Review: Heavy Rain – LiquescentShadow

Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

For a long time, Heavy Rain was one of those extremely elusive titles which kept people guessing right up until release. Ever since it was announced back in 2006, only snippets of information were released, including a few screenshots which did nothing other than give us an idea about how the game would end up looking.

It wasn’t until 2009 that I (and probably many other people) got a real sense of the game, when trailers and gameplay videos were made widely available. Labelled as one of the PS3′s big hitters of 2010, the release of the demo caused a massive stir; After playing that demo I was still in two minds, so was left guessing until I played the full release.

Whether you’d expect it to or not, Heavy Rain starts off extremely slowly; The entire prologue sequence could have done with being half an hour shorter, at least. Like many other game tutorials, it’s not popping up suggestions all over the place about what you should be doing, but leaves you to get to grips with the game yourself. Unfortunately, the first hour or so has little relevance to the rest of the story – I can understand what was trying to be achieved with the introduction, but certain areas could have been shortened to tighten up the game’s pacing.

The story starts out with the life of Ethan Mars, a family man and architect, and as you progress you’ll be introduced to the other main characters: Norman Jayden, an FBI investigator, Scott Shelby, a Private Investigator, and Madison Paige, a journalist. All of them fit into the story together and interact directly or indirectly, depending on certain decisions you make throughout your playthrough. Quite a bit of the story unfolds through pre-determined cutscenes, but there are many points where you’ll be nudging the story along yourself.

On the surface, Heavy Rain gives the impression of the player having more choice than they really do. Many sequences end the same regardless of the actions you take, although this is only noticeable if you play the game through multiple times or decide to replay a chapter. Whilst you’re given many options as to how certain scenes play out, most of the story is pre-determined and you have little affect on the over-arching plot. Most of the choices you make merely affect which ending you receive, and unless you deliberately make poor choices, your four characters will survive to the final chapter. The plot is good, and unless the game has been spoiled you’ll have a hard time figuring out who the killer is, although there are a few glaring holes in the story.

The characters, as well as plot, are key to a game like Heavy Rain. A large amount of effort has been put into bringing them to life, with quality facial animations and realistic movement. The voice acting isn’t as solid, though, with some characters voiced well and other performances coming across as flat and extremely bland. For an emotional experience there’s little feeling behind some of line delivery, which makes them hard to relate to at times. There’s minimal character background and explanation, making it hard for players to understand some of the situations you find yourself in. Some of the secondary characters could easily be replaced with a rag on a stick, too, for all they add to the story.

Most of the decision making you’ll be doing is done through conversations, extended QTE sequences or a combination of the two. Different speech options are mapped to different buttons, but don’t serve a real purpose beyond obtaining some more plot, as the story generally continues the same way no matter what options you pick. There is one major exception to this rule earlier on in the game which requires all of your reasoning skills and quick thinking. The speech options have a habit of floating around your avatar’s head, occasionally making it difficult to see all the options, given some of the game’s odd camera angles.

That aside, the QTEs are the real highlight of Heavy Rain, though, ranging from menial tasks to extremely thrilling sequences. From cooking or taking a shower with relaxed button presses to tense fights which require extreme reflexes and dexterity, there is a huge variety here showing what really can be achieved. Often much more than just simple, single buttons presses, you’ll have to move the sticks in certain directions by varying amounts, waggle them, hold and tap buttons, and, depending on which difficulty you’re playing on, use the controller’s motion sensing. You’ll frequently be doing many of these actions at once, too.

Whilst many of the button combinations are well mapped to real world actions, the control scheme is clumsy in places. You have to press R2 to walk, with steering of your character achieved with the use of the analog stick. Walking into objects is a regular occurrence and it does baffle me as to why it was necessary to use this particular control scheme. I do admire stepping into the unknown and attempting something new, but certain changes from the norm are nonsensical and should have been discarded in favour of more conventional setups. You’ll spend quite a lot of time walking, so it’s nice that the animation is different for each character, with an obvious effort put into motion capture.

As with most other areas, the game is extremely varied in the technical department. The graphics range from good to incredible but there are many bugs and glitches. Audio can drop for no reason, the lip syncing is awful at times and there is occasional graphical tearing. It’s ironic that David Cage, the game’s Director, asked that trophies be awarded at the end of chapters so that a player’s experience would not be marred by the distinct trophy ping – trust me, the trophy sound would be the least of your worries when playing. The soundtrack, however, is really where the game shines. Powerful and moving, it is beautifully composed and compliments the sequences perfectly. It can evoke emotion in seconds and sets your mood perfectly for whatever situation your avatars may find themselves in.

In the end, it would be wrong to call Heavy Rain a bad game; It’s definitely not, it just lacks a huge amount of polish which could have pushed the experience from good up to great. Some scenes are extremely well written and are genuinely moving, with choices in there to push your moral boundaries to their limit. It does reward multiple playthroughs, with several other highly emotional, completely unexpected endings, which add greatly to the mediocre feeling you could be left with after your first run. Graphically amazing at times with an awesome soundtrack to boot, Heavy Rain is a game that every PS3 owner should experience at least once, if not multiple times.