A merging between platformer and point-and-click genres.
Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain for the PS3 boasts a unique kind of gameplay: combining platform style navigation with the gameplay mechanics of a point-and-click adventure game.
The game’s plot has the player assume the role of various characters all of which are, in one way or another, involved with the case of serial murders committed by a culprit known only as the Origami Killer. The story is broken up into sections, each one being archived and free to be revisited once you have cleared them for the first time. The game is easily at least 10 hours long and feels just about right in terms of length by the time the story reaches its conclusion. Being a story-focused game, the story of Heavy Rain is easily the best part of the game: often leaving you on the edge of your seat and wanting to know what happens next.
The story is complemented by a wide spectrum of characters like the insomniac daredevil journalist Madison Paige or Police Captain Leighton Perry who cares about nothing more than good reputation with the press rather than catching the right criminal. Throughout the game players will meet a strong cast of characters, some of which you will love while others you will love to hate as you progress further in.
While the cast of characters in Heavy Rain is definitely a strong point, the same cannot be said about its voice acting. The voice acting isn’t bad but that doesn’t mean it’s good either. The voice acting sounds a little strange: something along the line of direct script reading but coupled with good expressions of emotion. Fortunately this works out better than expected with the dialogues still managing to deliver an excellent quality of emotion and impact throughout the game making you care even further about the characters.
Adding to an already great narrative and cast of characters is the soundtrack. The game’s soundtrack nails the mood the game is trying to go for: from the frantic blood pumping music during the various action sequences to the more brooding and flat tunes during an intermission, the soundtrack always manages to fit the situation being presented to the player.
On a technical perspective: Heavy Rain’s controls centres around the principal of holding down R2 to walk and using the left analog stick for direction while using the other buttons as commands for particular actions. These actions come in the form of prompts, which appear whenever you get near enough to an object you can interact with, showing you the button or motion you will need to do in order to initiate an interaction. Although this sounds simple, the game does a good job of making you feel involved by having each action prompt’s outcome resulting in a unique effect on how the scene plays out. For example: failing an action prompt while carrying something may result in your character stumbling or outright falling down and dropping whatever they were carrying or failing a prompt in a gunfight might result in a character getting wounded or, even worse, killed.
While the controls for the action prompts are good, the navigation control on the left stick however seems slow and unresponsive. This isn’t much of an issue at the start of the game but during certain later parts of the story where there is a need for speed and precision, the controls fall short and can become quite frustrating.
Heavy Rain boasts good graphics: the rain bounces off objects the way you would expect it to and clothes soak up when wet. Especially good is the phenomenal amount of detail on a characters face during a close-up. Sometimes it gets easy to forget that the character was just a 3D render. It is too bad however that most of these close-ups are shown only during loading screens.
All in all Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain is a unique game that offers a rather refreshing change of pace for what people have come to expect from video games. Although it has its problems, it is still both exciting and fun to play through from start to finish. Recommended purchase for fans of adventure games.
