It’s been a while since I’ve first played Heavy Rain, then exclusive to Playstation 3. It has been a somewhat controversial game, with some praising what it attempted to do, some criticizing what it actually achieved, some doing both. I was mostly doing the latter, as it has been a valiant attempt from Quantic Dream to do what they wanted, but at the same time a pretty poor game most of the time. Now, years later, the game is available on PC and that is the version I’ve decided to play. It’s been… interesting.
In case you are not familiar with Heavy Rain, or the types of games Quantic Dream have been making since Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, this is an “interactive drama”, a story-driven adventure game leaning very heavily into “cinematic” events and QTEs. The game is divided into chapters and those can be viewed as completely separate scenes, connected by the overall narrative, but otherwise working mostly independently, unless the scene involves some sort of consequences for your past choices. Most of their games, this included, feature multiple playable protagonists, all of whom are somehow tied in the main story but approach it from different angles. And additionally the game has very few straight up “fail states”, continuing from a failure or even a death of one of the characters, instead of leading to a “game over”.
The plot of this particular title is centered around the Origami Killer, who kidnaps and kills children with rainwater. The son of one of the main characters is kidnapped, setting off the plot, and several characters get involved in the investigation. And, as I felt with when I originally played the game, the beginning of this game is one of the worst parts to get through. It is so incredibly stupid that going through it again I felt shame for playing the game. The whole “Press X to Jason” has become a meme immediately after the game release, and for a good reason. And replaying that section only makes it look even more dumb.
However, as the game continues, it often times becomes pretty solid. There are countless great moments, really good character scenes, tense scenarios to go through. They almost always follow up those with the game falling flat on its face, of course, but many chapters or at least parts of chapters in the game are very good. Sadly, even if they didn’t get mixed with silly parts, it wouldn’t prevent them from feeling completely disjointed. Because the game simply feels like a collection of “cool” (and silly) scenes, that do have this overarching story, but more often than not it feels tacked on. As if the story was written as a series of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” ideas that got glued together, rather than something cohesive.
And in addition to that, the gameplay is just terrible. Even if you’re less annoyed at QTEs than I tend to be, the game is consistently bad with explaining what your motion or action might actually do. You just see the button prompt over some vague direction, press/hold/mash it and then something happens. Sometimes it’s something undesirable, that you didn’t even predict the game would do. Sometimes it’s just not obvious.
I’m also surprised that even though the controls were switched from the original more tank-like concept where you “drove” the characters forward and steered them left and right to the more common 2D controls, where the camera angle defines the movement directions, it still feels horrible. There are numerous moments where the characters Yogi Bear around like idiots as you’re trying to make them get to the spot you need them to be at.
Overall, it’s very hard to recommend Heavy Rain. It has some good moments, but those are not worth going through all the rest of the game to get to. Especially since it’s not a game that is fun to actually play. Even the most interesting investigative bits with agent Nahman Jayden EfBeeAi are pretty simple and linear and not worth the effort. As an additional oddity, the PC version of the game (and PS4 port, it seems) completely lack the only DLC the original title has ever received – the Taxidermist DLC, making it far less of a definitive release than it could’ve been. Not like I would’ve recommended it anyway, but it’s still a weird decision. So yeah, even 11 years later, Heavy Rain is… interesting. But not worth playing.