Heavy Rain
- March 10th, 2010
- By Paul Frew
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As I’m writing this I still haven’t finished Heavy Rain – why is it taking me so long? Well, my friend wants to watch me play the game but only after she’s had several games of Modern Warfare 2. So I’ve been trying to get an hour or two in a night but some nights I haven’t been able to get to it. Regardless – I think I’ve played enough to give a verdict.
We all know how I feel about Fahrenheit – it just wasn’t for me. Kudos to you if you liked it but I thought there were too many pointless things I had to do in order to progress. To some extent Heavy Rain is identical – you can skip a lot of the meaningless tasks like brushing your teeth or shaving your beard but other tasks like feeding your son does require you to do this in order to progress. From my experience with the game I would say it’s about 40% useless shit and 60% awesome stuff. Awesome stuff would refer to the “action” sequences and some of the interactions with particular objects. Some of you may not notice the annoying tasks if you didn’t play Fahrenheit or if you enjoyed it – but it did to me because of my personal experience with Quantic Dream’s previous efforts.

The story is the real reason to play Heavy Rain, not the gameplay. I don’t want to go in to depth about the story but all I’ll say is as much as what’s on the back of the box. The game is the story of the Origami Killer – a serial killer who kidnaps boys and er, kills them. You play as four separate characters who’s stories will intertwine like a Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino film – just as not as well. It’s a great experience and one that you’ll probably never experience again in a video game but it’s not without its flaws – particularly the voice acting. It does sound very B Grade and some of the voices, in particular the lines involving yelling, sound off and it is almost laughable at times. Don’t believe me? Listen to the latest PlayStation Chat episode – it sums my thoughts up perfectly.
You do grow an attachment to the four characters despite their audio flaws – there is an FBI Agent who’s investigating the case that has trouble with the local fuzz, a hooker who’s son was one of the victims, a private investigator also looking into the case and the father of the latest victim who has gone missing. The characters have a lot of depth and have many layers that delve deeper with each scene. It kind of reminds me of the latest season of Dexter and how John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer character’s traits/history etc were unveiled throughout the season – it is very well done.
Despite it being a little slow to get into, average voice acting and some mediocre gameplay elements – I’d still recommend Heavy Rain as a game that everyone should play at least once. I’ve heard there are 22 different endings based on your actions so if you do enjoy your first playthrough you will get a lot of replayability out of it. Despite its flaws I had trouble putting this game down which has to count for something right? There is a demo on the PlayStation Store so if you’re still having second thoughts after reading this review then download that first and see if this game is for you.
Recommended


Graphics: For a 2D sprite game the graphics are beautiful with each sprite being lovingly rendered and all environments being carefully designed with both appeal and gameplay in mind. I can safely say that when it comes to graphics nothing was lost in translation from the PS2 version of the game – if anything the visuals are even better. The only gripe I have with the visuals is that unless you are using a team of entirely story based characters and nothing from the character creation system then it can be hard to tell friend from foe.
The third in the line of Borderlands Downloadable Content, The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx, continues the story of your character from the first game and shows you the consequences of the actions you took in finding the vault. Atlas have tried to re-establish order through brute force – they have posted wanted posters of you and the other Vault Hunters around the towns and the Crimson Lance have sent assassin teams to hunt you down.
For those of you who haven’t switched on your PS3 – DON’T – because there is a major malfunction that is causing the PS3’s clock to revert back to 1999. Yes, it’s a Y2K bug-like error… probably led by Major Nelson…