Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain
PS3
SCEE

The Good – Immersive story – Fantastic visuals, sound and acting – Story continually adapts to your actions
The Bad – Not much reason to play through a second time – controls can be a little fiddly

Video games are very rarely an emotional experience, Heavy Rain however has managed to achieve this and then some. With a film you can become attached to characters and plot lines, but in Heavy Rain you can choose what happens to those characters. Having some control over the narrative makes the game and story so much more compelling, you may get scared watching a horror movie, but when it’s you running away from the psychotic killer, it makes that adrenaline rush so much higher.



In this interactive drama you will take control of four main characters, Ethan Mars, (who’s looking for his lost son), FBI criminal profiler Norman Jayden, Private investigator Scott Shelby and Insomniac Madison Paige. The story is told from each characters point of view, at first they seem rather unconnected and throughout the game they have little interaction with each other, however the end makes each characters relevance abundantly clear. The way you take control of each character is extremely simple but very effective, R2 makes your character walk and the left stick controls the direction. Prompts will appear for you to move the right analogue stick in the direction indicated, they all suit the action required, so for example to turn a door knob you will rotate the analogue stick, or to put something down you will pull down on the analogue stick etc. This may sound very simple but it works extremely well, if your character is nervous the choices, (prompts), will shake, adding to your anxiety. There is no right or wrong way to play out the game and each scene, if one of the main characters dies, that’s it, they’re dead, no game over screen, no continues, they’re out of the story. Although this may seem like the story can go in many different directions, the main story remains much the same and it does feel like the way the developers want you to play the game is to keep all four characters alive until the end of the game.



The acting and story throughout is fantastic, the visuals are superb and the soundtrack is perfect. However there are a few problems, occasionally the movement can be a little finicky, camera angles are not always the best and some occasional movements can look a little jerky. The main problem is that Heavy Rain is a victim of its own success, the first time you play through you will be completely immersed into the story, so when you try to play through a second time you feel completely distant from the game and then the game is not that interesting at all.

Heavy Rain really will have you cringing at some of the scenes, I know it sounds daft, but you will genuinely find it difficult to do just hold a button down in certain scenes. Overall HR is a fantastic achievement and although you may only play it once, that one time through is a real roller coaster of emotions. How far would you go to save someone you love?

8.5/10