Heavy Rain Review – The Uncanny Valley

Mature game noir will soak you to the skin

One of the most frustrating things about the current arguments surrounding so-called ‘mature’ games is the fact that mature still seems to mean “may contain breasts and/or blind ugly violence”.

Often, all a game has to do to end up with an 18 rating is sling in a bit of swearing, someone having their spine ripped out by a space marine or some unconvincing polygon boobs.

Quantic Dreams, fronted by the softly spoken but extremely vociferous David Cage are keen to see games move in a properly mature direction, and after experiencing Heavy Rain hands on, I can safely say that they’re moving in the right direction, not resorting on throwaway violence or tittilation.

Heavy Rain is now available in demo format for those of you who’ve found and solved the clues at The Precinct 52 viral website. For the first time we can see just how successful Cage’s quest to drag gaming kicking and screaming out of its difficult adolescence into true adulthood.

The first thing you notice about the game is how visually impressive things are. In-game animation is almost of cut-scene quality, and the much hyped ‘uncanny valley’ human character modelling is extremely well done in places, while still looking a bit muppet-like in others.

Heavy Rain plays more like a work of interactive fiction than a game, and though there are elements of direct control over your character, you heavily rely on on-screen prompts and quick-time events to control how each scene unfolds.

Some of these elements work well, giving you plenty of time to hit the appropriate button. Others will tie your fingers in knots as the game tasks you with holding down a sequence of buttons all at the same time. Think of it as joypad Twister and you’re not far off the mark.

Other control elements are gesture-based, requiring you to be a little dextrous on the thumbsticks. For the majority of the time, it’s not quite as immersion-breaking as I thought it would be – but it’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff either, and it remains to be seen whether it will become a source of annoyance rather than inspiration, the more time spent with the game.

The demo starts with a heavy-set and world-weary private detective investigating leads into the Origami Killings - a nasty twisted psychopath is on the loose, and his trademark is to leave exquisite works of paper modelling near his victims.

The game investigates the killings from several different viewpoints, and in the demo you’ll explore two of them – but and meet many characters to further progress the intricately branching storyline.

It’s atmospheric stuff, feeling like a cross between a David Lynch movie and an engrossing detective novel. One mini scene in the demo is pretty straightforward, but the other veers into a futuristic CSI-like territory, with the second controllable character – a gadget-laden FBI investigator – feeling like those initial moments in Sega’s Condemned, as you analyse a crime scene for particle and DNA clues.

Graphics are top notch, though annoyingly there’s plenty of screen tear in evidence which does more to suspend the feeling of immersion than the many on-screen prompts do. Thankfully if you can tune it out, you’ll definitely enjoy the high production values and excellent voice work, even the non-invasive soundtrack suits the game perfectly.

Heavy Rain does indeed feel like a title that has been honed to a fine sheen, but there’s still a way to go – and though this is an early preview code with final release code promising to be more robust, there were still irksome and irritating moments of lazy programming (my FBI agent cohort somehow managed to put his face through the solid cloth side of an evidence tent, look around and gather clues – and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t carrying a gadget that allowed his head to pass through solid matter).

What’s important is that Quantic Dreams have indeed succeeded in moving games a little further towards becoming a proper grown-up pursuit, with plots and writing that feel more cinematic and dramatic than the usual fare.

Plenty of shocks and twists are promised for Heavy Rain, and shelf copies will contain the final harrowing scenes of the game even reviewers won’t get to see unless they shell out for a copy. That’s certainly a powerful incentive to put your hand in your pocket and Heavy Rain looks like another PS3 exclusive that will almost certainly do hardware sales more good than harm.