The rain is heavy.
Having said that, it's also worth quickly pointing out that I'm going to keep this review completely spoiler-free, so feel free to read it without fear of anything being ruined for you (and trust me, you don't want anything ruined).
Quantic Dream's last title, dubbed Indigo Prophecy in North America and Fahrenheit pretty much everywhere else, tried to bridge together intricate storytelling with gameplay by using what were essentially quick-time events (think Dragon's Lair). A button prompt appears on the screen, and if you press it in time, the game continues and you get another one. If you don't, you fail and usually wind up staring at the words "Game Over".
With Heavy Rain, the studio took this control mechanic to a completely different level by removing the win/fail result and instead turned it into what can best be described as a branching narrative. You can't ever actually fail in Heavy Rain. There is no Game Over screen, and nothing will force you to have to replay anything. No matter what you do, the game, its characters and the story move on.
This has multiple effects. If you're in an action sequence, missing one prompt might not mean much other than that the fight or chase would play out a little differently. Rather than taking out the bad guy right then, you might get knocked down but get another chance right after that. Miss too many and the bad guy might get away, but like I said, the story will continue on, no matter the result. In other instances, these options (as there is often more than one button available to you at any one time) will decide what a character says, how they react to something, what you interact with or so on and so forth.
The result is that although you're still matching button prompts, Heavy Rain feels much more like you're choosing and influencing what happens in the game, rather than simply reacting to it. This is a major and key element of the control mechanics that separates Heavy Rain from the likes of Indigo Prophecy, Dragon's Lair or even God of War's boss takedown sequences, and it's really what makes the actual gameplay work quite well.
What's really interesting is that Heavy Rain manages to always keep you on your toes, and if you don't pay attention and keep your cool, you'll pay for it. There are action sequences that happen when you least expect them, and if you're not ready, you may "fail" them. In other cases, the opposite is true: events can happen very quickly and your gut instinct may be to react to them, when the best option may have been to wait for a better opportunity (or not react at all). The first time this last bit happened to me, I had to stop playing for a minute and think about what I'd done and what the consequences would wind up being. Things can get pretty intense, to say the least. The great thing about all of this, and the reason that Heavy Rain may not have worked with any other control scheme, is that everything in the game revolves around the story. This isn't something where Quantic Dream came up with some cool scenes and then wrapped a story around everything to tie it together; the story is the utmost focus, and everything that you do and everything that happens directly feeds into it, without exception. Without having a "defined" control scheme that only allows you to perform a set number of actions, the changing control options allow the mechanics to adapt to what makes sense for your character to do at any point to keep the storytelling as unopposed as possible.
My one complaint about the control scheme is that it's sometimes hard to tell what you're supposed to do. When your character is frazzled, the button or text options that pop up can be blurred and jittery to show that the person is tense as well as make it a little trickier to choose the right thing (you might say something wrong if you're not careful, like in real life). The problem is that button prompts will also pulse if you're supposed to tap them quickly rather than hold them down or do a single, quick tap, and distinguishing between these variants can be tricky. It's not a game-breaking problem, but I messed up in a few places where I wouldn't have had the prompts been clearer. Now, as I mentioned, the controls do a great job of allowing the story to shine through, and what a story it is. Each of the four, main playable characters is interesting, developed well and important to the story. The way that everything comes together and winds up feeding into the story progression is nothing short of fantastic. Games have come pretty far in terms of how well stories are told and the level of writing quality that some of them are able to achieve, but Heavy Rain is easily amongst the best that's ever been put onto a disc. Were this filmed as a Hollywood picture, it would perfectly fit the body of work of someone like Martin Scorsese or David Fincher.
Now, that doesn't mean that the story is told flawlessly. Like I said at the start of this review, the first couple hours are a little slow. As I've mentioned in previous coverage for Heavy Rain, this is largely due to the fact that, with a film, you're able to edit out dull bits like walking down stairs or going from the kitchen to the living room. The exposition and character development that happens in these opening chapters wind up being very important to what happens later, but the pacing is a little on the sluggish side. And, when some of the first things that you're able to do include drinking orange juice and taking a shower, it may seem like things will get lost in unimportant actions and details of everyday life. But, like I've said, after you get into the meat of the game, it picks up quickly and pulls you in. An important element of Heavy Rain's design is that it isn't an entirely linear story (and therefore game). Depending upon how you handle situations, you can start steering the story that you experience in a different direction than others. If a main character dies, the game will continue on anyway, but you'll miss story clues and scenes that the now-dead character would have come across.
