Gaming & Culture —

Hug your kids: Ars reviews Heavy Rain


Heavy Rain shouldn't have much going for it. Developed by a man known for his failure to properly end his last big game and filled with what look like quick-time events, it's endlessly dour and depressing... while being exclusive to the PlayStation 3. We said before that there is a good chance Heavy Rain is going to fail. That being said, our time with the game proved it to be a savvy, impressive, and often chilling experience.

If you're a fan of story-driven single-player games, do yourself a favor and at least rent the game. Get through the first few scenes, and give it an hour or two to allow it to grab you. Yes, that's a large investment on a game that is going to leave some cold. For those who are drawn in, however, this is something of an achievement in the art of gaming.

Title Heavy Rain
Developer Quantic Dream
Publisher Sony Computer Entertainment
Price $59.99 Shop.ars
Platform PlayStation 3

The Story

This is a game that will be more enjoyable the less you know, so we'll try to keep details of the story and the characters light in this review. You'll be asking yourself who the protagonist of the game is, and when the story actually began, and you could possibly change your mind about both questions multiple times throughout the game.

Heavy Rain is the story of four people who find themselves dealing with a dark time in their lives. How they get through this period, and what they do to themselves and others, is up to the player.

The main characters are a father, a private investigator, an FBI agent, and a... well, a woman. How you figure out who that woman is and what she's doing there is an amazing piece of stagecraft—a character says something off-handedly to himself in a seemingly unrelated scene and everything is made clear. There are more than a few scenes like this, where tiny pieces of information are given out, and these point you towards the conclusion. The dour atmosphere owes much to the ever-present rain, and in another clever touch the rain itself ties into the main storyline.

What happens to these four people and the characters around them? That's up to you. The game can end well, or it can turn into a tragedy. During my first playthrough for this review—and I can't wait to play again—I tried my damnedest to keep everyone alive. I failed.

The graphics are an uneven bag. Some scenes look much better than others, although nothing looks bad. It can feel somewhat jarring at times to move from environment to environment and see a jump forward or a fall back in detail and polish. 

Inaction: the only thing scarier than your decisions

Everything in the game is controlled by context-sensitive movements and button-presses, but the way they are shown on screen and how they influence the action is where the genius of the control scheme shines through. In some cases, you'll have to hold down one button, and then another, and then another. This can lead to your hands doing weird things on the DualShock 3, and you'll have to get rid of your notions of how the controller fits in your hand during some of these challenges.

This may sound weird, or even counter-intuitive, but these challenges are put in places where your character is being subjected to heavy emotional or physical stress. You're supposed to feel like you're on the edge of failure and pushing your dexterity to the limit, because that matches what the game is putting its characters through. I can't describe what I mean in detail because that would ruin a few plot and character moments.

What happens if you fail a challenge? Maybe you get punched, maybe the action of the screen alters, maybe nothing. If you continue to fail, however, you'll go down the list of adverse outcomes. It's very possible one of the characters will die. When that happens, the game soldiers on, and the narrative continues without that character's participation.

Being put in some of these positions while knowing that death is a real possibility gives the game an edge that I wasn't used to, and that made some of the scenes uncomfortable to play.

You'll also be forced to make very quick decisions, and what you do or don't do may mean death for you or someone else. This isn't a game where you get a binary choice between a "good" action or a "bad" action. In many cases, even after the scene was over, I asked myself if I had done the right thing. Don't take too much time to weigh your options; inaction may lead to something you're even less comfortable with.

You'll also need to be extremely observant. Things that seemed like small details, actions that didn't seem to have any consequences, details that seemed too small to matter—they can all come back and bite you in the ass if you're not paying attention. Again, the consequences may be nothing, or they could be great. The game doesn't play by the rules you're used to, and that's refreshing.

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Channel Ars Technica