Quantic Dream would have you believe that Heavy Rain is
not a videogame. The studio has long-standing fantasies
of being in the film industry, to the point where its last
game, Fahrenheit, completely masqueraded as a movie.
Director David Cage even put himself in the game,
sitting in a director's chair in the middle of a "movie studio."
Arrogant, perhaps, but you have to admire the team's conviction.
Heavy Rain takes what Fahrenheit started one step
further, producing what Quantic Dream calls an
"interactive movie." Of course, most gamers will
realize that what Quantic Dream has done isn't all that
new. This PlayStation 3 exclusive is more of a game
than it would like you to believe, evoking memories
of old point-and-click adventure games, albeit with a
little more Hollywood flare.
That said, Heavy Rain should certainly be complimented
on its achievements. It's not often a videogame can
claim to be a psychological thriller, and the team
has succeeded in bringing an underutilized narrative
genre to videogames. Heavy Rain does a lot of interesting
things, but interesting does not automatically mean good.
To find out if Quantic Dream's ambition paid off,
read on as we review Heavy Rain.
Heavy Rain (PlayStation 3)
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
To be released: February 23, 2010
MSRP: $59.99
Heavy Rain tells its story from the perspective of
four characters, all linked in their bid to track down
the Origami Killer, a serial child-murderer who
drowns young boys and places an origami figure
on their bodies. The main protagonist is Ethan
Mars, an architect who had already lost one son
in a car accident, only to potentially lose a second
to the killer. The hunt for Ethan's son draws
in private detective Scott Shelby, FBI agent Norman
Jayden, and insomniac photographer Madison
Paige. Each character has their own unique adventure
as they individually investigate the Origami Killer
case, and each one will have a potentially unique
story depending on the choices the player makes
throughout the game.
Heavy Rain starts out quite dull indeed. Whereas
Fahrenheit instantly gripped players by starting with
a brutal murder and forcing players to hurriedly clean
up the crime scene, Heavy Rain begins with perhaps the
dullest and most boring game intro I've ever experienced.
Players wake up, get out of bed, shake the SIXAXIS
to brush their teeth, and do all manner of mundane
things. Unfortunately, this will become a common thread
that runs throughout the entirety of the game. During the
course of Heavy Rain's story, players will perform such
thrilling tasks as shaving, putting on lipstick, and slowly
dressing wounds. If that sounds thrilling, then you lead
a very boring life. Let me tell you right now that it is not thrilling
.
Fortunately, however, the game's many boring moments
are offset by some of the most intense and sometimes
terrifying sequences ever found in a game. Although the
game's action sequences are all quick-time-events, they actually
succeed in drawing players into the game. Think of it like
Guitar Hero, but if the music was replaced with an epic fight
scene or chase sequence. Tightly-scripted, fast-paced and
always accompanied by a lingering sense of dread, these action
scenes have provided me with some of the most nail-biting
moments I've ever experienced.
Of course, these scenes are fantastic until you learn one
thing -- very rarely does your input matter. If Heavy Rain
does one thing amazingly well, it's create an illusion of
urgency, and a feeling that your choices matter to the game.
Sadly, however, that's what the vast majority of them are
-- illusions and feelings. You are made to believe that any
one of your four characters could die at any moment, but
that's not true. There are many sections that, no matter
how hard you try and fail them, will always be completed
successfully. Ethan, for example, must undergo a number
of "trials" in order to save his son. They are dangerous
and life-threatening and on the first play, you might
believe Ethan is in danger. He is not. He cannot fail many
of these sections. In fact, most of the time, you can simply
put your controller on the floor and the game will play itself
for you. In that regard, Quantic Dream most certainly
created a movie experience.
That's about as close to a "movie experience" as
Heavy Rain gets, though. You see, if Heavy Rain
really was a movie, critics would tear it apart.
The narrative, like the game, starts off incredibly
slowly, gets very interesting toward the middle,
and then becomes the worst shambles of deus ex machina
and incredibly stupid plot twists that you could hope to find.
Without spoiling the plot, it's hard to tell you exactly why the
story is so terrible, but let me simply say that Quantic
Dream tried too hard to be clever with the narrative's
unchangeable elements and overshot by a mile.
