--OkeyDokey--

User Score
9.1

Presentation - 9.5
Gameplay - 9.0
Value - 8.5

It's amazing how seemingly mundane tasks like applying eyeliner and drinking orange juice can feel exciting after playing ten million first person shooters. Heavy Rain has been hailed by some and mocked by most for its decidely different approach to interactive entertainment. Labels like "10 hour quick time event" have been thrown around since gameplay was first shown, but the game has generated a fair amount of hype leading up to release based on the promise of photo-realistic graphics and a compelling story. While it doesn't quite deliver on those expectations the overall experience was far better than I'd imagined it would be.

I will get this out of the way early. If you despise QTE's and cutscenes Heavy Rain is not the game for you. If you're a jaded gamer with an open mind Heavy Rain will be a breath of fresh air. The game's first hours serve as a tutorial and necessary plot set up and are definitely the low point of the 8-10 hour (depending on your choices) ride. But stick with it and you'll be rewarded with some of the most exciting, tense and downright frightening moments current gen consoles have to offer.

You play as 4 different characters along the way--a depressed single father, Ethan, a journalist whose boobs you'll see a lot of, Madison, an drug addicted FBI agent, Norman and an obese, athsmatic 48 year old private detective, Scott--all on the hunt for a serial killer known only as the Origami Killer, named so for his method of drowning young boys in rainwater and leaving an Origami figure clutched in their dead hand and an orchid sitting on their chest. That's all the story info I can give without spoiling anything. Silence of the Lambs this is not. But as it turns out, even a crappy movie makes for one hell of a game. You know those scenes in a movie where the character is in the bad guy's house, frantically searching through his belongings while he's in the next room getting drinks? There are several scenes like that in Heavy Rain. The game is at its best when it puts you in risky situations and forces you to make on-the-spot decisions which will affect how the plot unfolds.

For the most part, Heavy Rain takes place in small residential or public areas. You hold R2 to move your character forward and the left stick controls their direction. This can be a bit tricky at times with a constantly fixed camera and lack of open space, but it's a minor complaint. Many objects in the environments are context sensitive and you'll be able to interact with them by manipulating the right stick in the direction indicated onscreen. Usually they'll trigger a sequence of button prompts you must execute correctly in order to perform certain tasks. Yep, QTE's. Love 'em, hate 'em, they aren't going away. Heavy Rain uses them masterfully. There are some parts where you'll have to hold down multiple buttons at once to crawl or squeeze through an obstacle for example. It's hard to explain but these just feel right. There are some pretty intense action scenes, too. Theses are forgiving in the sense that it won't matter if you miss a few button promts, but if you just lay the controller down and let the whole thing play out by itself you're bound to get some characters killed eventually. And when characters die in Heavy Rain you don't go back to the last checkpoint and try again; they're dead forever. And you'll probably get a bad ending, too. 3 of the 4 characters play exactly the same but Norman Jayden has access to some seriously awesome gadgets to help him solve the case.

You can change the camera angle at any time. You can slow down or speed up animations for actions like opening doors or picking things up. You can hear the character's thoughts on the current situation. Little things like this can be done to add cinematic flair to scenes, and it's strangely satisfying. In a way, you're not really playing the characters so much as you're playing the director. It's all about the choices you make. It's especially worth replaying the last few chapters to see just how differently the story can pan out.

It's definitely a looker. It's constantly pouring down throughout Heavy Rain which creates a bleak, depressing atmosphere that fits the game nicely. Characters are incredibly detailed (though the uncanny valley effect is present) and animate beautifully and some environments approach photo-realism. Music is used to excellent effect and sound overall is of a very high quality, but the voicework simply doesn't measure up to recent titles like Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect 2. You can tell the actors are trying to mask british and french accents. There are more plot holes than I can count and the story gets a bit ridiculous at times, but none of this takes away too much from the experience.

I honestly didn't know what to expect from Heavy Rain but rest assured, it is an amazing and totally unique experience that I urge every PS3 owner to try.