Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

In 2006, Quantic Dream unveiled the first tech demo for Heavy Rain to an unsuspecting closed-door E3 crowd.  The theme was apparent from the start – the most realistic and compelling character driven story they could muster, coupled with the power of incredible visuals, unique and immersive controls, and realistic physics.  Fast forward to today as we see the release of Heavy Rain, exclusively on the PlayStation 3.  Given how much Heavy Rain relies on experiences and your reactions to them, it will unfold differently for every player – here is mine.  These initial story moments may reveal a bit of the storyline, but they serve to set the tone of the game – spoilers will be minimized as much as possible, and will only be from the first hour of the game.

Heavy Rain begins with the main character, Ethan Mars, face down asleep in his trendy two story loft.  On-screen prompts tell you that pressing up on the right thumbstick will cause Ethan to rise from his bed.  Holding down the R2 button causes Ethan to walk, with the left thumbstick causing him to change his direction.  Every aspect of his life is mapped to a motion - picking up and admiring his wedding picture, bending down to pick up a note from his wife, and cleaning up the house to prepare for his son Jason's birthday party. 

Getting into what's going through Ethan’s head is as easy as holding down L2.  This causes a halo of thoughts to swirl above the character.  Your first thoughts are fairly normal - grabbing a shower before you get to work.  Once I was clean, I grabbed a towel and perform an up and down shake to dry my hair, and a side to side shake to dry my back.  Slowly dragging my electric razor up and down my face makes you at least slightly more presentable, as does a quick side to side over my chompers so my breath doesn't wake the dead.  Looking more human after my shower and shave, I made my way to the nearby wardrobe to get dressed for the day.  Using the left thumbstick to look around I noticed that I could walk out onto the second story balcony.  Gazing over my carefully manicured lawn I let time drift a bit.  Daydreaming won’t get my work done, so it was time to head downstairs to my office.

Sitting in my in-home studio, I finally knuckled down to take care of some architectural work before my wife came home.  Using the gesture controls I drew out my plans, erased and re-drew some sections, and generally brought an entire building to life.  I finished my work just as my wife Grace pulled into the driveway.  Hopping up, I welcomed her home and helped her place the groceries on the counter.  Setting the table for our son's birthday dinner, I helped tidy up the room before stepping outside to play with my boys, Shaun and Jason. Unfortunately, this happy birthday came with a sad footnote as our pet bird Merlin dies shortly before the party starts. I (Ethan), being a good father, tried to console his son - this touching moment is the first of many I experienced in Heavy Rain.

Taking the kids to the mall for a bit of fun, Jason and I are left to roam the crowded mall while mom checks out shoes for young Shaun. Wandering down to a nearby clown to get a balloon, Jason wanders off with his balloon while I paid the tab. Unfortunately, tragedy isn't quite done with this family as Jason is lost in the surging crowd.  Frantic, I live out every parent's worst nightmare as I search for my son, calling into the crowd.  The worst possible sight a parent can see comes to pass as Jason makes his way into the street and is killed by an oncoming car.  Everything changes for the family, tearing it apart and beginning our story.

Several years later, a gaunt and broken Ethan picks up his young son Shaun for his visitation time.  Rain pounds down on his late model sedan as Ethan makes his way to his dingy apartment for visitation time with his son.  Wordlessly, Shaun settles in front of the TV, avoiding any real contact.  Watching some TV to pass the time, Ethan gets a small snack for his son, promising that homework can wait until 6:00pm.  This family is broken, but we don't know the half of it...

Heavy Rain is best characterized with one of the first achievements you receive - an interactive drama. Bolstered by a fantastic and well executed soundtrack, Heavy Rain does it's best to completely immerse the player utilizing incredible facial motion capture, solid voice work, and very realistic animations, the story is presented in a very moving fashion.  Dealing with topics such as death, grief, and loss, the family drama feels very real - something that isn't usually conveyed well in games.  The overarching theme is a tough one – finding out just how far you would go to save a loved one.

The game isn't told just from the perspective of Ethan - you'll play four characters through the course of the game.  Beyond the personal family strife of Ethan's family, you'll also play as Private Detective Scott Shelly.  Shelly is working hard to find the Origami Killer by interviewing the families of the 7 victims to date.  Shelly will search the dark underbelly of the city for information, but his well-honed hunches will be the key to unraveling this mystery.  The slightly less grimy portions of the city are handled by another playable character, Agent Norman Jaden of the FBI. Utilizing a pair of glasses and a glove that, when linked, allow Jaden to create video memo recordings of his crime scenes, as well as send out a pulse that highlights hidden evidence as large as a murder weapon or as small as DNA or a latent scent. His technology will make up for his rookie status as the mystery unfolds.  I won't spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that the ARI interface is the stuff of sci-fi and CSI dreams.