From my experience, your choices don't result in major changes throughout the game, instead sending slight ripples through the dialog and character interactions for the bulk of it but resulting in vastly different endings. After finishing the story with one of the best possible endings, I went back and played it a second time as poorly as I could; that is, killing off characters, intentionally skipping over clues and that sort of thing. I wasn't able to kill off (or generally lose) any of the main characters until about three-fourths of the way through, and up until that point, the only differences that I noticed were largely related to dialog changes. There's a lot of subtlety there, where people will talk to each other differently or reference earlier actions (quite well, I might add), but you'll still play the same sequences.
However, as I mentioned, the ending can change extensively depending upon what you've learned, who's still around, things you've done earlier and so forth. Obviously I'm not going to spoil anything here, but just know that if you're going through a second, different playthrough, you won't see a ton of changes until the conclusion, but it'll be worth it. And, fortunately, all of the endings that I either saw myself or heard about from others (it would take you forever to earn them all yourself) are great. Given the weight of the story and the fact that it's the absolute crux of Heavy Rain, the game's various presentation aspects weigh in just as heavily on the experience as its controls do. Generally speaking, the presentation is handled quite well, but none of it is perfect.
The graphics, for instance, are great with regards to characters' faces, but clothes, hands and especially some objects in the environment aren't as detailed as you would hope. Lip syncing is actually not bad, but the mouths on some characters (not all) don't have a ton of detail so the speech animation winds up looking off at times. And, while the character animation is top-notch in terms of the little details that Quantic Dream has tossed in (feet taps from a bored character, jaw movements while someone thinks, etc.), you can tell that the motion capture data isn't as detailed as what you'll see in, say, Uncharted 2. Hands will sometimes twitch a tiny bit, or fingers won't quite bend right on occasion. The voice work is similar. Some characters are great, while others are only so-so. One standout flaw is that while most characters are supposed to be American, some of the actors clearly aren't and their accents tend to slip through, making their line deliveries sound weird at times.
On the flip side, however, is the fact that the dialog is generally spectacular. Most every line is natural and written in an unforced manner, lending a great deal more realism to the characters. While I'm not talking about elongated monologues that would give Shakespeare a run for his money, the little things that people say are damn near perfect. Again, the delivery isn't always spot-on, but the content certainly is.
Really, when compared to most games, Heavy Rain has what would be considered very good voice acting. It's just that when so much of the experience is focused on it, you tend to notice the flaws a good deal more. One last nice bit to the presentation that I want to point out (because people will certainly ask) is that you can indeed skip back to already-played chapters. You'll be asked whether you wish to save or not, which means you can try out individual scenes without impacting your "main" save, which is nice.
Heavy Rain is a hell of an experience. Its controversial control scheme actually works really well in allowing the fantastic story to dictate how events play out, and many of the game's scenes will keep you on the edge of your seat. It starts slow and the presentation isn't perfect, but the character development, dialog and story twists will hook you like few games can. Heavy Rain is not to be missed.WARNING: This section may contain potential spoilers...
How good is Heavy Rain? I blew off the Superbowl to play it. Mind you, I beat Quantic Dream's latest long before the big game's kickoff, but what I found myself doing for the next several hours was playing the final handful of chapters over and over again. I cared about these characters, and I desperately wanted to see how each of their tales unfolded when I switched tiny things. What happens when I say this? What happens when I pick the wrong place? What happens when I let one of them die? What happens when all of them die?
These experiments might sound mundane, but the payoff can be astounding. Seeing your favorite character live happily ever in one ending only to go back, change one thing, and see him or her take their own life in another is a crazy thing.
Roper goes as far as to say that Heavy Rain's story would be a Scorsese plot if it was translated to film, but it's important to note that not everyone will feel that weight as they get going. In the beginning of the game – in the slow portions you've been warned about – I was laughing as I tried to get the hang of the control scheme and banged plates on the table and couldn't figure out how to open sliding doors. However, as time went on, I found the admittedly unique scheme completely immersive with the exception of confusing shaky button prompts with ones I needed to tap. I also wish that you could skip conversations you've already heard when you replay missions -- as you'll do the same thing again and again if you're looking to see it all -- but no game's perfect.
Heavy Rain won't be for everyone (namely kids or people just looking to blow stuff up) but its deep story, branching paths, and fleshed out characters make it a title that should be played by anyone looking to see what videogames are capable of in terms of heartfelt experiences. I cared about these people by the time the credits rolled, and that's what made me want to go back and get their stories right.
Heavy Rain's an interactive movie, and it's an enthralling experience.