Price: $59.99 | System: PS3 | Release Date: Feburay 23, 2010 | ESRB: M (mature)

3 Stars - Passable, a decent game (rent before buying)

(Extremely light spoilers, nothing "Heavy"...get what I did there:)

Heavy Rain is basically Seven: The Videogame. A crazy serial killer, a host of flawed characters, a horrible city filled with despair that's always raining, and the big crazy twist at the end. It plays sort of like an old school adventure game with a modern twist. The graphics in the game are phenomenal and besides the first two hours of the game, it's never boring. As you start the game it's pretty intense, thrilling even, as you barely escape dangerous situations, almost getting killed and shot at every turn. It's only once you fail do you realize you can't die and really don't have a lot of input. In fact you really can only die in about five different places in the game. The rest of the time the game gives you the illusion that you can fail; but really you can't. Sure, some times you can veer off the path, but no matter which direction you end up going, it will be the same direction everyone else who plays the game will go. Only the endings and a couple of little details change. Once you realize this simple fact, the whole “a game with millions of decisions” becomes "a game where only a couple of decisions really matter".

David Cage, the creator of the game has said he created Heavy Rain because he wanted to strike emotion and he wanted gamers to cry ... he pretty much failed. But on one side, I really loved Heavy Rain. I mean a modern day film noir “mature” videogame ... err, I mean interactive drama for adults! What's not to like? The reason I love Heavy Rain is because it's different. Though some reviewers argue that a game trying to be different isn't always good and shouldn't be reward for “trying to be different”.

In fact recently another gaming site, Destructoid, wrote a review for Heavy Rain. The author, Jim Sterling, criticized Heavy Rain for its lack of gameplay, lack of actual decisions and lack of a decent story. He also cited a recent article he wrote which claims that games that try to be different or artsy should not be rewarded if they are bad games. He said Indie Games just trying hard to be indie, artsy or different should not be rewarded if they play like crap. I agree that these indie games should not play like crap but I disagreed with his statements about games that stray from the normal should not be applauded, but more on that later.

The reason I bring up another site and their review is because of what happened next. Days after he awarded the game a 7/10 (not a bad score just not a perfect score, mind you) he received death threats, to the tune of “I hope you die and your family burns in hell Jim Sterling”. Wow, that's a strong thing to say to anyone, let alone over something as opinionated as a game review. I would maybe understand a troll doing it if say it was an extremely bias unfair review like a 2/10 but I mean 7/10 is pretty fair. Not perfect but it surely doesn't mean the game sucks.

It's funny, I'm a huge fan of Heavy Rain and I've been looking forward to the game for years. Heavy Rain has been hyped for years, since the PS3 was first announced and started debuting trailers and showing what the system was capable of. The most startling and bizarre trailer was a woman with realistic facial animation who talks to the camera then points a gun at you and then at herself. Also it was said to be all in-game animation, something so differnt and beautiful it had me hooked. I was also extremely excited to hear that Heavy Rain was the follow up game to Quantic Dream's first game Indigo Prophecy. Not a direct sequel or anything, mind you, but basically the spiritual successor. Same style of gameplay and storytelling. As I had really enjoyed Indigo Prophecy (even though the last half is a little Matrix-like for my taste) I was looking forward to the their next game. After playing it though, I can tell you the game is good, but not great and 7/10 is a pretty accurate game score. Again, try and read this score with an open mind, putting your biases aside, even if you loved Heavy Rain. You have to admit, if you're reviewing it based it on its own merits the game really is a 7/10 game. Let me explain.

First off Heavy Rain is barely a game. This was to be expected after playing Indigo Prophecy but Heavy Rain feels like you have even less control over decisions. If you never played Indio Prophecy, the closest approximation I can give is Dragon's Lair. You do have some section where you walk around and get clues like an adventure game but for the most part it's all Q.T.E “Quick Time Events”, the likes of which you'd experience in games like God of War. You watch a cutscenes and at key moments must hit buttons displayed on the screen. If you successfully hit the button your character is rewarded and the film continues, if you miss your character is punished ... only that's the problem you really aren't punished in Heavy Rain.

Originally Heavy Rain was billed as a game with millions of decisions, in fact the game was so unique that there is no retry or continue screen; if your character dies you are supposed to just continue playing as a different character and let it change the course of the game. Only this is a lie; very few parts of the game can your character actually die, in fact two of the five playable characters can't die no matter what you do. The game gives the illusion that you will be punished for what you do. Let me give you some examples from the game (don't worry, these spoil nothing) at one point your main character is forced by the killer to make his way through an electric maze. You may opt not to go through this maze and go through a door labeled coward or be brave and make your way through the maze. I being the brave soul that I am, opted to go straight through the maze of death... only to get lost and lose. Once I lost the game automatically forced my character to go out the coward door ... and that was it. The game continued to the next exact chapter I would have made it to, even if I had made it through the maze.

Another example is in one scene a character must wipe finger prints off a crime scene or he will be framed for a crime he didn't commit. I missed a couple of prints and was taken to the station only to be released seconds later and boom off to the next chapter. The point is for a game that is supposed to be about decision you really don't make any long lasting or life changing ones until the last couple chapters.

David Cage wants us to identify with these characters. He even wants us to get close to the characters and see their day to day lives and activites like their work, eating, taking a shower etc. So he gives us control over a lot of their actions, small or big. The problem is that reproducing an everyday movement with a joystick is nothing like doing it for real. The result is that you really are taken out of the reality because of the game's limited interaction it gives you. Displaying game controller icons over everything you do, shaking your controller to brush your teeth or moving the joystick in a half circle to wipe a baby's butt; I can't help but feel that this is taking you out, instead of pulling you in. You're not doing any of these actions, but simply hitting button icons on a screen like Dance Dance Revolution.

Sadly, the worst part of Heavy Rain is not the limited control you have over your characters or decisions but rather the sloppy storytelling. Without going too far into the story, I can tell you the the entire game takes story lines, characters and virtually everything else from movies that did it better. The biggest similarity is obviously the movie Se7en, throw in some of the Saw series, a touch of Fight Club, Memento, Al Pacino from Heat, the strange waiter from The Shining...

The movie references go on and on until they're not homages meant as a nod to cinema, they're directly copy-pasted and it feels like plagiarism rather then inspiration. The worst part is once you finish the game, as you backtrack the story in your head, you realize tons of it makes zero sense. There are so many plot holes in Heavy Rain and things that are ignored or go unexplained in the end that it almost is enough to get extremely mad about. I could forgive this if I cared about the characters, Mass Effect 2's overall story wasn't good but the characters were so well developed that it didn't hurt the game that much. But here the characters are also extremely one-dimensional it hurts when you have a non-sensical story.

Characters fall in love not because it's natural or believable but forced. Kids die and are in danger but again they're so stereotypical that you really don't care either way. Nothing feels organic, and characters often say one thing, do another, then go against everything that has been set up as a character motivation earlier. The acting is also extremely spotty in places as the game was made in France and it shows because a lot of the voice actors have strange accents. You can tell with a lot of these actors that English is not their native language.

The Verdict: For everything Heavy Rain does wrong it still does a lot of things right. I applaud Sony for making what should be an independent game a triple AAA game with a huge budget. They took a risk and a lot of things really worked out. The game is never boring, often exciting, just poorly developed gameplay, characters and story bring it all down from being the classic it could have been.