herself as a photographer to whomever she meets, all she wants is a little inside story on a victim's father about the Origami killer, and finally you have Scott Shelby, my favourite character. A private detective for hire who's out to get leads on the Origami killer and gets closer to the truth. I won't spoil it for you, because it had me by surprise, BIG TIME.

The story shifts around chapters and events with each of the four characters to balance it out. We each get a Point Of View of how the Origami killer has or is affecting their lives. Each chapter has a very depressing tone to it, it rains nearly every single time, and the skies are cloudy, always. The game takes place in the fall season, so it's no wonder why everything is depressing, but according to the investigation, that's when the Origami killer strikes. The Origami killer takes children between ages 8 and 10 every fall, and puts them under a grated pipe with a lock. He kills them by letting the rainwater fall on them till they suffocate. That's all I will tell you for now, the rest is up to you to find out.

Writer and Game Director of Heavy Rain, David Cage writes a phenomenal story that you'd expect to see it win Oscars and Golden Globes. He manages to make you a part of the story, to draw you in. His inter-active drama is about hitting the buttons at the right time, you miss one or two, it's game over for your character, but that doesn't mean your game ends, your story will pick up on to the next 3 available characters and so on. The game is rumoured to have up to 20 different endings, which means; depending on what you do in each chapter and event to your characters or the way you interact with the other non-playable characters in the game; it WILL effect your ending.

This game screams re-playability. Sometimes you wish you hadn't made a choice in one event and you want to go back, well, you can always restart from that chapter and it will erase all your progress that you are currently on, or play the game naturally to see one of the many endings this game presents you with. This game will revolutionize the gaming industry forever and it should. It should inspire other game developers to make you have a more thorough choice and consequence system. Some RPG's do that, but are they nearly as detailed as Heavy Rain? I think not. This game will win a few awards and will be nominated for game of the year 2010. It will win in the male and female voice acting department, because all the actors behind the mo-cap suit are under-rated actors. Especially Agent Jayden, I love his east coast accent, it makes him sound legit, he even looks the part too even though his mo-cap actor is fully European.

So, if you haven't purchased this game, then you're missing out on the game of the year and the game of the decade on a top 10 list. This remarkable game gets my 10/10 for originality, no movie can do this, because it would have to have many different versions of it. Harold and Kumar 2 has an inter-active feature similar to Heavy Rain if you rent the blu-ray, but nowhere near the depth of detail of Heavy Rain. But it does use the same concept, except without pressing timed buttons, just selecting what they will do next. It gets 10/10 for voice acting; some of the best voice acting I've seen so far in a video game, it's so believable as if they were real people. Like I said, Agent Jayden is an under-rated actor as well as the man behind Scott Shelby. Hopefully this game has shun a spotlight for them to act in Hollywood because they truly are gifted individuals. 10/10 for the concept. It plays like no other game has played before. You're taken in to the story and characters, the choices you make will affect the next set of events and ending. The button timers are also a plus to the events and actions your character is doing at the moment, whether it's life or DEATH.

Finally, the game gets a 10/10 for a masterpiece of a story. Even though you can change fates and endings, the background plot that connects everything is phenomenal! The game lets you discover who the Origami killer is on his own, and even if you can't figure it out, its revelation is nuts, it hits you real hard because you wouldn't believe that, that kinda person is the Origami killer. Like I said, I won't spoil, you MUST find this out on your own. It took me by surprise big time. The story makes you like the Origami killer before the character is revealed to be that killer, then when you find out. BAM! Big surprise, your face will literally change, your eyes will widen in awe and you'll say "holy sh*t, I can't believe I never saw this". But the important question this game/story asks us is: How far are you willing to go to protect the one you love? This game will makes you answer that, but also, think about it in real life. If something happened to the one you loved dearest, how far would you go to protect them?

Pros:

• Great story & characters
• Challenging choices
• Pretty good graphics
• Great plot twists
• Great music

Cons:

• Slow start to story
• Some story plot-holes
• Few bugs and glitches

Verdict: Another Quantic Dream game that conducts a great story with sympathetic protagonist that keeps you glued to the game. Thou with a slow start may push people away, the game delivers soon after.

8.5/10

I use the word 'thriller' as normally one doesn't associate that word with a video game, rather a movie or TV show. But the lines between interactive and passive entertainment have been blurring for some considerable time now, and Heavy Rain is the latest evolution of this.

From the same director and software house who brought us the 'infamous' Fahrenheit, notorious for its 'Simon Says' style of interaction, Heavy Rain shares this same basic game mechanic of following on screen prompts to engage particular actions. If you're near a chair, pressing the instruction cue, such as the right stick up, will see the character interacting with the chair, possibly by sitting, maybe by leaning on it.

And this simple yet extremely effective way is the model for the whole game. There is no 'forward back left and right with jump punch' type of control, instead movement is facilitated by R2 acting as a pseudo 'accelerator' and the left stick guiding the player - it's clunky, and at times obstructive, but it just about does the job.

As for the actual plot, because let's face it, that's the point of the game, to be a story, Heavy Rain follows the pursuit, by 4 main characters, of a notorious serial killer called the Origami Killer who is kidnapping and drowning young children. Suffice to say our heroes become embroiled in his latest kidnap and it becomes a race against time and rain (that will become clear later).

The ultimate question we have to ask ourselves, as to whether we like this game or not, is what we expect of it.

Is it the evolution and revolution of gaming that it promised to be? Probably not - it is let down by some mechanical failures, plot holes wide enough to fit the Titanic through, and a fair number of event/dialogue contextual gaps which make little sense at the time.

But inasmuch as these irritate, Quantic Dreams have to be applauded for trying. And trying really hard. Yes, the story and plot would have benefited from being proof read by professionals, but anyone looking that deep for flaws is missing the point - the game tries to do something quite different, quite radical, and involving of the player in ways not seen before by other games.

Heavy Rain does not hit the mark in everything it does, but it comes close overall, and is a worthy attempt at doing something dramatic and different in a gaming market which is in danger of becoming sterile.