Heavy Rain Review

Plotting Points by Tan(x)
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

Game: Heavy Rain
Platform: PS3
Played For: 8 hrs

In the last few years I’ve found that people are having a harder and harder time staying still for the whole two hour duration of your average movie. When you go to the theater you find your fellow cinemaphiles fidgeting with their cell phones, shifting restlessly and relentlessly or desperately cramming popcorn into their mouths as if a two second pause between bites would mean instant heart attack. With attention spans dwindling and emerging entertainment like video games allowing greater engagement than the passive couch potato model, it may be only a matter of time before traditional cinema has to adapt. Heavy Rain, by Quantic Dream, may represent that evolution precisely… more movie than game, but with just enough viewer participation as to keep that restless agitation at bay.

In Heavy Rain you guide a number of beautifully animated characters through a gritty murder police drama. Our protagonist Ethan Mars races against time to save his abducted son from the Origami Killer, all the while experiencing black outs that may indicate that he himself is the culprit. The story is not without its cliches… it draws heavy influence from movies like Se7en, Saw and Hostel… but it isn’t as over-the-top nasty as those titles might suggest. It is a game that is strictly for adults, not just because of content but also due to the fact that youngsters wouldn’t have the patience to play it anyway. It isn’t as passive as a movie, but we aren’t talking FPS adrenaline rush here either.

Heavy Rain is a Quick Time Event game, a device that has become almost a slur when spoken of by many reviewers. While watching an exciting action sequence the viewer is prompted along the way to quickly hit the right button or thumb the correct motion on the throttle (the game also sometimes requires the controller itself to be tilted this way or that, an awkward motion that would invariably send my cat running away in a panic.) Repeated misses mean failure for the game character, which can have story-altering consequences later on. There are many instances when protagonists can expire early, so happy endings do require a consistent success rate with these quick reflex button prompts. The value of quick time events in other games such as Resident Evil is debatable. But Heavy Rain is a game entirely based on them, and dedicated to the purpose of making them work well and organically.

The immersion of the game comes from the choice of buttons or movements the player is asked to perform… they are carefully designed to mimic the actions that the protagonist on the screen is performing. So opening a refrigerator door requires moving the throttle up and then rolling to the right, analogous to grabbing a handle and pulling. Grab an object from a tall shelf by pushing up. Use the buttons in the correct sequence to dance without stumbling. You get the idea. Having tested this idea previously in Heavy Rain’s predecessor Indigo Prophecy, Quantic Dream has both perfected the technique and fallen strangely in love with it.

What else could explain the need in this game to perform such a wide variety of incredibly mundane tasks? Be ready to help the characters shower, shave, scramble eggs, change diapers, get dressed… the list goes on. While it was amusing to see each of these ordinary tasks translated into motions on a controller, the prospect of having to go through them again in the future really cuts down on the possible replay value of the game. This is particularly true as Heavy Rain is another in a long line of modern games that refuses to let you keep more than one save file. If you want to replay certain scenes and allow for the story to remain consistent with your previous choices, your only available method is to start from scratch. This, to me, is in direct contradiction to the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure roots from which the game emerged in the first place, and stands as quite an impediment if you would like to experiment with different endings.

One device I really did like in the game was the special spectacles that FBI agent Norman Jayden uses to analyze crime scenes. Tied to a glove and carrying a computer, the glasses, dubbed Ari (Added Reality Interface) allow Jayden the use of virtual computer assistance, something like the bastard child of a PDA and Star Trek’s holodeck. The glasses and glove allow Jayden to interact with virtual objects displayed on their lenses, and they display local clues the computer’s sensors pick up and cross reference with the police database. So if Jayden stares at a fingerprint with his glasses on, he sees police records hover in the air above them. Even better, the glasses can provide Jayden with a virtual office, allowing him to envision his surroundings however he likes. If you could choose any kind of environment to work in, would it be underwater scenery, or perhaps the surface of Mars? The game is completely worth playing just to drool over this impressively credible piece of technology (if you read the game manual, it suggests that the Ari system is already in use by the FBI in RL… but it still sounds a little bit like wild speculation to me.)

The other big innovation in Heavy Rain is the modeling of faces. Ever since the “audition” trailer showed up on the internet, Heavy Rain has gone hand in hand with conversation about the Uncanny Valley, that strange realm of facial animation that is so close to real but not quite right that it gives an unsettling feeling as it is viewed. The faces in Heavy Rain have not yet crossed the Valley completely, but they do represent a fascinating step forward in creating virtual actors. Heavy Rain has quite a few professional actors and actresses who do a great job breathing life into their characters, but despite modern technology there are still moments when animated heroes move awkwardly or shuffle like zombies.

It should finally also be noted that Heavy Rain is not without its bugs. The game crashed on me at least twice, and that isn’t counting the full day I couldn’t play it as almost every PS3 in the world shut down for their version of a Y2K bug (an interesting event that brings up many questions regarding the playability of PS3 games in the future if the Playstation Network ever ceases to be supported…) Despite these flaws, I really enjoyed Heavy Rain as an interactive experience, and hope to encourage more of this kind of movie-as-game. Especially if I can play them on an ARI system someday down the road…