Further into the story you'll be introduced to a photo journalist named Madison Paige.  Awake again in her apartment in the pre-dawn hours, she suffers from insomnia.  Her story is no less dramatic than Ethan’s, but far more graphic.  I can't say much more than that without ruining one of the most tense scenes I've played in any game to date, and I'm not saying that lightly.  Each scenario that unfolds as Ethan tries to piece his life back together is a mashup of puzzles, quicktime events, and motion control manipulation done right.

The interaction of these four characters and the way their stories interact and intersect make up Heavy Rain.  Each one will be touched by the Origami Killer, and each one will be forever changed.   While the game starts off somewhat slow in pace, once it locks you in you won’t be able to put it down.

Replayability is something that's tossed around quite a bit.  If you want to know why Heavy Rain took as long as it did to be released, you simply have to play through it once.  In any given scenario there are multiple outcomes and branches that can drastically alter the story.  Heavy Rain takes roughly 9 hours to complete a single run through, but there is reason enough to play this game time and time again just to see what other outcomes are possible.  When you are facing down a suspect with a gun, do you shoot him immediately, or try to talk him down, wait him out?  What happens when that same suspect does something unexpected?  Each play through can be different.  When the scenarios become hectic, your thoughts become shaky and hard to see, and thus hard to read and select quickly.  You don't have unlimited time though, if you wait long enough Ethan will blurt out whatever is on the top of his head, which is not necessarily the best option. 

The game isn’t simply about character interaction though – there is actually a bit of combat, usually in the hands of our P.I. or FBI agent.  Much like the conversation system, the combat is entirely flexible.  In one scenario I tried to stop a robbery, but accidentally dropped the bottle I was going to use as a makeshift weapon when I flubbed the thumbstick gesture.  The scenario went from a quick struggle for the weapon to a full out hostage situation as I tried to talk the gunman down enough to disarm him. 

I’ve spoken at length about how great Heavy Rain is, but there are some parts that are somewhat soggy.  Sometimes animation transitions will cause your character to get stuck in the environment.  The only option at that point was to roll back to one of the previous, albeit frequent, autosaves.  There are also occasional framerate issues that occur when the environments get more complex.  This is especially true playing with the various ARI interface, but the more cinematic pace of the game means that it never really affects gameplay.  The glaring issue is unfortunately the usual suspect – the controls.

Since the game utilizes the thumbstick heavily for motion control scenarios, the camera is locked to pre-defined angles.  It works great for cinematic effect, but occasionally makes the walking controls difficult to use.  You'll end up walking awkwardly into objects or up stairs only so you can turn around and walk back down them.  This is somewhat mitigated by the change camera angle button, but it does break the incredible immersion that the game works so hard to build.

Has a game ever made you feel bad because you failed at a task?  How about the feeling of despair as your child looks up at you, the broken father figure, as you fail to make them feel good about themselves?  If you can't master simple button presses to teach your son how to properly throw a boomerang, you'll see that reflected in the disappointment of his eyes.  Screw up badly enough and you just might lose the boomerang entirely - how much of a failure are you then?  Few games reach this level of immersion, and no game I've seen reaches this level of replayability.  Just like life, the game can be hectic and unpredictable – the exact formula needed to draw you in and hook you.  It’s just a shame that the ride doesn’t last long.

For those of you who are more 'quicktime event resistant', you'll be happy to know that there are several difficulty levels for the game, giving more time to hit the button or gesture, or simply cutting down the number of them.  The game will still be greatly dependent on the motion mechanic, but it will be less frantic during the action sequences.

So here we are at the end of the review and it’s still hard to define Heavy Rain.  It’s film noir, it’s drama, but most accurately it is unique.  I’ve played literally thousands of games on every platform under the sun, but Heavy Rain really connected with me.  The motion controls are everything previous Quantic Dream title Fahrenheit attempted to do, but done right.  When Sony cranks out the PR talking points about “only possible on the PlayStation”, most of the time us jaded press members just roll our eyes, but with Heavy Rain it just might be true – I’ve never seen anything like this on the Xbox 360.  Hell, I’ve never seen anything like this, anywhere.  While it may be short, if you are a PS3 owner you need to pick up Heavy Rain.

Gaming Trend Score

91

1. Graphics: 97
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 90
5. Value/Replay: 85
6. OVERALL:91