Game Rieview: Heavy Rain

It's story time children. Last year, while I was working as a security guard, I had a bit of a scuffle. In the end, I won, the bad guy lost, but I had injured my knee, and had to take a month off. I had just been paid and so I hobbled over to my local Game Stop and purchased three games: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Devil May Cry 4, and Heavy Rain.

I got home, and popped in MW2. After playing 10 minutes online I told multiplayer to fuck off and popped in DMC 4. That lasted me about an hour before I decided to play this game I had heard little about, but was interested enough to buy. Heavy Rain.

It started a bit slow. I had to wake my character up, have him shower, put on clothes, blah, blah, blah... It was a lot like a life sim, where I just had my character do everyday stuff. It was about as exciting as the story I told you in the above paragraph...

Then [ Spoiler Alert ] (but to be fair, it has been out for 2 years.) your kid dies.

Wow...

I mean, in this world of political correctness, having a kid die in the opening hour of a game. Quantic Dream, you... got... ballz!

I started playing at 5pm, and finally had to take a break at the half way point around 1am. The next day, I turned it on and played through the rest of the game.

Now Ive heard a lot of people rip on how "It's not really a game." or "All you do is Quick Time Events." Which is true. But I found that it added to the tension of the game. It was really hard to have to hold cretin buttons when trying to pull a gun on a guy. But then when you think about it, your guy DOESN'T want to be doing this. He doesn't want to hurt anyone, but if he does not complete the "mission" he is on, his other kid will die.

 When you have to hold down three buttons, and then use the control stick to saw off your fucking finger, I feel like I'm there.

It is amazing how immersed I got in this game. I WANTED to finish the game. I WANTED to save my kid. And in the end, when I got the bad ending and EVERYONE DIED, I felt as if I failed.

I love this fucking game.

If you haven't played it yet, go out and try it.

Quantic Dream has a new game coming out next year called Beyond: Two Souls, and I will be per-ordering it.

As I'm getting ready to finish up here I just realized I never told you all what kind of game Heavy Rain is. But you know what, I'm not going to. If you have a PS3, go play it. If you don't, then watch a Lets Play online or something, but please, experience this game in some way.

Here's to great games.

~AZ