TheCannon

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TheCannon Reviews: Heavy Rain

I know I said Saints Row 2 would probably be my next review. Well, turns out I was wrong. I tried to play it, but it just didn’t make a good first impression. I’ll play more of it in the future, but for now I moved on to Saints Row The Third. So, you’re probably thinking, “Well, Cannon, why aren’t you reviewing Saints Row The Third then?” I was out of town for a couple of days and didn’t have my Xbox, so I couldn’t play more of Saints Row, and I didn’t feel I could review it after only playing about five or six hours. I brought my new PS3 with me when I was away to try some of the games I got for it while I had free time, and after trying Infamous (don’t worry, we’ll get to that thing at some point), I played and finished Heavy Rain. So, I decided that was the next thing to review.

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I have a bit of a weird history with Heavy Rain that makes it a bit hard to review. I originally watched a Let’s Play (wasn’t called that, but that’s what it was) for the game on youtube and thought it looked just amazing. I was extremely upset when I found out it wasn’t on the Xbox 360. I ended up getting a PS3 for my birthday and got the game, which meant I could finally play it. The problem is that its focus is on the story. And since I already watched a let’s play, I knew the story and the plot twist. This would make it seem like a waste of time to play, but there are two things about the game that still made it worth playing even though I knew the story. The first is that the game is still amazing to play, even when you know everything. I’m not sure why, but it just is. The second is because I was able to have the story change a bit from the version I watched (the core story is still the same, like in every game, but my version still changed a lot).

Yeah, the game’s plot changes depending on your actions. Some of them are just things like how characters interact with each other, others are stuff as major like whether or not a main character lives or dies. And if a character does die, then their death will cause a chain reaction that screws up the whole thing. For example, I had a character die in a section of my playthrough. This resulted in one character dying in the climax and one not being there at all. I enjoyed this, as it made playthroughs more unique and makes it something that can only work as a game instead of a movie, TV show, or book.

You’ll notice that in the beginning of the last paragraph I said that the game’s plot changes depending on your actions, not choices. While the game does have you make some choices, a decent amount of the stuff isn’t an actual choice, but a Quick Time Event. Most of the action scenes of the game are honestly just Quick Time Events, and failing them will result in either you getting at least one more opportunity to succeed, usually more, until the character ends up dying. I suppose you could say that you can choose to intentionally miss it, making it a choice. I suppose that’s right, but it’s still a Quick Time Event and not a more tradition choice making system like in Mass Effect or Fallout or something that merges well with normal gameplay like Spec Ops: The Line.

Now I know this sounds awful the way I describe it, but it’s actually not that bad. It might not be as involving as games like the Arkham Asylum & Arkham City, but I was honesty surprised by how much I was getting invested in all of the action scenes. It wouldn’t work for a lot of games, but the style of gameplay works for this kind of game.

When you’re not in an action scene and do more than Quick Time Events, you walk by holding the right trigger. If you want to change the direction you’re walking, you move the left stick. This caused me to mess up my direction a few times, and I don’t see why they couldn’t have just had you use the left stick like most games, but it worked I guess. If you hold the left trigger, you can hear the character’s thoughts about what’s going on by pressing a button for whatever you want to hear. If you’re talking to someone, it switches between the character talking himself/herself and having you press a button to determine what to say. The dialogue choices are well-written enough that it all feels in-character with the characters. My only problem with this is that there are times where it’s not clear what button to push. For example, there were a few times where I wanted to have a character say that Circle was. However, I pressed Square because I thought it looked like a square and not a circle. This only happened five times at the most, so it wasn’t a big deal, but was still frustrating at times.

I know I didn’t talk about gameplay much, but that’s because I was saving a lot of my talk for story. The reason for that is because the game itself puts most of its focus on story instead of gameplay, so I feel I should do the same in my review. To sum up the story of the game the best I can, it involves tracking down a serial killer called the “Origami Killer.” The Origami Killer has been active for three years, and in that time, has killed eight children by kidnapping and drowning them. The plot features you playing as four different characters while trying to discover who the killer is and stopping before he/she can strike again. The story is extremely good, and possibly the best main plot in a video game I’ve ever seen. The way I describe it doesn’t do it justice, because I can’t go into much detail without spoilers or just giving info no one cares about since they haven’t played. To put it shortly, the story is just really great.

There’s a few smaller things about the story I want to cover. It gets off to a very slow start. You start off the game by getting up, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed, waiting for your wife & kids get home, helping your wife out a little, and playing with your kids, all before the real story begins. I was playing this in front of a few people, and all of them didn’t seem to have a good first impression of the game after seeing this. They all agreed it got better as it went on, but they didn’t like the opening. Personally, I didn’t have a problem with it. It starts off slow and builds up, which I think is good pacing for a story. Some may not like it, while other will, and I’m in the group that likes it.

