Heavy Rain

I finished Heavy Rain yesterday and while I will say it has a lot of problems, it clearly stands out in my mind as being one of the most intense game experiences I’ve ever had. The divided nature of its criticism makes perfect sense. Heavy Rain is not for everyone, it’s bound to displease a few people. That’s just comes with the territory of taking risks I suppose, universal acclaim only seems to come to highly polished and well done versions of established ideas. Games like Uncharted 2 comes to mind, my and many others game of the year for 2009.

Let’s start with the problems before I join the praise brigade. Heavy Rain has a pretty underwhelming introduction. The opening scene felt forced and artificial. At important times even the animation looked wrong, so much so that once the climax had reached I was left feeling more confused than anything else. The game quickly makes up for this problem by having much more polished and moving scenes for the rest of the game. Still, there are a few times when certain characters motivations are left unexplained and once the story was complete I had a few lingering questions. Honestly though, I am willing to overlook them considering the big picture of what Heavy Rain set out to do.

My only other problem is the controls tended to get quite tiresome after an hour or so of playing. Since you could technically call the game one big quicktime event I wasn’t surprised to feel this way. The only times the game isn’t acting like a quicktime event it is plagued by contextual movement based on a constantly changing camera that often times resulted in me walking back and forth erratically trying to figure out the right direction to push the thumbstick. What I was surprised by however was the incredible job Quantic Dreams did at creating some of the most overwhelming and emotional playable sequences using nothing but timed button presses for input. Heavy Rain had me gripping the controller tighter and focusing harder than games that require far faster reflexes and much more complex thumb maneuvers like Devil May Cry.

Despite these problems, I was enthralled by the game and couldn’t put it down. If it wasn’t for having to work an abnormally large number of hours this week, I probably would have finished the game in two play sessions. The story had me guessing until the very end (though that was in part due to the game lying during a particular scene) and combined with excellent graphics and an intense musical score, Heavy Rain definitely delivered the powerful and emotional game they set out too.

I doubt this type of game will become the new norm for quality narrative experiences in games, but there is definitely room in the market for this style. With a bit of refining, I expect this genre will become an important part of the currently unfolding storytelling movement. Still, I’m not entirely sure how successful it will be with a story that doesn’t keep you as engaged as Heavy Rain. The controls are tedious enough at times that if not for absolutely wanting to know what happens next I may have put it down. Overall, I think I’ve made it clear that if you have a PS3 it definitely deserves eight to ten hours of your time. It’s a pretty unique experience that you should check out.