PlayStation News, Articles and Information for the UK and Europe

PLATFORM: PlayStation 3 (Exclusive)

RELEASE DATE: 26th February 2010

RATING: 15 (BBFC), 18+ (PEGI)

DEVELOPER: Quantic Dream

PUBLISHER: Sony Computer Entertainment

When Heavy Rain was first announced in E3 2006, it certainly shook things up, with the tech demo called The Casting it was great to see what the wet-behind-the-ears PS3 could do. Ever since then, Quantic Dream have been teasing us with the looks of such an inspiring and ground-breaking game, including the sole use of quick-time-events (QTEs) throughout the game. Finally, Heavy Rain has been released to the awaiting public, warts and all. But has the game disappointed many with the oodles of hype, or has it just exceeded those expectations? Whatever the reaction was, it was going to rock the community’s world…

So, let me fill you in on the background of the storyline (there are mild spoilers to follow, but only for the first twenty minutes of the game). The game starts off in the hands of Ethan Mars, an architect with a loving wife and family. It is his eldest son’s birthday, and they decide to go to the mall for a quick trip out. Unfortunately, Ethan loses track of his son which sadly results in his son dying. Two years later, and a serial killer known as the Origami Killer has surfaced, whom is only interested in children. The rest of the story follows a detective (Scott Shelby), an FBI agent (Norman Jayden), a journalist (Madison Paige) and the architect (Ethan Mars) in a race against time to stop the Origami Killer from succeeding in killing his latest victim. **END OF SPOILERS**

Fighting this guy might be just one of the ways to finish this scene.

One of the main features that the game is based on is the way the story can play out. There are hundreds of choices that you have to make, which start off easy and become so crushingly hard. This isn’t like inFamous or Dragon Age: Origins where the story ends in roughly the same way each time – Heavy Rain has multiple endings, each on opposite ends of the scale in terms of good or bad.

The story itself has several twists in it, you never really find out who the killer is until the last couple of scenes, before then it could be anyone – literally anyone, and when I found out who the killer was, it was heart-stopping, instantly making its way into the treasured memories of videogame twists – alongside Bioshock and other classics.

What I didn’t like though, was that some events were still cemented in place, you couldn’t choose what to do, and that put a downer on the sense of freedom which you do experience (and thoroughly enjoy) ninety-five percent of the time. One thing I was incredibly surprised with were the decisions which you had to make. The ‘correct’ way forward can be so oblique and incredibly hard to find (unlike inFamous, where you are almost told which is which), and in the end you find you are making your own decisions. Not what you want the character to do, not what seems like the good thing to do, but what you would do in that situation; and I cannot emphasise enough how difficult the choices are.

The characters themselves are incredibly lifelike, they’re so believable and you feel like you’re affecting someone’s life by making the aforementioned decisions. I just remember in every loading screen (where you get to look at the character you’re about to play) which involved Ethan I couldn’t help but sympathise with him. Never have I been so emotionally attached to a set of videogame characters, and that includes the likes of Final Fantasy. You feel that they are real people, and that their lives continue whilst you’re not playing – I found myself thinking about them whilst I was away from the game, almost hoping they were alright in some ways; and then when you go to play the game, you think so carefully because it will affect someone you’ve become really attached to.

Whilst playing the game, you'll see symbols appearing on the screen telling you what to do.

The gameplay itself is pretty solid stuff. I wasn’t sure how a game composed entirely of QTEs would hold up, but the events are involving and the controls are intuitive. I chose to complete the game on the hardest difficulty and was surprised at how challenging the game was at times – especially in the more action packed scenes. The use of R2 to walk didn’t bother me too much, although I felt that the characters could get hard to control, namely in scenes where the camera angle changes.

If you go for the easy option you’ll be met with only the most basic of controls for your PS3 controller, but if you go for hard difficulty you’ll be using six-axis extensively, holding several buttons down at once, or moving the right stick in the oddest of fashions. I really likes where you had to hold several buttons down, it felt like playing Twister by myself with my fingers, we’re talking about holding down [], O, X, R2 and L1 all at once here – tremendous fun indeed.

One of the highlights of Heavy Rain is the voice acting. A lot of work has obviously gone into getting these characters just right, and making them act believably in a situation. The cast fit the characters almost perfectly and although sometimes the interaction between them does go awry with odd lines of dialogue, the game holds out and you still feel that empathy for the characters that makes the game so special.

The soundtrack of the game is impressive and emotional, with more upbeat tracks when you’re fighting off intruders and some incredibly sad ballads when the story requires it. Most of the time you won’t notice it, but that’s because it’s so good at what it does by reinforcing the emotions on-screen whilst not taking over from the acting. Basically, the music is not overpowering and only helps to create the atmosphere of the game. If you are in to video game music (or even if you aren’t), I would strongly recommend that you buy the soundtrack which is available on the store for about £3.

Its hard to give a word to describe the graphics in this game, but I would say inconsistent. In some areas, the graphics are incredible, with detailed character models and beautiful surroundings, but then again at other times, you do see a few flaws in the engine. For example, in the bigger areas, the hi-res textures take longer to load, leaving you in a blurry mess for up to fifteen seconds, or sometimes the game will glitch and you’ll end up seeing the polygons of characters rather than their actual faces – but this is very rare though.

A big feature to point out is the brilliant water effects, for a game called Heavy Rain, you’d expect to see a lot of rain, and you do. When you’re outside in the rain you’ll see the water bouncing off of your character’s face and into small puddles, and it all looks great. Overall, there’s nothing in the graphics department that will make or break the game, you’ll be impressed at some points and disappointed at others, but neither should ruin your experience unless you are extremely unlucky with the few bugs present.

As stated above, there are many paths you can take through this game, all ranging on the scale from the best possible ending to the really bad ending. It was nice to have a choice on what to do, but once you’ve played it once the experience the second time just isn’t the same, you’re not on the edge of your seat all of the time even though the story is just as good.

There are some beautiful moments to be enjoyed throughout the game.

The game will take between 6-8 hours to finish, and to get all of those trophies will depend on whether you look all the secret ones up or not. If you do, it should require 2-3 playthroughs maximum,with a little extra time spent on individual scenes to get all of the trophies. If you don’t look up the secret trophies, it will take a lot longer for you to meet all of the requirements (some are pretty obscure) and should result in about 30-40 solid hours of trophy hunting to get that elusive Platinum.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Heavy Rain. It was and still is a pleasure to play, and although it loses its spark after the first time through, it is worth revisiting just to bring back memories of your first time through the story. This is the first true game for adults, with the depressing story delving in to all sorts of deep dark practices. The graphics are great for the most part, and the voice acting is on the whole very good. The music only adds to the tonnes of emotion inside the game and the several paths through the story give you a great freedom (although not quite a big enough reason to play through the game several times).

One of the only things that Heavy Rain lacks is the cohesiveness that the classic games have, the unknown quality that makes a game like Uncharted 2 or Bioshock extra special, the originality that just feels right when you’re playing. If it had that originality, that cohesiveness, that unknown quality, then Heavy Rain would easily hit that perfect score and be remembered forever in the library of PlayStation greats. But it doesn’t, and although it is essential for all (adult) PS3 owners to play, it doesn’t quite have the impact it set out to achieve.