There’s a lot to be said for a game that looks so real you’d swear you were watching a movie.  But, Heavy Rain
isn’t a movie.  It’s almost not a video game.  What it is, though, will have you sitting at your Playstation 3 for hours, spellbound by the story and the challenges that the game puts you through to get to the end of it in one piece.

Heavy Rain follows the lives of 4 different characters: a detective, a journalist, an FBI agent, and a father.  The father, Ethan, loses his first of two sons, Jason and Shawn, early on in a flashback when the boy darts off by himself at the mall.  Subsequently, this leads to Ethan’s divorce from his wife and a downward spiral into self-loathing and pity.

The Origami Killer is on the loose and when Ethan loses his other son, Shawn, it becomes vividly clear that the Origami Killer has him and intends to do the same with him as he did with the other boys: kill him.

The rest of the game centers around Ethan, Madison, Norman, and Scott as they all try to find Shawn, either because it’s their job or because they get entangled with Ethan and his attempt to locate his son.  Who the Origami Killer is discovered to be is a moment that most seasoned gamers would throw their controller across the room at, but in this case, that’s a good thing.  It’s a plot twist like no other seen in a video game recently and it’s a welcome one.

The controller scheme for this game is a breath of fresh air for those who have been playing video games for a long time.  The controls are rarely ever the same, except for basic functions like walking, turning, and opening doors.  Each situation your characters land in is unique and thus, the controls are adjusted to the situation, not vice versa.  Decision making is a hugely important part of this game and without it, you would literally be watching a movie.

The story is one with many branches, some leading to dead ends, some leading to success.  However, this aspect gives the game a golden replay value.  You may be able to play through the story fully in 8 to 10 hours, but the real reward of this game is being able to play through the game again, make different decisions, and get a slightly different ending each time you do so.  Every decision you make affects the ending, no matter how insignificant you may think.  Maybe it’s something you said that changed the outcome of a situation or the outcome of a situation changed the outcome of the entire story.  Maybe you got one of the main characters killed, which will ultimately change the way things turn out.

Something else quite revolutionary about this game is the fact that there is no “game over” screen.  If you get one of your characters killed, you simply move on to play as the next character, but the story will have been adjusted to account for the deceased character’s absence.  Getting one character killed can completely change the outcome of the game.  Or you could get all of them killed; it doesn’t matter.  There is no “game over”; the story simply adjusts (or ends) as necessary.

Sometimes the decisions you make are as simple as whether to open a box; others are important enough to get someone killed if you pick the “wrong” option.  The text for the options that you have may shake and be blurred around the character, making them difficult to read, which translates into the difficulty making decisions in real life.  Most of the time in Heavy Rain, there is no clear cut path to victory.  Make decisions as you would make them in real life and do what you would do if you were them.  The decisions you make in Heavy Rain could say a lot about who you are and the way you make decisions in your every day life.

The musical score for the game is also breathtaking.  In many parts, you barely notice the music is there, but in others it helps in creating a such a tension and a mental stress on you that you will have a hard time making decisions (as if making decisions isn’t hard enough already).

All in all, this is a gaming experience like nothing else in recent history.  It’s not for everyone, though; anyone who likes a lot of action and likes it to start immediately won’t get much fun out of this.  In fact, they’ll get frustration more than anything else.  Heavy Rain’s story and gameplay are slow to immerse the player, but once you’re in, you’re in.  The story starts off slow, but the little details in the beginning are what will keep you playing until the game sinks its hooks into you.

If you like a great drama film with some hits of intense action, this is the game for you.  If you like action movies with intermittent scenes of drama, you won’t like this so much.  It’s a story that everyone can appreciate, though, if you can make yourself get into it by spending the first hour or two being frustrated with slow plot and character developments.  But, once the developments start, they’re off to the races.

Heavy Rain gets a thumbs up for ingenuity, story, gameplay, and well… just about everything else.  Go buy it. You’ll be glad you did.

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