The voice acting, however is a different story. The music is among the best I've heard in a game for a long time, the soundtrack constantly fits the mood of the current situation, and the sound effects that accompany it do a stand up job. The character models are superb, as are the animations for the most part, but some really bland textures in the background and foreground can spoil the immersion sometimes a particular example being when Madison is putting on a pair of jeans, you see a close-up of a chair with clothes draped on it, and they flat out look horrible. The graphics are hit and miss, contrary to what you may have heard. On hard you'll occasionally have your fingers twisting about the control pad trying to hold down the buttons it's telling you, letting you feel the frustration the character is feeling at that point. If you are playing on easier difficulties, it's far too easy to not care about the situation at hand, as it's so straightforward to do. Playing the game on the hardest difficulty is a good piece of advice here, it'll really lend to the tense moments where you need your reflexes to be quick. If you miss something, you've missed it, there probably won't be a chance for you to go back, so it's a good idea to fully search each area when you can as these clues can all be accessed later in Jayden's office. It makes you feel like you are actually investigating something, not forcing you to find clues. This is a great little system, with you hitting a button to 'scan' the local area revealing any potential clues. Using this you can scour crime scenes, looking for clues to help in your case. As an FBI agent, he has access to a high-tech pair of sunglasses and glove, which is known as ARI. In most QTE based moments in games, if you fail you have to start again: Heavy Rain simply lets you continue on, sometimes with consequences you won't see coming.Īll the characters control identically, with the exception of Jayden. These never feel tiresome like they usually do though, thanks in part to the ability to 'fail' an action. You'll have to hammer at the X button during a struggle, or move the analogue stick in the right direction quickly to avoid a blow. As you get to action scenes in the game, such as fights, everything moves to quick-time events. The entire game is played out like this, with you performing most of the actions the characters themselves take. The game switches between the four main characters and allows you to see multiple scenarios from different perspectives. All these actions add to the immersion and after the painfully slow introductory period, never really feel like a chore to do. If you're in a bathroom you can quickly nip to the toilet, if you're in a kitchen you can go over to the fridge to get a quick drink of juice. The controls are what drive the game, along with the story, letting you do every little action given the situation.
After this, we are given full scope of what the game intends to throw us into. Thankfully this introduction is really just that, an introduction. While this sounds good in theory, there's only so many times you can do things like shave and brush your teeth before you start to feel the nasty hand of boredom on your shoulder. This is where you'll get introduced to the game's relentless need to make you do everything. The introduction is a sort of 'how-to' of the game's basic controls, where you are in control of Ethan going about his morning routine before helping to organise one of his sons' birthday party. The other controllable characters in the game are Madison Paige, a woman who has constant bouts of insomnia, Norman Jayden, an FBI agent trying to track down the killer, and Ethan Mars, who is arguably the game's main character. One of the characters we are in control of is Scott Shelby, a private investigator contacted by the victim's families to find the killer. He puts an orchid on the chest of his young victims and places a small origami figure in their hand.
The game's story revolves around a serial killer, known as the Origami Killer the man is quite clearly intelligent and methodical. Does the final product live up to this though, or is it just more marketing talk?
Heavy Rain, a game that developers Quantic Dream promised would give players total freedom of choice, with a notable consequence for each small action they took in the game. Reviews // 29th Mar 2010 - 12 years ago // By Kev Malone Heavy Rain Review