Game Review: Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain has attracted a huge amount of press attention since it’s release, and deservedly so. Billed as an “Interactive Drama” rather than a game, its lofty ambitions were to present a new way to develop and present a narrative in a videogame. Developer Quantic Dream has had this as their aim since their inception in 1997, with games Omikron and Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit under their belts. Heavy Rain is not so much a revolution, but a refinement of the system used in Indigo Prophecy.
The game has four playable protagonists, all investigating the case of the Origami Killer, all in their own ways, and all for their own reasons. What we have in reality is four thriller stereotypes. We have the retired cop, now a PI, the plucky young journalist, the tortured dad who will do anything to save his son, and the FBI agent putting the local cops’ nose out of joint. However, given that the game is attempting to do something quite new in terms of narrative presentation, it might be wise to stick to standard, accepted characters as signifiers of genre, to give the player something to hold onto in the midst of the control scheme.
Ah yes, the controls. The control system is at the heart of the whole game, and at the heart of all the claims that have been made by Quantic Dream. The buttons on the pad are constantly changing and flowing from one purpose to another. As you navigate your character through the scenes, subtle hints appear on objects prompting you to make a button press, or a swing of the controller in order to make an in-game action. For the most part, this works well, although the awkwardness of actually walking (R2 to walk forward, left stick for direction), can often make your character engage in bizarre ninety degree turns into walls, which does not help in the suspension of disbelief.
According to the promotional materials, the game is all about choices, and the consequences of the choices you make. In practice however, you are not really presented with any real, difficult choices. For instance, one character, Ethan, is given a choice to chop his pinky finger off to receive information about his son’s whereabouts. Why would the player choose to keep the pinky? Where is the disadvantage to the player, other than a bandage appearing on Ethan’s hand for the rest of the game. The points in the game where the story can really change often come down to single missed button press, rather than a conscious choice, which can be very frustrating.
All in all, Heavy Rain was always going to have problems, given the scope of it’s ambition. It succeeds in providing a gameplay experience unlike anything else out there (save perhaps their earlier games), and has made many other developers sit up and take notice – that there are other ways you can present a narrative within a game. It will be interesting to see whether anyone else can take up the challenge laid down by Quantic Dream and fuse narrative and interactivity even further than Heavy Rain.
8/10
Iz b agreein padnah. It iz pritty gudd butt ulimaytely flodd
Yeah, what he said.
Kind of torn with it. I was really sucked in when playing it and finished it fairly quickly but unlike most games, i did so, to find out what was going on. Still it has opened up a new genre of gaming, so what they come up with next will be interesting.
Been a while since i played it, but are there not some major plot holes in it towards the end? I forget.
Be careful with how you answer that Stephen, I’ve only just started it!
Sorry Mr Lowe, you can keep that as long as you wish by the way.