Since the game is about tracking down a serial killer, the game obviously has to reveal his/her identity, right? Well, they do reveal who the killer is. I won’t reveal who it is because that’d make me a massive jerk, but I’ll just say that I was shocked and I never saw it coming. You might think that this makes it a swerve and not a twist, but you’d be wrong. A swerve is something done out of nowhere that doesn’t make much sense with what’s been established already. A twist is something shocking that happens, but still makes sense in the plot when you go back and look at what’s happened before. I was shocked when I found out who the killer was on youtube, but it all made sense when playing the game myself with the knowledge of who it was. So, I think the twist was just amazing.

I’ve heard some complain that the killer being the same in every playthrough is a bad thing. But why would it be? I understand that a different killer each playthrough would make it interesting, but it also wouldn’t make much sense with the plot. Every piece of information we get on the killer goes along with who it’s revealed to be, so changing the killer would also change the information gathered, and probably change the entire plot of the game. Why would you do that, and would it even be possible to put into the game and still have it be good? This is just something I’ve heard people complain about that I find stupid and wanted to mention.

I mentioned that you play as four characters, so I’ll briefly cover them. The person who I’d probably consider the main character is Ethan Mars, the father of Shaun Mars, the most recent kid abducted by the Origami Killer. Scott Shelby is a former cop, now Private Investigator, who has been hired by the families of the victims of the Origami Killer to track the killer down. Norman Jayden is an FBI Agent who has been sent to the local Police to help them track down the Origami Killer. And Madison Paige is a journalist who I can’t go into more detail about without revealing spoilers for the plot. It might sound like these characters are completely unconnected, which they kind of are. But the plot with the Origami Killer ends up causing them to start slowly meeting each other until finally all coming together by the end (assuming they’re alive). Those are just the four main characters. There are some non-player characters such as Lauren, the mother of one of the Origami Killer’s victims who helps Scott. There’s Lieutenant Blake, a lieutenant (obviously) at the police department that Norman works with to track down the killer. There’s Ethan’s wife whose name I honestly forget. And there are some smaller characters that are only important to one or two scenes. Overall, I like a lot of these characters. While sometimes their dialogue could be a bit better written, they were still good characters that I felt I knew by the end of it. Some of them were un-likable, but they were supposed to be.

I know a lot of people complained about voice acting, but I don’t understand why. I thought it was good. Not great, it’s certainly not on the level of Mass Effect or The Walking Dead, but I thought it was good. A few lines sounded off, but every game has that. I thought the voice acting was just fine and don’t understand why people had such a problem with it.

Now let’s talk about the ending to the game. Well, endings. There is a lot of different endings to the game. The final section of the game will change much depending on who’s alive, and what choices have been made (which will determine who’s able to be there). Depending on how that section goes, there will be a news report to give a general overall look at what happened, followed by 3-4 epilogue scenes for each main character. These will greatly change from each other depending on previous choices, who’s alive, and what quick time events were completed. They range from happy endings, to some that are kind of happy while also depressing, to just all being depressing endings where everyone dies (and some endings where everyone but the killer dies). Overall, the endings were just amazing to me. They’re everything a game ending should have: multiple outcomes that change depending on how you played that are satisfying and make sense within the story.

As you’ve probably been able to tell, I loved Heavy Rain. I thought it had an amazing story that still blows me away every time I see it, good characters, and had everything I want in a video game ending. That said, the game isn’t for everyone. If you’ve read this review and still can’t decide whether this game is for you, here’s how I’d settle it: Ask yourself what you want in a video game, and just use the first 3 things that come to your head. If the first thing you had was a good story, then I recommend Heavy Rain. If a good story is the second or third thing, then I’d recommend Heavy Rain as a rental (assuming it’s available) and make up your mind from that. If a good story isn’t even in the top 3 (what’s wrong with you?), then I don’t recommend Heavy Rain at all. If I had to give Heavy Rain a final score, I’d probably give it a nine out of ten. It’s extremely good and could probably be called a work of art, but does have a few slight problems that keep it away from perfection. That’s it for the review and I hope you enjoyed. Next review should be either Beyond: Two Souls or Saints Row The Third; I’m not sure yet. See you guys next time.

Summary

The Good:

  • Great Story
  • Good Characters
  • Good Plot Twist that’s shocking the first time, but makes sense later on
  • Great Endings where previous choices & actions truly matter

The Bad:

  • Some things aren’t a choice, but a quick time event
  • Some sections are kind of annoying

Overall: 9/10

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