The game's main conclusion, that all gamers will experience,
plays a certain trick that is at once inanely predictable and
utterly bemusing. The closing chapter of the game is full
of so many plot holes, disregarded story elements, and
failed attempts to shock for the mere sake of shocking, that
any player with a brain would be rightly angered by
the smug and frankly inept conclusion. Depending on the
choices players make in the game, it can be even worse.
You might have characters make references to things in the
ending that they never actually experienced during your
personal playthrough, which seems to indicate that Quantic
Dream never bothered to tie up certain narrative loose ends.
This is easy to believe when you realize that certain
revelations and red herrings in the plot are never resolved
-- they are simply discarded once they become inconvenient.
This is before we even go into the characters. Two dimensional
and accompanied by mediocre-at-best voice acting, the
Heavy Rain cast is impossible to sympathize with. The
relationship between Ethan and Madison, for example, is
so rushed and forced that it feels as if a child devised
their interactions. About the only compelling character is
Jayden, whose addiction to the fictional drug Triptocaine
makes him a rather conflicted and interesting protagonist,
especially in the scenes where players have to try and resist
his addictive urges.
In a rather desperate attempt to come up with as
many Origami Killer suspects as possible, Heavy Rainalso
introduces us to about five different psychopaths in the
space of a few hours. From doctors that want to perform
surgery on people while they're still awake, to club owners
who get off on forcing women to strip at gunpoint, the game
is full of so many ludicrously over-the-top characters that
it becomes simply laughable. It's the sheer volume of
ridiculous situations and unbelievable characters that make
the game so hard to get behind. If it could have limited
itself to just one or two overtly maladjusted comic-book
villains, it might not have been so bad, but it seems that ever
other chapter has yet another crazed sociopath ready to hold
up a sign that says "I MIGHT BE THE KILLER OMG."
It's sad because, from a conceptual standpoint,
Heavy Rain does a lot of things right. The sections
with Ethan's trials are brilliant from a narrative
perspective, and the very fact that Quantic Dream
even attempts a serial killer story in a videogame is
worthy of respect. The game is very good at presenting
tense moments, intriguing choices and a sense that
whatever you do, it will have an outcome on the game's
conclusion. Of course, many of these choices aren't
really choices at all, but that's not to undermine
the moments where decisions really do have long-standing
consequences. Characters can die before the game's closing
chapters, and a player's going to have to think long and hard
if they intend to keep everybody alive for as long as possible.
If anything, Heavy Rain deserves to be played simply to
see the potential of games in this style. In the hands of
better writers and the throats of better voice actors, a
game like Heavy Rain could be absolutely amazing. This
particular game is good in many ways, and is truly a
trailblazer, but it falls short of its own ambitions, possibly
because it thought it was so clever that it didn't try harder.
The game's plot is awful in many ways, yet it still made
me wrack my brains over who the Origami Killer may be.
The gameplay is more smoke-and-mirrors than life-or-death,
yet it still shook my nerves and provided me with
some fast-paced excitement that I won't soon forget.
For the memorable experience and the sincere attempts
to be interesting, Heavy Rain deserves praise. The fact
that the ending is so stupid doesn't take away from the
fun I had, but likewise, the fun I had doesn't make up
for the dull and frustrating moments where I was
moving the right analog stick incredibly slowly so that
my character could apply mascara without jabbing herself in the eye.
Quantic Dream also chose style over practicality,
representing all its QTE button prompts with stylized white
windows that are sometimes hard to differentiate. During
tense moments, the game will have all the button prompts
shake in order to make the player feel under pressure.
However, there is a prompt that pulses in order to indicat
e that players need to rapidly tap a button. During intense
QTE sections, it can be hard to tell straight away
whether the game wants you to hold a button down
or tap it rapidly, due to the fact that all the icons are
trembling. Perhaps this is what the developers wanted,
but it's frustrating to experience regardless.
The camera doesn't help things either. Some button
prompts end up hidden off-camera, or behind other
objects. The game made them appear in dynamic areas,
but the camera doesn't recognize that, and sometimes
it's hard to interact with an object because the prompts
to do so are not placed clearly enough for the player to see.
As well as the QTEs, Heavy Rain also has players
perform certain tasks by holding down certain buttons
while pressing new ones. At first, this starts simply.
Hold X, then keep X held while pressing Triangle,
now keep Triangle and X held while pushing R1.
