Heavy Rain
Geeks with Wives Mini- Review
Platform: PS3
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Quantic Dream
Engine: Havoc
Interactive Drama
This game is enthralling to say the least. You begin the game in what feels like an impossible learning curve, trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing, how to do it etc. What is so cool about the beginning to this game is there is actually “no right way” to do something. The game just happens. Everything from unbuttoning your jeans to use the restroom, to moving to your dresser to get dressed like a real person, Heavy Rain delivers in many realistic ways and draws the player into the lives of the characters interacted with during the course of the game. Some of the main figures include a private detective, a father (main character, who is an architect) and a young women. Your paths cross at some points and the player is challenged mentally in this game to over-come obstacles. More than just gunning down the bad guy, you are faced with crying babies, raining streets, victims who want to kill themselves and bad police work. Which naturally would make a detective uneasy and the feeling is conveyed to the player making this a thriller in every sense of the word.
The dialog and cut scenes are cinematic in nature and allow the player to experience the game in this way as well as the world around you. Door handles are opened, the sound of wind shield wipers makes your view more clear and the ever present origami killer one step closer to killing with each hour that passes.
Compared to other games that I’ve played recently, Heavy Rain is not as “fun”, and for that I applaud the developers in creating a rich, textured, grotesquely detailed experience. One of my favorite parts to Heavy Rain is the introduction of the young female in her apartment, in the middle of the night to open food boxes on the coffee table, to the black and white snow and static coming from the TV. What happens next, well, you will have to play Heavy Rain to find out.
Heavy Rain tells many stories and depending on your dialog choices and combat prowess, the story will change.. Not only does it change the game, but there are many endings to a great story, and as that has happened in many other games, the result in Heavy Rain is a lot more satisfying as you get the feeling that you arrived at the culmination of your decisions, not just met the requirements to view bonus material apart from what everyone else sees. With that being said, you do not have to play the game multiple times to get this feeling, the story telling in Heavy Rain are second to none and in a lot of ways remind me of a calculated, dark movie portraying the harsh reality behind the human mind, in a tangible way.
There are a few things that I thought could have been done better and one of those is the movement of the character and the relationship that character has to space and other objects around it.
Next are the controls, they are a bit touchy and it takes a little while to figure those out.
Another feather in the hat of Heavy Rain is developers pioneered this game into a class all its own and did so with a bar set really high. I found it easy to appreciate a studio that took a risk to make a title new, fresh, powerful, and of their own recipe. I’m so tired of developers doing what has already been proven to work, their own way and slapping a different name on it. Gaming has evolved and grown in a huge way and we owe those big game developers credit for doing what was popular, but it is my opinion that gaming takes bigger steps forward by seeing the fruit of smaller studios make a unique experience like Heavy Rain, that pushes the envelope for variety and creative thinking among game design, in ways that have not yet been done. I can’t wait for more games like this and Heavy Rain should be a part of any game enthusiast’s collection.
This would be a great game to pop in on a rainy afternoon or evening when you have the house to yourself. Be your own detective and figure out the secrets behind the mysterious murders and the Origami Killer.
Purchase @ $60