I generally like rain, and now, thanks to Quantic Dreams, I really quite like me some Heavy Rain as well! I also really enjoyed Qunatic Dreams previous morality adventure endeavorer, Fahrenheit (better known as Indigo Prophecy), quite a fair bit--though I actually only played that for the first time sometime early last year--but, as anyone who's played it also can attest it, that game had some issues. And not just the kind of issues where you go about assassinating specific individuals while under hypnosis. In fact even to this day I still haven't completed it, and left it during one of the later flash back stealth sections. Seriously, fuck those sections with a ritualistic dagger! So terribly uneven with the guards line of sight, the camera controls and.. it really just isn't any fun.
From what I've also heard from people who braved the torment of hearing ''stop or I'll shoot'' over and over, the ending segments that begin to wrap up the story really weren't even worth the hassle to begin with. Which is a shame, since I was really diggin' the story, the characters, and the incredibly innovative tale telling design and atmosphere it loved to flaunt in every scene.
It was this contrasting praise against my skepticism built around Indigo's final few sections that kept me away from Heavy Rain for so long, until only around a week ago, actually. I was admiring it from a far, but I still wasn't entirely convinced, and not to mention my own money needing to be spent on games I'm more assured to find some appeal. I buy a lot of sequels for example..
Anywhoo, I did finally take the final step towards a Heavy Rain purchase, thanks to turboman oddly enough during the last Shadowy Cabal Podcast and his compliments towards it being such a really great game.
That's right. The mentally challenged and never not drooling offspring of HS21, Jazz, Turbo, and Godlyawesomeguy made a sale... You know when your podcast is moving up (to selling out!??!) when it maybe potentially scoring you royalty cheques..
And now with all of that pointless and no doubt dreary exposition out of the way, onto the game!
Heavy Rain is.. really kinda-sorta-awesome, and is now no doubt one of my favourite games of 2010. I mean it's so much better than Fahrenheit. The games dripping and constantly bleak atmosphere and direction is fantastic, and pulls greatly against my love of detective thrillers. The game has quite a few glaring problems even still, but compared to what the game gives within its positives would be like I'm nit picking. Though no, some of the problems do really stick out and need to be addressed... The movement is a common complaint and well deserved. It is reminiscent of the old Resident Evil games, yet a whole heap more sluggish. Sometimes it feels like my character's trying to walk through a river.. going with the theme of the Heaviness of Rain maybe (not), but still unforgivable. I could get behind you needing to hold a button to move - or rather I could tolerate, not so understand it; the actual movement is bleedin' terrible. So often would my character get latched between two pieces of furniture and my attempts to escape this hell would result in him/her constantly just turning around over and over. It didn't ruin the game or anything, but when put against the high quality of so much else the game delivers it was made more evident, and no doubt helped ruin the serious immersion, such as Ethan Mars being too busy to bond with his only son because he's in the midst of humping this park bench.
There were moments that the QTE's proved to be rather tricky, and tough to pull off. Most notably the half/quarter circle directional inputs, to which under high pressure are made to be incredibly difficult over every other kind of QTE the game threw at you. My own reactionary senses could be to blame for the most part, but sometimes when I was sure I done it correctly would the game still cancel it out. A lot of times it proved to be finicky, and under the around 1.5 second timer you're given to make the moves, it would leave me with a lot mistakes. It's understandable to have some difficulty within the proceedings, but on the other hand it also took out my ability to create my own interpretation of Heavy Rain. I mean I lost my very own Nahmen Jayden because of those slight inaccuracies and he was my favowit ='(
It's appreciated and refreshing for a game to have you live with your own mistakes and too carry on regardless of how a situation is carried out, but when it's because of the games sometimes inaccurate and unfair demands of input sequences, it was made to be a lot less enjoyable.
The end of the game had me left with close to no-one alive, and I was sitting through no doubt one of the more depressing endings of the game. It really was kinda haunting, and had me thinking things over for a few hours afterwards; what if I done this, what if this character survived, what if this character didn't? And I'll most likely never know either! The one weird thing this game gave me was a kind of closure. Even though Heavy Rain ended on a kinda fitting low note, there are so many interpretations of what could happened, which made this journey of mine feels more personal, and one I wouldn't really want to tarnish just to get a lot of ''what if'' alternatives. Which again sets this game apart from so many others for me - someone who generally adores games with plenty of replay value, yet with Heavy Rain was left with it going to waste for the sake of authenticity of my own playthrough.
Really is such a bewildering game, and made to be so vividly memorable for its own uniquities as much as its excellent cast of emotionally driven characters and stylistic story. I wouldn't say it's exactly bulldozing the boundaries of story within games, though it most definitely does give you one that stands out amongst the pile. Equally a movie as a game, titles like Heavy Rain are the ones that are bringing forth a more mature story telling design and are to be lauded for its attempts at bridging the gap (or at least continuing where Fahrenheit left off) between two of the most popular kinds media in the world. I can not wait for Quantic Dream's next particularly tuned adventure title, and whatever it is, thanks to Heavy Rain, I'm sure it won't take me around a year to finally catch up to it.
Log in to comment