However, as the game continues, one can end up
playing Twister with their fingers as they struggle to
keep the buttons held while accessing new ones.
It sounds like it would be painful and annoying, but
it's surprisingly challenging and rewarding.
The game certainly looks very good, which is
something it does have going for it. The
characters are incredibly detailed, and environments
are varied and remarkable in their normalcy. The
constant rain effects create a drab atmosphere that
is actually quite appealing in its bleakness. However,
the great visuals are offset by rather stiff and awkward
animations and a tendency for the game to shudder
at odd moments and skip frames when transitioning
the occasional camera angle. The voice acting, as
we've already determined, is atrocious for the most part,
but the music, at least, goes some way toward making
up for that. Morbid and beautiful, the game's score is one of the highlights.
Heavy Rain wishes to be compared to movies, but it is
very lucky to be a videogame, where poor narrative is
more readily forgiven. When compared to movies,
Heavy Rain not only falls short, but is almost embarrassingly
sub-par. Hell, compared to some of the leading narratives in
videogames, Heavy Rain is below expectations. Less demanding
players may be tricked into thinking the game is telling a brilliant
story simply because it's not telling the kind of story that
gamers are used to seeing, but make no mistake. Its naive
conclusions and impossibly weak characters would get
Heavy Rain laughed out of any serious film festival.
For its ambition and the genuinely exciting moments it provides,
Heavy Rain is a good game. It had enough tools to be
something truly spectacular, but its developers were unfortunately
not up to the task. PS3 owners should definitely play it, and many
will hail it as a classic, but anybody with an eye for a good story
and a desire to not have their time wasted will be exasperated
by the many slow chapters and the poor writing. Everybody should
be able to have fun with it, and that is the most important part.
It's just that the fun is accompanied by a sour aftertaste.
Ultimately, Heavy Rain is an experiment that both succeeded
and failed, when it could easily have been a total success if the
brains behind it weren't trying so hard to be smart, and cared
more about providing a sensible plot as opposed to a shocking
one. As a game, Heavy Rain is pretty good for the most part. Heavy Rain
is just damn lucky it isn't the movie that it wishes so badly to be.
not a videogame. The studio has long-standing fantasies
of being in the film industry, to the point where its last
game, Fahrenheit, completely masqueraded as a movie.
Director David Cage even put himself in the game,
sitting in a director's chair in the middle of a "movie studio."
Arrogant, perhaps, but you have to admire the team's conviction.
Heavy Rain takes what Fahrenheit started one step
further, producing what Quantic Dream calls an
"interactive movie." Of course, most gamers will
realize that what Quantic Dream has done isn't all that
new. This PlayStation 3 exclusive is more of a game
than it would like you to believe, evoking memories
of old point-and-click adventure games, albeit with a
little more Hollywood flare.
That said, Heavy Rain should certainly be complimented
on its achievements. It's not often a videogame can
claim to be a psychological thriller, and the team
has succeeded in bringing an underutilized narrative
genre to videogames. Heavy Rain does a lot of interesting
things, but interesting does not automatically mean good.
To find out if Quantic Dream's ambition paid off,
read on as we review Heavy Rain.
Heavy Rain (PlayStation 3)
Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
To be released: February 23, 2010
MSRP: $59.99
Heavy Rain tells its story from the perspective of
four characters, all linked in their bid to track down
the Origami Killer, a serial child-murderer who
drowns young boys and places an origami figure
on their bodies. The main protagonist is Ethan
Mars, an architect who had already lost one son
in a car accident, only to potentially lose a second
to the killer. The hunt for Ethan's son draws
in private detective Scott Shelby, FBI agent Norman
Jayden, and insomniac photographer Madison
Paige. Each character has their own unique adventure
as they individually investigate the Origami Killer
case, and each one will have a potentially unique
story depending on the choices the player makes
throughout the game.
Heavy Rain starts out quite dull indeed. Whereas
Fahrenheit instantly gripped players by starting with
a brutal murder and forcing players to hurriedly clean
up the crime scene, Heavy Rain begins with perhaps the
dullest and most boring game intro I've ever experienced.
