Whether you’re fighting with an armed robber in a convenience store or fleeing from the police, the action unfolds in what can loosely be termed a Quick Time Event. Heavy Rain has some wonderfully tense moments of danger, but they’re all at very specific, scripted moments. Unlike more action-oriented games, this lack of precise control never puts your character in peril. Overall the controls are fairly intuitive, but having to constantly keep the R2 button pressed to walk seems a little clumsy and unnecessary, and more than a few times I found myself going the wrong way due to an abrupt or awkward camera angle. This simulated movement doesn't make you feel like you’re performing the actions yourself, of course, but it does make them a little more fun than hitting arbitrary buttons.
Stepping carefully at one point alternates between the R1 and L1 buttons, for example, and jerking the controller up quickly is used for anything from jumping over an obstacle to downing a shot of scotch. As you explore the various environments, icons will appear that prompt actions (which fans of Fahrenheit will immediately recognize), and the game does a good job of trying to keep the motion-based actions at least partially related to what you see on the screen. The left analog stick controls which way your character faces and the R2 button is pressed to walk.
It might seem like the constant alternating would break the flow of the story somewhat, but the game cleverly chooses its moments to shift characters and the four narratives interlock nicely, even if the characters rarely interact at all with each other.Īs different as the four scenarios are, they all control the same way. Their methods and personalities are radically different from one another, giving the same murder investigation a diverse feel. And Madison, the photojournalist, follows a few leads of her own. Scott, the private investigator, questions the families of previous victims to see if there’s anything the police missed. Norman, the FBI profiler, uses a sci-fi pair of sunglasses to analyze clues at crime scenes. While Ethan desperately begins playing the killer’s game, Heavy Rain flips back and forth between three other characters as well, all of whom are following their own trails to finding the Origami Killer. The mandate is clear: Ethan will learn where his son is being kept if he successfully performs the trials, but if he fails his son becomes the latest victim. The victims are kept alive for a few days before that, however, and Ethan receives a box of origami figures which, when unwrapped, provide an address he must visit to perform various “trials”, several of which seem to be inspired by the Saw movies. The opening story features Ethan, a down-on-his-luck architect whose son gets kidnapped by the Origami Killer, a sadistic psychopath who kidnaps young boys and drowns them in rainwater, leaving an ornate paper figure on the body as a calling card. It’s certainly not a traditional adventure by any means, and you may not control the story as much as you’d like, but that won’t stop you from becoming deeply attached to its characters and engrossed in their plights.
As long as you don’t mind the fact that you’ll do far more watching than playing, Heavy Rain is a beautiful example of just how emotionally involving games can be. While the end result still isn’t perfect, it is easily one of the most fully realized interactive narrative experiences available. This didn’t stop me from enjoying it completely, however, though most of my thoughts as I finished the game began with “This could have been incredible, if only they had…”.Īfter years of hype as a flagship PlayStation 3 exclusive, now Quantic has released Heavy Rain, a game that builds on its predecessor's achievements and addresses almost everything that went wrong. While the novelty was enthusiastically embraced, Fahrenheit was nevertheless a flawed first attempt at an “interactive drama”, falling short of its bold promises and abundant potential. It was an ambitious concept, focusing almost exclusively on story, character, and freedom of player choice, trimming much of the actual gameplay to Simon-style sequences and button mashing. Five years ago, Quantic Dream unveiled a groundbreaking game called Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy).