Heavy Rain is, well, heavy. (A spoiler-free review.)

Every so often, a game comes along that changes the way I feel about video games.  Heavy Rain is one of them.  It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that has absorbed me as com­pletely as this one did.  I sup­pose I should pref­ace this review by admit­ting that Heavy Rain is the main rea­son I finally broke down and bought a PS3.  (Sure, I’m a month or two late, but that’s what I get for pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on my taxes.)  I had been lust­ing after this game for well over a year, all the while lament­ing my lack of PS3.  But the game’s highly antic­i­pated release, along with PS3’s much more rea­son­able $299 pric­etag, was, for me, a win­ning combo I could no longer ignore.

So a few days ago I wasted no time break­ing the seal of the PS3 box, breath­ing in that deli­cious new con­sole smell (I know you know what I’m talk­ing about) and chris­ten­ing my Sony expe­ri­ence with this amaz­ing game.  I won’t bother delv­ing too deep into the plot or the char­ac­ters, as I’m sure you can find more than enough infor­ma­tion about them else­where.  Instead I’d like to focus my review on con­grat­u­lat­ing Quan­tic Dream for craft­ing a gam­ing expe­ri­ence like no other.  It seems incor­rect some­how to refer to Heavy Rain as a video game, when really it’s more akin to an inter­ac­tive film.  The direc­tion and art design demand your atten­tion right away, with graph­ics so real­is­tic you almost feel like you’re intrud­ing on these character’s lives.  (Side note: the game def­i­nitely lives up to it’s M-17 rat­ing; it’s def­i­nitely not a game I’d let my kids play…if I had kids).  The metic­u­lously detailed envi­ron­ments, rich sound­scapes, and of course the game’s sig­na­ture relent­less, pound­ing rain com­bine to cre­ate an atmos­phere of intense fore­bod­ing.  It’s an emo­tion­ally heavy expe­ri­ence that pro­gresses from light to dark; from sad­ness to full on despair.

Although there is but one over­ar­ch­ing objective–to iden­tify and stop The Origami Killer–the four main char­ac­ters each have their own story to tell.  Your actions and deci­sions as a player impact their per­sonal nar­ra­tives, for bet­ter or for worse.  There is no right or wrong in Heavy Rain, there is only cause and effect.  The best course of action to take is not always the most obvi­ous; and some­times the game throws a deci­sion at you so fast you can eas­ily miss it.  Yet the game pro­gresses even if you fail or if your actions don’t unfold as intended.  By the way, Heavy Rain’s auto-save fea­ture pre­vents you from going back for “do-overs.”  Thus, life goes on and you must live with your choices.

With that final thought in mind, I’ll try not to beat myself up too much for unin­ten­tion­ally killing off 3 out of 4 main characters. ;-)

My thoughts after fin­ish­ing Heavy Rain:

• Damn, I fucked up.
• Damn, I fucked up a lot.
• Now I’ll need to play through it again just to redeem myself.
• The iden­tity of the Origami Killer…wow.  Did not see that one com­ing.  At all.
• Yes, Heavy Rain was worth the wait. (And worth my PS3 pur­chase, for that matter.)
• This theme music is going to be stuck in my head for a long time…

And now, a few small gripes (because Heavy Rain, although amaz­ing, isn’t perfect):

• It was shorter than I had hoped.  On the other hand, like a well-edited movie, it was no longer than it needed to be.
• Some­times the game is too lin­ear for my taste; it’s often too obvi­ous where to go or what to do next.
• Some of the but­ton com­bi­na­tions are frus­trat­ing as hell; be pre­pared for rig­or­ous fin­ger exercises.
• It could just be my shitty TV, but some­times it’s really hard to see the action icons.  There were mul­ti­ple times when I inter­preted an action incor­rectly because either my char­ac­ter was hid­ing it, or it was too small to see.

Despite its minor flaws, I loved every sec­ond of Heavy Rain and I wish there were more games like it.