Heavy Rain

I've moved halfway round the world this year, and I've only just got round to buying a PS3...so this is an old'un. But is it a good'un?

Heavy Rain is the story of Ethan Mars, and his quest to save his son who has been kidnapped by a serial killer - he only has a few days to find out his son's location and save him. There are three other playable characters. Madison Paige is a woman Ethan meets in a motel, Sam Shelby is a private investigator who is trying to track down the killer, and Norman Jayden is an FBI investigator who is helping the local police with their search.

The story is interesting and engaging, it kept me guessing how things were going to turn out until the very end, and when it gave me a moral choice it really felt like one. The animation is excellent thanks to extensive motion capture, although there are a few isolated examples where it looks extremely unrealistic. The real star of the show is the facial animation - again, their use of motion capture and real actors worked wonders and every expression looks real.


The controls are woefully cumbersome - use the analogue stick to pick a direction, and hold R2 to walk? Why not just bind walking to the stick? There were also a number of occasions where I was holding a direction, and then the camera angle changed meaning my character turned around and went back the way they came which changed the camera angle again, making me go back and forth like a sideways yo-yo.

Also, the game makes use of the Sixaxis controls - that is to say there are times when you have to shake the controller about to do things on the screen. The problem is, the detection isn't perfect so sometimes I'd do the action but the game told me I'd missed it. Not a big deal when I was, say, opening a cupboard. Hurtling down a freeway in the wrong direction at 60mph and trying to avoid an oncoming lorry is a different story.

Which brings me to another point - this game is one big QTE fest. I don't have a problem with QTEs, but I know a lot of people hate them. Consider yourself warned.

The real problems with the game begin to show when you start your second playthrough. The first time you play, it seems that you're exploring a vibrant new world, and that every decision you make has consequences. Unfortunately, it is all an illusion - the game is incredibly linear, and it is impossible to leave the railroad tracks the developers have put you on. Even when I was actively trying to mess up, I ended up succeeding anyway because it would have broken the story if I'd failed. The thing that I liked most about the game during my first playthrough was in fact just an illusion. It's like having a Choose your own Adventure book that says 'Which way do you want to go? If North, go to page 23. If East, go to page 23. If West, go to page 23.' - you're not choosing your own adventure at all, it's just making you think you are.

There are several timed sequences in the game, which are a failure after the first time you see them. Let's say you have five minutes to investigate an apartment before the owner returns. The first time you play, you go around the entire place and look at every possible clue, which is about enough time to see everything before you are interrupted. On subsequent playthroughs, you've seen everything and know there is nothing there that's actually relevant...so you just have to sit and do nothing for 5 minutes while an invisible counter ticks down. There is nothing you can do to progress the story, so you're left to just entertain yourself until the game decides to continue.

I'd recommend you play the game once, as it's definitely worth one playthrough. Unfortunately, it's only worth one. If you can rent it do that, otherwise get it second hand - but don't pay more than you'd spend on a couple of DVDs.