Heavy Rain Review
Played on PlayStation 4 (base)
Developed by Quantic Dream
Released 23rd February 2010
David Cage plays a significant role in the video game industry, more specifically in the narratively led, interactive dramas he directs. Because of his work, he has set the bar relatively high for other choice-based games and has even made some titles that stand out as highlights of each console generation. For the PlayStation 4 it was Detroit: Become Human, however, his other, impressive title that highlights the PlayStation 3 era is Heavy Rain. This game has become a now, long-forgotten staple in the interactive story genre, supporting a 2000-page script, 170 shooting days and 30,000 unique animations all for short scenes that constantly piqued the player's interests. Now, let's delve into my personal views on this multi-GOTY nominee that Microsoft missed out on.
Story
The story of Heavy Rain consists of a fantastic concept that is only made better by its great execution. The narrative focuses on four different perspectives and how they interact with the mysteries of the Origami Killer, a serial killer who abducts young boys and drowns them in rainwater. Out of the four perspectives, all of them are playable and intertwine with each other, sometimes changing each other's outcomes. These four are made up of: Ethan Mars, a father whose son became the most recent victim, FBI profiler Norman Jayden and private investigator Scott Shelby (not a Peaky Blinder, unfortunately), both trying to solve the case and finally Madison Paige, a journalist seeking news coverage on the killer. The whole 8-hour experience is engaging and captivating, filled with a couple of cool twists and turns along the way, and many moments that are done brilliantly despite lacking in necessity. While it is an enjoyable experience, there are a couple of unexplained plot holes and events that never get touched upon again. This disrupts the narrative, damaging the quality of the game.
Gameplay
The gameplay is a good compliment to the story yet a poorly aged mess. Like every other interactive drama, there are three different ways you'll interact with the world and its occupants: QTEs (Quick Time Events), selection and exploration.
The QTEs are nearly all incredible. The ones that left an impact on me were well executed and intense all the way through and visually complemented the actions occurring. This is because the QTE prompts would shake and tremble in accordance with the characters' stress and fear and are as difficult as the actual task being done. For example, pouring a hot mug of coffee is a nice and easy button press, but crawling through broken glass or climbing over electric fields requires intense focus as you'd be forced to play a game of Twister with your fingers across your controller. However, there is one type of QTE that I hate. The 'move slowly' joystick QTE is the worst addition as it leaves you more frustrated than tense in any given situation.
The selection aspect of this game is the iconic moments of picking dialogue or story-changing choices. And yes, the choices actually matter. Having played so many games where the 'X or B' choices do nothing despite their emphasis, I'm so glad the choices actually do something. It can even lead to some catastrophic moments of any of the four characters dying, and preventing any further contributions to the story. Now, this is more of a nitpick but, the choices at times did feel incredibly cheap as it's relatively easy to get the best ending for at least two of the four characters. This flaw is a little more damaging when you realise that there are so many different endings that can occur, yet the best ending is always the one that appears the most, regardless of whether you have much insight into the game or not.
Finally, is the exploration. This aspect is the most poorly aged part of the game. The movement is so uncomfortable and incredibly stiff and consists of some of the most sluggish movements I've seen in these interactive dramas. Additionally, the mechanic of the 'Thought Dispenser' is quite trivial seeing as I rarely used it and it didn't add much to the experience.
While there are three different ways that you can play an interactive drama, Heavy Rain takes it a step further and lets you do it with four different characters, all with unique approaches to mechanics. Ethan's gameplay is filled with disturbing trials and brutal QTE challenges, while Norman is a more thought-provoking puzzle-piecing form of selection and exploration. However, while Scott is an intriguing mixture of Ethan and Norman, Madison is lacklustre. Her character brings nothing extraordinary to the table. I feel like the developers even knew of this given that she has only 10 playable chapters out of the 52 potential ones, and that's only if you manage to keep her alive to the very end.
Characters
The characters are quite sub-par. This game happens to have the most uninspired and unmotivated voice acting I've ever seen. Nearly every character sounds like they don't want to be there, especially the voice of Ethan Mars, the protagonist. I'm not saying Pascal Langdale's acting capabilities are bad, it's just that his performance in this game made me die a little on the inside. This flaw is emphasised even more when the dialogue sounds stiff. The words that come out of some of these characters' mouths feel forced and fake, giving them an unrealistic sound. The only good portrayals that were decent enough to be memorable were the characters of Madison and Scott. However, even then, all of these portrayals ended up ruining a part of my immersion making me feel like I'm watching the events unfold instead of experiencing them.
Atmosphere
The game, atmospherically, hits more than it misses. Starting with the best aspect of the game: the music. How the hell did Quantic Dream pull off such a fantastic soundtrack? Whether the moment is sombre or intense, the delicate performances of the instruments manage to capture the heavy and dark tones of the game.
Visually, the game is mostly great. Whenever a game attempts to emulate reality, down to every single pixel, it ends up ageing pretty badly due to the limited hardware at the time and newer titles achieving this false reality better. Yet, despite all of that, Heavy Rain remains to look great. It doesn't look realistic like it used to, but it still looks intricately designed and hyper-detailed enough to leave an impression. The game doesn't strive off of insane colour palettes or distinct designs, it strives off of how gritty the real world could be and how well it presents that grit.
Moving onto the technical features, it sometimes functions well, but when the facial emotes on characters aren't offputting, the game bombards you with frame rate drops and odd texture load-ins.
Story - 9/10
Gameplay - 7.5/10
Characters - 5/10
Atmosphere - 8.5/10
Good
One of Quantic Dream's finest narratives, plagued with poorly aged mechanics and uninterested characters.
