4 March 2010
heavy handed rain
(no big spoilers, but best not to read if you’re still to play through Heavy Rain)
Its an absolute first for me between drifting into Game on late Saturday afternoon to late night Sunday (approx 10 hours of playing) I had purchased and subsequently completed Heavy Rain. I have never managed this with a game before. I guess this was mainly down the inability to die, no matter how you play the game will keep on rolling.
But what makes Heavy Rain special is ultimatly what causes it to suffer as I felt torn between different directions
1) A desire to ‘win’ by hitting every ‘bop it’ key stroke in time and what I could deem as ‘correct’.
2) To direct characters in the way I wanted, even if this meant missing a vital key stroke, or making ‘fatal’ decisions for them.
3) and finally the predetermined game narrative.
By the end I hadn’t decided which way I was playing as I was drifting between both winning and directing, and was ultimately slapped in the face with the games predetermined conclusion.
I agree with this destructoid article to some extent that whilst I found it compelling and highly addictive, narrative wise Heavy Rain is fatally flawed. When you are given the ability to influence a characters decisions you assume a level of narrative control, but Heavy rain was way to heavy handed on pulling the narrative and characters back in a potentially opposite direction. I had expected the games antagonist to differ dependent on how you played a character- but it didn’t, instead you just have the capacity to really mess up a character’s narrative arc and motivation.
The game has always (and even after playing still does) reminded me of the PC Blade Runner game in which the narrative subtly shifted depending on how you played and reacted to characters. Your choices were often small and seemingly insignificant, and you often never knew if you’d ‘failed’ to achieve something (unless you died), and the version of endings varied quite significantly. Ultimately I never felt cheated by the story and playthroughs were seamless.
Its also interesting to read back over some of the release reviews for Bladerunner which Gamespot in particular stated “an interesting mood piece, built upon some very detailed graphic work and an interesting premise — but somewhere along the production line, someone forgot to include a game.” which could easily read as a review for Heavy Rain. Its a shame as Heavy Rain falls down where Blade Runner succeeded (although Blade Runner was far from perfect, and the writing in HR is overall superior), but did so perhaps at a time when we weren’t quite ready for interactive drama in place of an adventure game.
I don’t think Heavy Rain was an abject failure, and the fact that its the first game I’ve truly missioned it through speaks volumes, and it is still beautiful . I just wish it had been a lot less heavy handed both on how it displays your choices and how it drives the narrative. And perhaps next time the story could be a bit less ‘every psychological thriller along with Blade Runner’ in a blender.
