Videogame review: Heavy rain

The hunt for the origami killer.

If you are a “serious” gamer you are supposed to immediately dislike this game and possibly deride it. It’s astonishing the number of people who went online to say how bad this game is. Now this, as many internet things, is only vaguely related to reality considering that this game sold more than two million copies but it’s interesting to see why the “hardcores” so actively dislike it.

Now I don’t want to say like Paul W. S. Anderson of resident evil fame that in reality there are only 1000 people posting the same stuff over and over again over the internet but I think that in the digital world some ideas become “cool”, or “memes” if you prefer it, and start a process of self replication. The “meme” in question is the idea that a game gets better and better the more freedom there is for the player to roam and mess about. The standard of this is probably GTA where, according to his aficionados, is wonderful to go around this virtual city and just do random stuff like shooting at policemen and things like that.

So the plot, here goes the saying, is for wussies and real players just skip it as faster as they can to get to the next bit of virtual carnage.

This is of course ludicrous, but don’t tell them, they could get angry, in reality people can enjoy so many different things out of a game. Somebody could stop watching a wonderful scenery in World of Warcraft, another person could spent hours reading all the in game material of Dragon Age, yet another could spent weeks maximizing the stats of his Final Fantasy party, and I could go on and on.

And so we get to the people like us, who like to immerse ourselves in a story, who actually enjoy a cut scene, for us “Heavy Rain” is a masterpiece. The story, the atmosphere, the plot twists, everything is incredible. I saw a lot of movies with worse pacing and a sillier plot than this one and being actually in control, I participated enormously in all the vicissitudes of the various characters. The creator of the game, David Cage, called it an emotional experience and I can say that, at least for me, he succeeded.

The controls are similar to the dreaded QTE (Quick Time Events) made famous by God Of War. The idea of a QTE is that in particular situation, like when we need to finish an level boss, a cinematic scene start playing and we need to input a series of command that are prompted on the screen to complete it.

What makes “Heavy Rain” a much better experience is that the commands are not arbitrary. We actually use the same command to the same things over and over again during the game. I can’t speak about the normal controller but with the move they all feel very natural. To knock the door we raise the Move while the character raise the hand and then we push while the character knocks. I know that it sounds ludicrous but it actually contributes to put us there, in the scene.

When there is a strenuous situation the controls get complicated so that we can literally feel what is going on. We need to keep pushing some buttons to make our alter egos continue doing what they are doing, we need to do it slowly for frail stuff, fast if it’s something that requires speed, push it repeatedly if we need to exert ourselves.

This game is really a unique gaming experience, a glimpse of the future.

My only nitpick is that many chapters appeared to have only one way to complete them which is a shame and made me feeling slightly railroaded. When there is a window and some bricks are lying nearby it would have been nice to have the possibility to get inside breaking the window with a brick instead of spending five minutes looking for the entrance that the developer envisaged for us.

I say this is a nitpick because with more than twenty different ending and the actual possibility of losing some of our characters and continuing the game toward the end this game made me feel like I was in charge of the story.