Heavy Rain - Review

I actually finished this PS3 exclusive last month and I've been putting off writing about it for no particular reason. Here goes...

Heavy Rain is definitely unique. Literally...there's nothing else quite like it. It is the result of someone trying to convert a murder mystery film into a video game. It tells the story of Ethan Mars, the unluckiest man on Earth. In the 2nd chapter of the game, while at the mall with his wife and 2 sons, 1 of his boys wanders off and into some traffic and gets run over by a car. As a result of this, the Origami Killer kidnaps his other son and sets up a series of tests for Ethan to see just how far a man will go to save someone he loves. The tests include driving the wrong way down the highway, crawling through tunnels of broken glass and walking through electrical cables, cutting off parts of your own body, killing another man, etc. You have a choice of whether to complete all the trials or not, which in turn has an impact on the outcome of the game. I'm guessing if you don't complete the trials you don't get to save your son. I went the super happy way, completed all the trials, caught the bad guy and everyone lived. I would really like to go back through and make different choices to see what else can happen, but it probably won't happen. You alternate playing time between Ethan, Madison (a reporter), Scott (a PI) and Norman (an FBI guy, I think).

The "gimmick" of the game is its abundant use of Quick Time Events. Pretty much everything you do, aside from walking, requires a QTE of sorts. Want to open the fridge? You'll probably have to make a semi-circle motion with the right stick. Put dishes on the table for your son's birthday party by gently pressing up on the right stick. Make the movement too quickly and you might drop a plate and break it. All very interactive.


Like

-The music is very moody and appropriate. I dug it.

- The whole game is just very intense. I already touched on this a little bit while mentioning the plot. When you lose your son in the mall and have to search for him, the music ratchets up a notch and you walk around a sea of people (I've never seen a mall that crowded) looking for him. All the trials are very creepy and kind of unnerving. When you're driving down the highway the wrong way, the game gives you a ton of more standard QTEs (that is, press a certain button or make a movement with the joystick really fast) in really rapid succession. When you have a fist fight with someone you'll have to nail your QTEs to either dodge or land punches. If you fail them, you'll get laid out and the bad guy may get away. There are many more examples, but I was just very "into" the game during these moments. I couldn't blink and didn't want to fail them.

-I watched some special features included on the disc about the casting of the characters, etc. The developers really did a phenomenal job of modeling the characters after their real life counterparts, especially the characters Ethan, Madison, and Scott. Check it out here.

-It's something completely different.

Dislike

-The movement controls are.....mutilated. You have to hold R2 to move and you kinda move around old-school Resident Evil style. I've thought about it and thought about it and I can think of absolutely NO reason why I should have to hold R2 to walk. Why can't I just move around with the left stick?

-Texture loading. It happens quite frequently. It really happens with a lot of games, but oddly enough, the only time I ever hear about it is when people critique Gears of War and Gears of War 2. "Texture loading and pop-in is very noticeable and distracting." Well, I agree, but why do I only hear about it in reference to the Gears games?

-The game has plot holes. They have been well-documented. I think it's GamesRadar that has compiled a pretty comprehensive list of them, but here are a few that I noticed.
-At one point, the police suspect Ethan of being the Origami Killer. They've already talked to him in his hotel. He knows they suspect him, but he continues to stay at the same hotel.
-Apparently, Norman can tell what kind of car someone is driving just by examining tire tracks. I didn't know that was possible.
-Norman goes to ask a dude some questions and discovers a decomposed body in an oil drum. Why would you ever keep a dead body in your garage, your place of business?

-And finally, some of the voice acting is questionable. Some of it is downright terrible. The voice actor for Norman SUCKS. The kid voice actors are atrocious and have French accents. Why couldn't they just get American voice actors? I get that they wanted to use the same voices as the actors portraying the characters, but they should have just gotten different voice actors for all of them, as they did with Madison (the lady she was modeled after was just TOO French). As a result, she's probably the most convincing character in the game because I wasn't distracted by an awful accent every time she uttered a word.


Wrap Up

Obviously, the game has problems, but I'm willing to give it a break since it's really the first of its kind. With better writing, refined controls (NO holding R2 to walk!!), and better voice acting, a game like this has potential to be really really outstanding. Even with its flaws, this game sucked me in to the extent that I actually reloaded a save after one of my characters died and redid that section so that they wouldn't. I didn't really expect to do that, but when it happened, I was kind of like, "NO! You're going to make it through." I think it's definitely a game to be experienced if you have a PS3. Give it a try.