Heavy Rain

The long-awaited spiritual sequel to Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, has finally arrived.  Whether or not it was worth the wait seems to be a matter of opinion, but I am sitting quite comfortably on the “Of course, are you out of your mind?” side of the fence.  For anybody hearing about Quantic Dream’s masterpiece for the first time, a quick recap…

Heavy Rain is being marketed less as a game and more as an “interactive drama”.  The story follows four characters, each chasing a serial killer known as ‘The Origami Killer’ for his or her own reasons; Ethan Mars, a father whose son has been kidnapped; Scott Shelby, a private investigator who has been hired by the families of the killer’s victims; Norman Jayden, an FBI agent working alongside the police to crack the case; and Madison Paige, a photographer-cum-journalist doing some investigative reporting.  The gameplay consists almost entirely of quick-time events, ranging from mundane tasks like pouring juice and cooking eggs to edge-of-your-seat fight scenes.

Sound fun?  Well, it isn’t — but that’s not a criticism.  It’s not much fun to watch when you’re not playing it, either — but that’s not a criticism.  Like its predeccessor, Heavy Rain is completely unlike most other games; rather than playing it for the satisfaction of seeing somebody’s head explode or handing somebody’s ass to them online, you play it because you are engaged in the storyline.  You play it because the mundane tasks you perform make you feel like the character is real — because you feel empathy for them.  I admit, it’s tempting to see Heavy Rain as a work of art, and most of what I’ve said is already plastered all over every review site and gaming magazine known to man.

But fear not, skeptics — I’ll be the first to admit that Heavy Rain does have some faults:

• Inconsistent Voice Acting
  Owing almost entirely to the fact that you are in direct control of what your character says, what they think and how they react to certain situations, some of the voice acting comes across as entirely wrong and broken.  Early in the game, when your son goes missing, you can press “X” to call his name.  Being caught up in the game as I was, I pressed the button regularly and was disappointed to hear Ethan’s cries cycle through the same three variations of “Jason!”.  Entirely my fault, granted, but giving the player the ability to ruin the mood of the scene was a bad move.

• Pretty Short
  I can’t give an accurate time (since the game doesn’t provide one), but the game has taken me less than two days of play to complete.  This may not be too big a deal, if it proves to be as replayable as I hope, but otherwise I feel a little cheated.  I wasn’t expecting a 40-hour epic, but I could have sworn Fahrenheit was longer… And that cost me less than £10.

• Major Technical Bugs
  In my short time with Heavy Rain, I have experienced the following faults (in no particular order): temporary loss of all sound, speech delays that wouldn’t look out of place in a badly-dubbed kung-fu film, video freezes, children walking directly through my character and seemingly random interruptions to internal monologues.  At one point, Jayden’s ARI glasses flew off his face, folded themselves in mid-air and placed themselves neatly in his coat pocket — pretty hard to ignore.

That said, ignoring most of the above is exactly what I’m going to decide to do. Why?  Because the storyline is brilliant, full of twists and its conclusion depends entirely on how you play the game; because it deals with some very mature themes and proves conclusively that games are not “just for kids”; because it’s going to be a game that everybody talks about for years to come; and because the installation process includes an origami how-to for the bird on the box.  Heavy Rain is a work of sheer genius, and should not be missed.