What kind of crazy is this?? Well, here is the review. Heavy Rain is a unique game that is story-driven all the way to the end.
The Story (SPOILER ALERT!)
So you are a guy named Ethan Mars. You start by getting out of bed: you're in your underwear and your lovely wife gives you a note saying she will be out getting stuff for your son Jason's 10th birthday party. You have to take a shower - yeah, a video game that demands you take a shower before you do anything. Who knew? So you go to the bathroom to get showered up, dried off, and this is where the SIXAXIS comes into play. So you dry Ethan off, put new underwear on, get dressed and go downstairs to get some work done. Later your wife comes home with the boys, so you go outside to play with them. A few days later I think you go to the mall; there were a lot of people there that day. So the wife said, "Watch Jason for me." He says "Ok," so Jason like any typical 10-year-old wanders off. I catch up with him and he wants a balloon. I pay for the balloon. A**hole clown though - like I never paid for a balloon before! And why was it two bucks? Go to the Dollar Store, they will sell you a dozen for a dollar.
So guess what happens next? Kid wanders off again. He wants to go on the Ferris wheel. You know this because you look over the rail upstairs and there he is. So you go downstairs to find him and after a little bit you go outside. Jason is across the street. So you yell out, Jason crosses the street, and this bitch talking on her cell phone not paying attention to what she's doing comes along (thank God she wasn't texting; that's worse). So I jump out to save my son and in some weird way it kills him and knocks me out for 6 months. Great. I guess Ethan never heard of the buddy system: one, it works and your kids do not wander off, and one other thing, what kind of 10-year-old wanders off just randomly? When I was a kid I was always close to my mom or aunt. But this stupid kid said, I will go off on an adventure all by myself. Makes you wonder how smart their kids were to begin with. Even a four-year-old knows you never cross the street without a grownup! But no, not this kid crossing by himself. Makes you wonder. Another thing: they had a wonderful house, very nice-looking and all. He must be a nice architect. So this is where the game begins. I will leave it here so I don't spoil more of the game.
Graphics
The game has really nice-looking graphics. The people are rendered very nicely, and the facial hair looks really good. When you search for clues he goes in this FBI mode - it is the coolest thing I have seen in a long while. The glasses that appear on him are awesome - truly one of the coolest things in the game. It scans for clues and turns your office space into something else: from the great outdoors to outer space. You can see virtual files in this mode and it is really cool. Water is a big part of the game. Rain water falling on people, for example, really looks good especially the way it runs down their face; it's a really good-looking effect. This has been used alot in sports games to illustrate sweat on their faces, so seeing it in a game like this is something different. Trouble is, this effect is so jacked up it makes some of the objects in the background appear low res, making them look out of place.
Sound
The soundtrack is very dramatic at times. You can be walking and a violin will be playing in the background, not loudly. Sometimes the music can overpower the coversation and you can not hear what's being said. This is really frustrating because you've got to know what's going on, so you have to hear what they say. This is story-driven, after all. But when the action picks up so does the soundtrack, and it can get intense at times. That is good for setting the mood of the scene; the game does not fail at that.
Gameplay
This game is all Quicktime events. If you ever played Time Gal on the Sega CD or Night Trap, you know what you're getting into. By pressing the right button at the right time you advance to the next one. If you fail it's OK, you will get another chance to get what they want you to do. If you fail too many times, well, there is no "game over", so you deal and it will change the story. These Quicktime events can be frustrating, like changing a diaper. So, you have to press X with L2 and R2 - yes R2 - all three buttons at once. This can be awkward but sometimes you have to do this. I had trouble getting in a fridge: I had to press square and X and R2 but I did not do it right. It took me like, three times to get it right! It was really frustrating because the girl might die. So I finally get in the fridge; it was an ordeal that I found really was not necessary but the game made me do it in order to advance.
Controls
I will be honest: I do not like the controls of this game at all. You move by pressing R2 and the left stick and your person moves like a tank. I will give this a pass. I can complain about why they would do something like this; but it works, so this makes moving really awkward. And the camera does not help much on making moving a seamless thing which is sad because the right stick is to interact with things in the world so they could not make the right for free camera. But I can understand why they did this. It makes the game almost unplayable, but at the same time it's OK because the game does not require really precise controls. That being said, I still wish they could be a little tighter: pressing L1 on the PS3 controller does make it pretty odd, and I run into the wall a lot, so this game comes from the school of Resident Evil 1. Sometimes the controls get in the way of the Quicktime event. For example, I am on this bike and it tells me to turn the controller right, and I have the controller up, so I try and they say I fail. I don't know why Sony does not use Sixaxis controls that much anymore. So I fail both times and she goes to jail. You cannot try again because the game saves the data really quick - so you have to move forward.
All in All
I can say, "do not buy this game" with all my complaints about it, but the story is (pardon my french, but it fits) a really fucked-up story. So if you own a PS3 and you see this game for $30 bucks or more you kind of owe yourself a mind freak, because this game will test you mentally and physically in every way. Bring your soul - you will need it, because you have to make some really messed-up decisions. It makes you scream, "What just happened?!?" at points, and you will go, "This is really crazy - it cannot get any more crazy!" It goes straight to crazy-land and you just go, OK. I've watched a lot of horror films and Japanese horror films and they borrowed some details out of those, but I will not give too much away if you did not play it for yourself. The game does keep you guessing all the way to the end which is what kept me going: to see where the story will lead. There were some parts that had me saying, "This is too crazy for me", like when my kid got hit. I was like, yep, I am done with this game. But the game really hit it's stride. For me the ending did not pay off, but it might pay off for you because it has multiple endings. It makes you play through to see the other ending in the game. It is one of those games that has no replay value; after you see all of it you can sell it back to the store and never miss it again, making it a perfect rental and a cheap buy if you like a good story and do not mind bad controls. If that's the case for you, you will like this game. I had a nice, yet frustrating time in Heavy Rain, but I do not want a return trip back for a long time.
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