“Like an exquisitely crafted piece of origami, every movement, every turn, means everything. Get it right and the result is something truly wonderful”
I see enough rain. Like Rhod Gilbert says; most of us in Wales were five or six before we knew we could take a cagoule off. Rain is not something that has ever terrified, excited or delighted me. Heavy rain though – that is a totally different precipitation.
Like any other owner of a PS3 I’ve been bombarded with information on Heavy Rain for a while now: The web browser home page, the forums, sky writers – the lot. Don’t get me wrong, the screen shots and what not have looked incredible. But most of them seem to nowadays, the so called ‘bull-shot’ has been a plague of this generation. Does it really look that good or, like a slightly over the hill supermodel, has it been retouched to within an inch of its life?
Heavy Rain was supposed to be one of the first ‘truly adult’ video games of this generation. Was it another exclusive that could never live up to the hype – with a few lady lumps included in order to try and make it ‘adult’? The demo released a few weeks ago on PSN assuaged those fears a little. It really did look that good; however the controls did take some serious getting used to.
In general, using a shoulder button to accelerate a vehicle feels right, using it to move a person however is bizarre. Your head is mapped to the left stick and quick time event movements are mapped to the other, they really have reinvented the wheel here but give it time and it does start to make a lot of sense.
To give a background into this story sounds like telling the plot from a bad episode of CSI. Basically, you are trying to catch a child murderer called the ‘Origami Killer’, who has previously kidnapped and killed a number of young boys who were then found on waste grounds with an origami animal placed in their hands.
You play as four separate characters that are in some way linked to this series of deaths. Firstly, Ethan Mars, a slightly deadbeat dad whose youngest son is the latest victim of the origami killer. It transpires that each of the boys are drowned in rain water by the killer before being left on the waste lands and you know you’ve only got a few days to find your son before the amount of rain water is high enough for the killer to add another life to his list.
Secondly, there’s Scott Shelby, a private investigator whom has been hired by the families of previous victims to chase down the killer. Thirdly, Norman Jayden, an FBI agent with an exceptionally useful device (I’ll let you find out, just wait until you get back to your office, I was dumb struck) who has been relocated to assist the local police force with the investigation and lastly, Madison Paige, a Photojournalist. Now each of these characters, other than each being closely entwined in the case, share another similarity, they each have almost crippling faults, be that mentally, emotionally or physically, ranging from simple Asthma to a body-breaking drug addiction.
In the initial instance the atmosphere, the mood, is quite bright and pleasant, it reminds me a little of the social networking service Home. However this little piece of paradise is short lived, soon it rips away the happy little homestead and throws you into panic, depression and fear. Just try not to feel a little stressed when following that red balloon.
You progress through this, skipping from character to character, scenario to scenario, via a series of contextual quick time events. Now I thought exactly the same as I’m sure you are now when I heard that statement – that really does not sound fun, having to watch all of the cut scenes from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the patriots and occasionally pressing the X button sounds awful. But, and this is a huge, huge but, this is not quick time events in the sense of God of War or Dante’s Inferno, when it says that these are contextual it means it. Making use of the motion sensitive sixaxis controls and making you move the whole controller from side to side, and then up and down, to brush your characters teeth just feels right. Not only does your characters dental hygiene come into this but things like changing a baby’s nappy or climbing up muddy hills (Which forces you into playing a little game of finger twister. Making you, to a far lesser extent, mimic your characters exertion) or the little things, like a Mexican stand off with a suspect and your partner, make you feel involved, like you’re part of this. This really does make the ordinary extraordinary.
These quick time events aren’t just limited to actions either. Verbal and mental choices are made in a similar way. The mental options are basically just a way of giving you hints, telling you what your character is thinking and reminding you of your goals should you get lost. The verbal and physical actions however are the most important as they can get you killed.
For example, and I’m trying really hard not to spoil anything here, someone has pulled a gun on you, but not because they want to kill you but because you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re frightened and they’re nervous, now you could try to disarm them, but one wrong move and you’ve got a bullet in your gut, or you could try to talk them down, telling them the consequences of their actions, appealing to their sense of self preservation. Now if you make a mistake, you’re dead, and not in a ‘restart from last checkpoint’ or ‘load last save game’ kind of way. You’re dead for good. The game will continue even if your character dies but things will pan out differently because actions that they would have played a part in will have never happened. Now this makes even small decisions really stressful as you don’t know if this will have a detrimental effect on the rest of the game, and the big decisions have had my heart racing to the same extent as the character I’m playing; in a very brilliant way, should your character be in a situation that is particularly stressful, the options that you have that would usually float gently around the characters head are shaky, blurry and move so fast that it puts you in the same place as your character, you really don’t know what to do.
There have been times when I have picked an option only because it was the only one I could make out rather than because it was what I wanted to do. Honestly, I have actually not played some nights because I’ve felt a little tired and felt my reactions would not be quick enough – I am actually a little apprehensive to play this without being able to concentrate as much as I can. Not many games can bring that out of you.
Now… I’m not a very prudish person, violence and gore has always been a mainstay of gaming and more and more so recently language has also been a way of bringing in both adult gamers and pubescent boys who like to giggle at F words. One thing that games have never been good at however is sexual content (giggle if you must) or nudity. It has always seemed immature or a bit pervy, countless young men have tried every trick there is into getting Lara Croft to take her clothes off but for Quantic Dream to not only embrace such content but to make it work, to make it feel necessary to the plot, is very impressive. It really is quite difficult to explain this without giving too much away, so I won’t, you’ll just have to try this for yourself.
So, in conclusion, if you own a PS3, even if the above doesn’t sound like your thing, you really do owe it to yourself to give this a try. Will it be the definitive title that Sony wanted it to be? No, I don’t think so, not because it’s bad – far from it, it’s incredible, but its so, so different to everything else that I don’t think some will give it the time or attention it deserves.
As I said earlier, it is like a bad episode of CSI but that’s not the point. The story is important, of course, but it’s the characters, its your decisions, it’s the quality, its just how different it is that all add up to something truly magnificent.
