Heavy Rain Review (PS4)

  Heavy Rain is an interactive movie about a serial killer who drowns kids. The “interactive movie” genre has become rather wide in scope recently, so to clarify: you usually have full control of your character as far as movement goes, and are free to walk up to objects you can manipulate with an analogue stick or button prompt. Most of those actions are Duke Nukem-esque extraneous details that help the environments feel real, so there is a lot of peeing. Other times you're asked to perform quick time events for more action oriented scenes, or there are Telltale-style branching dialogue choices that affect how the game plays out. The “serial killer who drowns kids” genre is somewhat more straight forward.

  As pure spectacle, Heavy Rain's production values are extremely impressive. This is a remaster of an early PS3 game, but if you didn't know that it could easily pass itself off as a new title for the system. Skin textures are strikingly realistic, the voice acting is convincing, and when everything comes together it looks as good as newer games of similar ilk like Until Dawn. Some cracks in the facade shine through with low polygon vehicles or stiff animations, but overall it's quite a looker. Certain scenes seem to have been given more attention than others, but whether that's the result of an uneven remaster or the original game I can't say for sure.

  I'm a fan of games that use the standard controller in unconventional, innovative ways. Heavy Rain tries this over and over, and is successful about sixty percent of the time. Using Street Fighter quarter circle moves to open doors and drawers makes sense and really pulls you into the game, giving a tactile feel to ordinary, otherwise forgettable motions. Alternating between R1 and L1 during a foot chase or flicking the stick left or right to avoid oncoming traffic while driving a car can be tense. When the prompts work, they work well enough that you wonder why other games don't rip them off to expand what is possible for interaction in their stories. When you fail one of these controller quizzes, however, the results are either frustrating or unintentionally hilarious. Whenever you're asked to use motion controls by moving the controller around you may as well flip a coin to see if the game will register what you're doing, because it controls like ass. If you've ever wanted to see what it looks like when a grown man fails at brushing his teeth, well... it's pretty funny when he looks at himself in the mirror, defeated. Similarly, simple acts like walking can be jerky and come off as goofy, effectively breaking the illusion and undercutting the serious emotional tone the game is aiming for.

  And Heavy Rain is not afraid to get dark, which I appreciate. You control a few characters, the main one being Ethan Mars. A twenty- or thirty-something suburban architect with a fairly normal life, he's thrust into turmoil after he is struck by a car while trying and failing to protect the life of one of his dumbass kids. This splits his marriage and he's afflicted with depression and bouts of blackouts. When his surviving son disappears on his watch, he is sent messages and instructions from The Origami Killer, a serial child murderer fond of putting kids in drains and letting them fill with rain water. Ethan goes through a series of trials not unlike a Saw film, while at the same time questioning his own involvement in the incident in a touch of Momento. You'll also view the events through the eyes of an FBI agent with some high tech sunglasses, a private investigator hot on the Origami Killer's trail, and a journalist who randomly gets caught up in the mess.

  The multiple protagonist storytelling technique is largely well done. Each character is fleshed out and has a unique perspective on the unfolding drama; from the P.I.'s old school noir approach to Ethan's decent into madness and sacrifice, they all have interesting through lines. The weakest is the female journalist, who just seems there for misplaced romantic subplot reasons or to act as a deus ex machina. She's never really fleshed out, and seems unbelievable: ready to help out and cover up for a famous fugitive she met hours ago just because, even when he confesses he's probably a kidnapper and child murderer... but the motel clerk downstairs is real creepy because he looked at her ass. Want to kiss?

  The branching paths presented aren't as cut and dry or as obvious as a Telltale game or something similar. You can fail multiple QTEs seemingly without consequence, then a random one may result in a main character's death. It's never quite clear what is or isn't important, and that winds up being a strength of the game. In my particular playthrough, shit went wrong and got dark. Ethan's kid died. The Origami Killer got away. The FBI agent was executed. But the game continued on to a dreary conclusion (which I was happy with), but some of the puzzle pieces didn't quite line up. Ethan had drank a poison that was supposed to kill him in an hour, but one of the last shots of the game was him blowing his brains out. Why? It felt like a string of cutscenes pulled from a well based on the choices I made, most likely because that's what it was. An impressive amount of options and conclusions and paths for sure, praise the Sun, but the end result still feels a bit rough. And since this is such a narrative heavy and fairly lengthy game I feel very little desire to replay it anytime soon, so what I got is my story... a story that I liked the tone of, but couldn't help but feel wasn't the “right” story.

  Heavy Rain is a high mark for big budget interactive fiction. It's not afraid to get dirty or let you run a bit crazy in it's world, which is welcome in the genre. The cost of letting you tinker with the character's stories, interactions, and animations can be downright goofy and hilarious and the motion controls suck, but at it's peaks the game is up there with some well written television shows and films, even if it does pull heavily from some known material. Now if you'll excuse me I have to run full speed into every empty mall store in sight and yell, “Jason!” into the face of some very confused clerks.