French developer Quantic Dream has raised the bar high for what they tout as a new genre of storytelling in their latest PS3 exclusive crime-drama game, ""Heavy Rain."" The basic premise is this: As he triangulates the identity and whereabouts of a serial killer and his victim, the player controls four characters, alternating between a caring father, an insomniac photojournalist, a drug-addicted FBI criminal profiler and a private investigator.
Timed button presses and context sensitive control-stick movements are the vehicle for decisions and actions happening on screen; failure doesn't mean game over, but rather branches the story along a different arc, creating a choose-your-own-adventure range of possibilities.
For instance, a convenience store robbery early in the game can go down a number of ways. By pressing certain buttons properly without error, the player can surprise the gunman and wrestle his gun away. If his finger slipped or something, he can attempt to talk him into leaving the store, while holding the L1 and R1 buttons to the character's hands above his head. Varying degrees of success with this tactic can lead to learning the robber's sob-story and reasoning for his actions, another struggle for the gun and/or the clerk getting shot. Given the correct circumstances, even the main characters are not immune to death. If photojournalist Madison Paige slips up too many times, finally ending in a fatal misstep, the narrative will continue on without her.
The resulting marriage of story and interactivity pleases the viewer in just about every way. The camera-work is highly cinematic, as are the voices (Sam Douglas has the standout voice role as P.I. Scott Shelby) and swelling orchestral soundtrack. Graphical fidelity is very high.If not for the on-screen button prompts, someone walking into the room might assume they were watching a feature film, as the content ranges from the more ""gamey"" challenges like fist fighting to those as mundane and real as rocking an infant to sleep. The lion's share of the animation has been motion captured, which is great for dramatic delivery, but sometimes stumbles when characters physically interact with the world because of a slight graphical spacing issue. It made one love scene in particular a bit uncomfortable, as the character's mouths and bodies were not quite touching the way they should, or at least the way I've seen it in real life.
While it is a blast to watch, actually playing ""Heavy Rain"" brings a host of issues which reflect negatively on the experience. In a game about choice and accuracy, the controls are constantly fighting with the player. If you cannot name the placement of the circle, square, X and triangle buttons without looking at the PS3 gamepad, you will want to play the game on easy mode, as a delay in pressing them will cost you. Control stick movements seem intuitive and well contextualized, but the implementation of motion control is frustratingly inaccurate. In addition, making selections between a number of speech options involves hunting through a swirling cloud of labels and button symbols around the character's head, a difficult and frustrating task.
A final caveat, gamers accustomed to past attempts at truly interactive storytelling will instinctively reach for the power button when something goes wrong, in order to load a previous save and take different actions. Quantic Dream highly discourages this practice by design, as shutting down during one of the frequent auto-saves could be bad for your game data. People looking for ""the best"" ending may feel cheated in this respect when a main character dies, but ""Heavy Rain"" is meant to be played multiple times. Being only about eight hours in total length, it begs to be replayed and explored for different story paths. A scene selection feature in the main menu encourages this, allowing players to revisit favorite sets, so they might toy with the narrative acrobatics the game presents.
Despite gripes about control and having to deal with the consequences of poor decisions, ""Heavy Rain"" is less of a game than it is an interactive experience. Every moment is permeated with a sense of urgency, and the emotional highs and lows approach those of a good film.This makes it one of the canonical entertainment works of the year. It's likely the future of storytelling in our digital age.
