Heavy Rain Review

10 Feb 2010 at 16:19:18 by Andy Alderson
Systems used to review this title: (PS3)

“What do I do?” I ask my house-mate as we inch our way to the edge of our seats, utterly captivated by the high drama unfolding before our eyes. We're pointing a gun at a clearly unhinged and, unfortunately, armed sociopath who is threatening to deliver the wrath of the Almighty upon us. With every moment that passes, he becomes more agitated, more volatile, his finger twitching on the trigger as his voice cracks under the weight of the pressure. The thoughts of our character rattle around the screen and we scan them nervously for a solution, an escape route. The oppressive orchestral soundtrack builds to a terrifying crescendo and my heart quickens as I realise we're out of time.

“What do I do?” I repeat, my words laced with desperation. “I don't know, but do it now,” is the response and in that moment - that gloriously anxious moment - I make my choice. The immediate aftermath suggests that what we've done, or rather, what I've done is right. Or wrong. God, I don't even know any more. I'm a nervous fucking wreck and the point of my moral compass is spinning like a rotor blade. Never has the notion of choice played a more important role in gaming and never has a game elicited such a range of emotions in me. Heavy Rain, it must be said, is a monumental achievement.

Quantic Dream's latest, and undoubtedly its best, release builds wonderfully on the foundations the developer laid with Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy for our pan-Atlantic colleagues). The 2005 title, while undoubtedly flawed in a number of areas, took the struggling adventure genre and offered something new. Its aim was to create a new level of immersion in gaming, to make you care about what was happening on the screen. Its controls were designed to draw you into the experience by mirroring the actions of your character and its branching storyline ensnared the gamer in the notions of choice and consequence. With Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream took this framework and built on it in every conceivable way – while its predecessor veered off-track with narrative excess and grand conspiracies, Heavy Rain both simplifies and complicates the formula to stunning effect.

However, unlike Fahrenheit, the beginning of Heavy Rain is gentle, sedate and could not be more different from what is to follow. We're dropped straight into a contented family unit as we guide architect Ethan Hunt around his suburban paradise, in what is essentially a tutorial section to get us acquainted with the game's unique control system, centred around the right analogue stick. You'll need to match the on screen movements to make Ethan perform the required actions so, for instance, to brush his teeth (yes, you can brush your character's teeth – surely a gaming first*), you'll need to shake the Sixaxis from left to right and up and down when prompted. Once you venture beyond the domestic bliss at the start of the game into the dark psychodrama that ensues you'll find yourself contending with a lot of QTE-based action sequences too, in which you'll be required to match the on-screen prompts in time in order to ensure success.

However, what will undoubtedly be the most-discussed aspect of Heavy Rain's controls will be the basic movement. Because the right stick is used so prominently in interaction, it's not available to control the camera as in the majority of third person games. Quantic Dream has attempted to solve the problem by using a combination of left stick, right trigger and L1 for movement. Tap a direction on  the left stick and your character will point in that direction, while holding R2 will make them walk. L1 switches to another camera angle in an attempt to help you navigate the game's environments.

*add wiping a baby's arse and fashioning a rudimentary mini-skirt to that list too

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