Two years ago I woke up early one morning wanting to play some games. As I looked at my Xbox 360 collection at the time I realized two things. The first thing was that I had a whole bunch of stuff that I never played. The second thing was, there was a game that I had been following for a while at that point, and I would not be able to play it on the 360. That game was Heavy Rain.
That morning I did what any logical thinking person would do. I traded in over $1500 worth of Xbox 360 games and equipment (console included) in order to purchase a PS3 – all for one game. Since then I have been able to repurchase a 360, allowing me to have both systems, but I would have lived without one for the chance to play Heavy Rain, and with the release of the demo this past Thursday, the wait is (sort of) over.
Heavy Rain (dev. Quantic Dream) is considered the spiritual successor of one of my favorite games of all time, Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe). While Indigo Prophecy had its short comings (like a rushed ending), it was also one of the most immersive games out there. I loved the idea of what has now been dubbed a storytelling engine. The game did not focus on specific style of gameplay, but rather on storytelling and exploration.
Heavy Rain follows suite with Indigo Prophecy’s style of game play, but makes some very impressive improvements, but we’ll save all of that for a full review. Let’s just jump into the demo.
The demo has three sections of play. The first section is a very short tutorial during which you control a character walking down an alleyway. This is basically the tutorial portion that shows you which icons respond to which buttons during prompts and quick-time events.
The second section has the player in control of a private detective who at a seedy hotel to get some information on a recent victim of the Origami Killer. As a way of showing how important every single decision can be in this game here is what I found. I have played this section three times. The first time I had no real agenda other than to try the game, and I got a specific flow of conversation. The second time there was one conversation branch that I thought was going to really change the flow of things if I said it differently. In leading up to that branch, I said all of the exact same things, but I said them in a different order. Because I simply changed the order, my conversation with the character was completely different than before. When it came to what I thought was an important conversation piece, I accidentally pressed my answer from my first play through, but I was so impressed that everything else had been different that I didn’t care. On my third play through, I started the conversation out normally, but in walking around I noticed that I could mess with some environmental pieces while talking. This time I picked up a picture of the victim while his mother was answering one of my questions and instead of continuing, she just broke down. I simply offered her a tissue, left my card on the table, and left. I walked away with a very deep respect for what I had just witnessed. As amazing as the conversation engine in Mass Effect is, this blows that out of the water. In games like Mass Effect your choices really do lead to the same results in most cases. In Heavy Rain, you can really affect the very next element of gameplay with a choice you make in a conversation, and that choice can butterfly throughout the game.
This sequence has the choice to end with a fight, which is controlled by quick-time events like in Indigo Prophecy. This fight blew my mind. First of all, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time because it really did feel life-threatening to my character. Secondly, the amount of environmental detail put into this was amazing. As the two characters throw each other around the room, failing or succeeding in a QTE can cause one of the two characters to seamlessly use the environment in the fight. I hit, and got hit with everything from glass bottles, cabinet doors, and stools. These scenes are as beautiful and cinematic as a cut scene, but is really all in game.
The last playable scene is just as fun, but in a different way. You take control of an FBI agent investigating the Origami Killer. He is at a fresh crime scene and is looking for clues. To do so, he uses a state of the art augmented-reality system called ARI. This sequence was mainly to show off this system, so it was not as mechanically deep as the first sequence.
There was only one thing that really bothered me about the demo – something I assume extends into the full game. The side-character voice acting was a little over the top. First of all, it is obvious that the characters were voiced by Europeans trying to do American accents. That drew me out of the immersion just a little. Secondly, some of the acting was just bad. The worst of it was the hotel manager. He had a great line, but horrible delivery. In the face of the other great things, I can live with the bad acting.
This game is on track to be my personal game of the year. It releases February 26. If you’re on the fence about it, head over to the Playstation Store and give it a whirl. I was not disappointed.
Popularity: unranked [?]