Players wake up, get out of bed, shake the SIXAXIS
to brush their teeth, and do all manner of mundane
things. Unfortunately, this will become a common thread
that runs throughout the entirety of the game. During the
course of Heavy Rain's story, players will perform such
thrilling tasks as shaving, putting on lipstick, and slowly
dressing wounds. If that sounds thrilling, then you lead
a very boring life. Let me tell you right now that it is not thrilling
.
Fortunately, however, the game's many boring moments
are offset by some of the most intense and sometimes
terrifying sequences ever found in a game. Although the
game's action sequences are all quick-time-events, they actually
succeed in drawing players into the game. Think of it like
Guitar Hero, but if the music was replaced with an epic fight
scene or chase sequence. Tightly-scripted, fast-paced and
always accompanied by a lingering sense of dread, these action
scenes have provided me with some of the most nail-biting
moments I've ever experienced.
Of course, these scenes are fantastic until you learn one
thing -- very rarely does your input matter. If Heavy Rain
does one thing amazingly well, it's create an illusion of
urgency, and a feeling that your choices matter to the game.
Sadly, however, that's what the vast majority of them are
-- illusions and feelings. You are made to believe that any
one of your four characters could die at any moment, but
that's not true. There are many sections that, no matter
how hard you try and fail them, will always be completed
successfully. Ethan, for example, must undergo a number
of "trials" in order to save his son. They are dangerous
and life-threatening and on the first play, you might
believe Ethan is in danger. He is not. He cannot fail many
of these sections. In fact, most of the time, you can simply
put your controller on the floor and the game will play itself
for you. In that regard, Quantic Dream most certainly
created a movie experience.
That's about as close to a "movie experience" as
Heavy Rain gets, though. You see, if Heavy Rain
really was a movie, critics would tear it apart.
The narrative, like the game, starts off incredibly
slowly, gets very interesting toward the middle,
and then becomes the worst shambles of deus ex machina
and incredibly stupid plot twists that you could hope to find.
Without spoiling the plot, it's hard to tell you exactly why the
story is so terrible, but let me simply say that Quantic
Dream tried too hard to be clever with the narrative's
unchangeable elements and overshot by a mile.
The game's main conclusion, that all gamers will experience,
plays a certain trick that is at once inanely predictable and
utterly bemusing. The closing chapter of the game is full
of so many plot holes, disregarded story elements, and
failed attempts to shock for the mere sake of shocking, that
any player with a brain would be rightly angered by
the smug and frankly inept conclusion. Depending on the
choices players make in the game, it can be even worse.
You might have characters make references to things in the
ending that they never actually experienced during your
personal playthrough, which seems to indicate that Quantic
Dream never bothered to tie up certain narrative loose ends.
This is easy to believe when you realize that certain
revelations and red herrings in the plot are never resolved
-- they are simply discarded once they become inconvenient.
This is before we even go into the characters. Two dimensional
and accompanied by mediocre-at-best voice acting, the
Heavy Rain cast is impossible to sympathize with. The
relationship between Ethan and Madison, for example, is
so rushed and forced that it feels as if a child devised
their interactions. About the only compelling character is
Jayden, whose addiction to the fictional drug Triptocaine
makes him a rather conflicted and interesting protagonist,
especially in the scenes where players have to try and resist
his addictive urges.
In a rather desperate attempt to come up with as
many Origami Killer suspects as possible, Heavy Rainalso
introduces us to about five different psychopaths in the
space of a few hours. From doctors that want to perform
surgery on people while they're still awake, to club owners
who get off on forcing women to strip at gunpoint, the game
is full of so many ludicrously over-the-top characters that
it becomes simply laughable. It's the sheer volume of
ridiculous situations and unbelievable characters that make
the game so hard to get behind. If it could have limited
itself to just one or two overtly maladjusted comic-book
villains, it might not have been so bad, but it seems that ever
other chapter has yet another crazed sociopath ready to hold
up a sign that says "I MIGHT BE THE KILLER OMG."
It's sad because, from a conceptual standpoint,
Heavy Rain does a lot of things right. The sections
with Ethan's trials are brilliant from a narrative
perspective, and the very fact that Quantic Dream
even attempts a serial killer story in a videogame is
worthy of respect. The game is very good at presenting
tense moments, intriguing choices and a sense that
whatever you do, it will have an outcome on the game's
conclusion. Of course, many of these choices aren't
really choices at all, but that's not to undermine
the moments where decisions really do have long-standing
consequences. Characters can die before the game's closing
chapters, and a player's going to have to think long and hard
if they intend to keep everybody alive for as long as possible.
