Heavy Rain With a Chance of Quicktime Events
Heavy Rain is a game I have been looking forward to for some time now. It is exactly the type of game a linear RPG nut like me wants to play, in that it is not much of a game at all. The game is basically one long quick-time event (with interspersed sessions of walking and talking), and while reading that on paper makes me want to beat the creators of God of War to death with my pants, Heavy Rain actually manages to turn one of the worst game conventions in existence into an immeasurably enjoyable gameplay experience. More movie than game, Heavy Rain offers something for the story nuts out there without futzing it all up with complicated gameplay systems, and it is unapologetic in doing so. It’s a thinking man’s game that would appeal to the sort of person who could spend hours of their life reading a mystery novel and trying to figure out the clues. It may not appeal to most of the gaming community, but that doesn’t make it any less of a masterpiece.
The origami killer is on the loose, and that is a bad thing. This psychopath uses rainy days as a cover to murder children, and he still hasn’t been caught. All of his victims are found with a flower on their chest, and a folded paper figurine in their hand, hence, how he got his name. You, as the player, jump into the role of the many characters that are entangled in this mystery. There is an FBI agent, a private investigator, a mysterious woman, and a father who is just out to make sure his son isn’t the next victim. The game unfolds much like a mystery novel; clues pop up everywhere with most of them ending up as red herrings. The game decides which character you play and when, and puts you in a setting specifically designed for that portion of the story. There is no free roaming whatsoever and it is a very closed game world.
However, roaming isn’t really the point. In fact, simply controlling your characters movement, is probably the worst part about the game. You have to hold down a walk button to put your character into walking mode, and then you can move him around with the analog stick. It’s annoying, but ignorable, because believe it or not you simply won’t be doing it all that often. Sure there are points in the game where you wander around, look for clues, and talk to important people, but a majority of the game is spent within the game’s scripted action sequences and dialogue, and this is where the meat of the game lies.
When talking to other characters, you are presented with a number of dialogue options, each of which are mapped to one of the buttons on the controller. Conversations play out realistically, and, unlike most RPGs out on the market, you rarely get to go back and try a second dialogue option again. Conversations move forward, just like they do in real life, with the choices you make effecting how the conversations pan out in the end. Outside of scripted events, you can use the same conversation button prompts to hear what your character is thinking. This not only helps to flesh out the story, but also acts as a hint system for people who may get stuck.
Action sequences, as I said before, are basically one long quicktime event, but the game takes it much further than “press X to not die”. The designers of the game saw fit to make your button commands somehow mimic the action your character is performing, and in the absence of true motion controls, this is about as engrossing as you can get. When your character needs to do many things at once, you are tasked with holding multiple buttons at once, sometimes up to five at a time. When your character needs to react quickly, say to dodge a punch, the game asks you to tap the analog stick in the direction of the dodge within a certain time period. Frantic scuffles involve mashing on buttons or shaking the SixAxis to wrestle free from your opponent’s grasp, and so forth. The whole game basically follows this model till the end, and I have to say it is one of the first games I have played that have made the quicktime event feel natural.
There is no real “game over” in Heavy Rain. You can fail to enter a quicktime command or make a bad decision in or out of a conversation, but the game keeps going forward nonetheless. Hell, you can even end up killing main characters by accident, and the game goes on anyway, adjusting the story as needed until it reaches its conclusion. Just in case you weren’t happy with your performance, you can go back and play chapters over with or without saving. This allows you to alter the direction the story is going in, or perhaps just go back to see what could have happened if you acted differently. Don’t get me wrong, the game isn’t “fail a quicktime event and die.” Failing a quicktime event simply means your character failed in whatever he was currently trying to do. It has an effect on the scene you are in, but it most certainly doesn’t stop it dead cold.
The only glaring weaknesses that I can see are the vague command prompts. Quicktime commands only show up as the action that you the player need to take. As a result, you don’t always know what your commands will cause your characters to do. When you are only given one command, you can generally figure out the consequences by yourself, but when you are given choices, you sometimes are left scratching your head as to which buttons to press, only because you aren’t sure what character action they correspond to.
The same holds true for the dialogue sequences. Your options are boiled down to one word choices such as “threaten” or “convince” however you are never quite sure how your character will threaten or convince the person they are talking to. Therefore, it is very hard to plan conversations in advance and equally as hard to gauge other character’s reactions to your choices. The majority of the choice-making in this game will be done by the seat of your pants, which is still fun, but far less strategic.
In terms of graphics, this game takes a flaming motorcycle jump across the uncanny valley. Character models, especially faces, border on photorealism at some points, and if a random person were to walk in on you playing the game without any idea of what was going on, they could very easily mistake Heavy Rain for a film with live actors. Upon closer inspection though, the game suffers from some stiff character movements, which unfortunately land the flaming motorcycle in the valley itself. Character’s arms, legs, and hands especially simply don’t seem to move like a normal human being’s would. This is especially evident when you are given direct control of walking your character around, as the walking animations are filled with unnatural arm swings and head swivels.
The soundtrack is phenomenal, with epic orchestral tunes framing every awesome thrill packed moment, but the voice acting is another story. The plot takes place in America, very heavily in the New York, New Jersey area. Unfortunately, very few of the voice actors are good at pulling off the indigenous accent (and I might just be saying this because I am a Jersey kid by birth) so quite often you get this strange almost ESL vibe from some of the characters.
Overall though, Heavy Rain was a magnificent game. The guys who were creating it really knew how to use camera work and lighting to their greatest effect. Normally I would say that about a movie I just saw, but I can honestly say that Heavy Rain wins over many modern day theatrical blockbusters hands down. Quite simply put, I would rather play Heavy Rain again, than see any sort of thriller in theaters right now. It is well worth the 60 bucks, if you are in to that sort of thing, and if you are, I cannot stress enough how imperative it is that you go out and get Heavy Rain today.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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