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Heavy Rain is a game which came out during the PS3 generation, in 2010, and which rather passed me by at the time as story-based games weren’t really quite my bag. However, I later played Quantic Dream’s Beyond Two Souls on PS3 and loved it. It got some poor reviews by some press, but that was only from so-called reviewers who either didn’t understand it, or didn’t care to, and so just gave it 2/5 and moved on.
In this review, I will mention some of the issues I’ve had with it, but what I must state upfront is that it has a very affecting storyline, and you’ll control a number of different characters as you progress, at first seemingly feeling like they all have their own separate storylines, but their paths will cross as time goes on.
Without giving spoilers, the Origami Killer has struck again. A child has been kidnapped and if the parent of that child can solve the clues given to them, and successfully complete some bizarre and life-threatening trials, they may just get their child back, but time is of the essence, as people can drown in heavy rain…
The game is heavily reliant on QTEs – Quick Time Events – which can work well, but when they’re done too often, it can get a little tiring. One example being a level called The Butterfly, which ended up feeling like a game of Twister with having to press five buttons at once, and sometimes you press all the buttons in the right order and it STILL doesn’t let you through, and then you run out of chances and have to restart the level again!!
(And this was sometimes even though the character is further on in that level than it would take to go back to the start, which would technically mean even more QTEs on their part than to continue – as you’ll see, so that doesn’t make sense).
At first, the game does feel like you’re just going through the motions with having little end-game impact on each chapter, but later on, you will engage in chapters where the characters you control will make choices that stop later chapters showing up, depending on how things turned out, or which retain chapters but change certain things. I will not give spoilers, however.
That said, the start of a new chapter isn’t very well signposted. so I had to look at the start of the next chapter so I knew I was not stop recording the video that I was in now. I like how these games have individuals chapters but I do really need it to spell out when you start a new one for the purposes of recording gameplay. As such, before starting a new chapter, I had to check Youtube for how the next one starts, so I knew when it was okay to stop recording and know that the position had auto-saved.
The graphics are in 1080p HD, but note that while this is a step up from the original’s 720p HD graphics, it doesn’t drastically remaster them, so they’re more detailed, but still feeling a bit ‘last gen’. However, if you put yourself in the mindset of that era, then you’ll definitely get into it.
Overall: 7.5/10
Heavy Rain is out now PC and PS4, and click on the packshot for the full-size version.
Important info:
- Developer: Quantic Dream
- Publisher: Quantic Dream
- Players: Single player campaign
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.