If anything, Heavy Rain deserves to be played simply to
see the potential of games in this style. In the hands of
better writers and the throats of better voice actors, a
game like Heavy Rain could be absolutely amazing. This
particular game is good in many ways, and is truly a
trailblazer, but it falls short of its own ambitions, possibly
because it thought it was so clever that it didn't try harder.
The game's plot is awful in many ways, yet it still made
me wrack my brains over who the Origami Killer may be.
The gameplay is more smoke-and-mirrors than life-or-death,
yet it still shook my nerves and provided me with
some fast-paced excitement that I won't soon forget.
For the memorable experience and the sincere attempts
to be interesting, Heavy Rain deserves praise. The fact
that the ending is so stupid doesn't take away from the
fun I had, but likewise, the fun I had doesn't make up
for the dull and frustrating moments where I was
moving the right analog stick incredibly slowly so that
my character could apply mascara without jabbing herself in the eye.
Quantic Dream also chose style over practicality,
representing all its QTE button prompts with stylized white
windows that are sometimes hard to differentiate. During
tense moments, the game will have all the button prompts
shake in order to make the player feel under pressure.
However, there is a prompt that pulses in order to indicat
e that players need to rapidly tap a button. During intense
QTE sections, it can be hard to tell straight away
whether the game wants you to hold a button down
or tap it rapidly, due to the fact that all the icons are
trembling. Perhaps this is what the developers wanted,
but it's frustrating to experience regardless.
The camera doesn't help things either. Some button
prompts end up hidden off-camera, or behind other
objects. The game made them appear in dynamic areas,
but the camera doesn't recognize that, and sometimes
it's hard to interact with an object because the prompts
to do so are not placed clearly enough for the player to see.
As well as the QTEs, Heavy Rain also has players
perform certain tasks by holding down certain buttons
while pressing new ones. At first, this starts simply.
Hold X, then keep X held while pressing Triangle,
now keep Triangle and X held while pushing R1.
However, as the game continues, one can end up
playing Twister with their fingers as they struggle to
keep the buttons held while accessing new ones.
It sounds like it would be painful and annoying, but
it's surprisingly challenging and rewarding.
The game certainly looks very good, which is
something it does have going for it. The
characters are incredibly detailed, and environments
are varied and remarkable in their normalcy. The
constant rain effects create a drab atmosphere that
is actually quite appealing in its bleakness. However,
the great visuals are offset by rather stiff and awkward
animations and a tendency for the game to shudder
at odd moments and skip frames when transitioning
the occasional camera angle. The voice acting, as
we've already determined, is atrocious for the most part,
but the music, at least, goes some way toward making
up for that. Morbid and beautiful, the game's score is one of the highlights.
Heavy Rain wishes to be compared to movies, but it is
very lucky to be a videogame, where poor narrative is
more readily forgiven. When compared to movies,
Heavy Rain not only falls short, but is almost embarrassingly
sub-par. Hell, compared to some of the leading narratives in
videogames, Heavy Rain is below expectations. Less demanding
players may be tricked into thinking the game is telling a brilliant
story simply because it's not telling the kind of story that
gamers are used to seeing, but make no mistake. Its naive
conclusions and impossibly weak characters would get
Heavy Rain laughed out of any serious film festival.
For its ambition and the genuinely exciting moments it provides,
Heavy Rain is a good game. It had enough tools to be
something truly spectacular, but its developers were unfortunately
not up to the task. PS3 owners should definitely play it, and many
will hail it as a classic, but anybody with an eye for a good story
and a desire to not have their time wasted will be exasperated
by the many slow chapters and the poor writing. Everybody should
be able to have fun with it, and that is the most important part.
It's just that the fun is accompanied by a sour aftertaste.
Ultimately, Heavy Rain is an experiment that both succeeded
and failed, when it could easily have been a total success if the
brains behind it weren't trying so hard to be smart, and cared
more about providing a sensible plot as opposed to a shocking
one. As a game, Heavy Rain is pretty good for the most part. Heavy Rain
is just damn lucky it isn't the movie that it wishes so badly to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment