The Day The Rain Came Down

I've been putting off playing Heavy Rain for some time, perhaps in part to it being by the same team that made Fahrenheit on the Playstation 2. That was a game that started with an intriguing premise (man has murdered random stranger but has no recollection of why) before descending into a plot that could be best described as "batshit insane".

That may explain why now, in 2012, I'm writing about a game that came out in 2010. But, hey, you can probably pick it up for a tenner now, which I'll say now is about the correct price for a game that doesn't bear repeat plays. More on that later.

Back to my original point, I was concerned Heavy Rain would go the same route as Fahrenheit, being as just about the core of it followed similar lines: you play a number of people brought together by unfortunate events and by "play", we mean do the odd dialogue choice in between mashing the buttons in quicktime events.

Hardly riveting gaming, then, but the whole point of these gigs is the story. Which goes something like this: Ethan Mars is living an idyllic life, with success as an architect, a loving wife and two sons. Naturally, it all goes completely to shit very early in the game and an unfortunate event sees him spend time in a coma, coming out with a nasty case of black outs and terror of being in crowds. In fact, the game could well be sub-titled "The Increasingly Shit Life of Ethan Mars", such are the horrors inflicted on him, which may well delight sadistic gamers.

While Ethan is struggling with this and major-league domestic problems, some nasty little fucker is going around grabbing wee laddies off the street and drowning them in rainwater, leaving origami figures on the dumped bodies. Investigating these are FBI agent/drug addict Norman (yes, really) Jayden and stereotypical private eye Scott Shelby, which is just as well for Ethan as his youngest son winds up being the latest victim and time is running out before the poor mite drowns. Insomniac journalist Madison Paige, whose digitised nipples are there to be perved on if wished, also winds up involved with Ethan, offering help and the most implausible romance sub-plot I can remember.

Given the story would appear to be the main area of interest, it does a pretty good job on first playthrough. The identity of the murderer is kept secret till very near the end, which kept me guessing and the twist was indeed very effective in making me go "no fucking way!".

However, and this may be the biggest however I can think of, in the 30 minutes or so after the game ended, tiny plot holes began to grow to the point they were the size of those you see in open cast coal mines. How did the killer afford all the stuff needed to carry out the crimes? How does Shaun survive any length of time in his makeshift cell? And that's just those I can tell without spoiling the story.

Worse still, the game has little/no replay value because all that you can change is who makes it to the end alive. If, like me, you seemed to have got the "best" conclusion (i.e. everyone lives, psycho killer turned into mince), then going through again seems a tad pointless. It would have been very cool if there were two or three other suspects to provide a different finale.

On other points, the game does look great. The constant rainfall certainly adds a dark gloom to events, aided and abetted in style by a great music score, though the voice-acting stays around the average-at-best mark.

As a potential look into the future of film-making or video games, Heavy Rain falls short. What it does work as is a decent thriller/murder mystery that can fill up ten or so hours of your time, but no more.