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Heavy Rain Playstation 3

Heavy Rain

Interactive morality test

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Review Entertaining, thought-provoking and not to be easily dismissed. These are the reactions that come to mind after working my way through Heavy Rain, the interactive drama/game from developer Quantic Dream, a company previously known mainly for Fahrenheit.

They are also French, and when everything goes a bit Jean Luc Godard I kept telling myself, “Give them a break, they are French”.

Heavy Rain Playstation 3

"One ring and two jammy please"

The main narrative of this game/interactive film centres on a series of murders committed by the Origami Killer. He is so named because he kidnaps boys and drowns them five days later, leaving them all with an origami model in their hand and an Orchid flower on their chest.

You play four main characters whose stories start separately but become intertwined as you interact with the game. You start the game as Ethan Mars, a successful architect with a fittingly posh house and two kids. Sorry mate, that’s all about to change!

His youngest son is killed in a slow motion car accident at the start of the game and then everything seems to take an appropriately depressing tonal shift as his other son goes missing. The game manages to evoke a great amount of empathy for poor Ethan, even while his terrible luck makes your gaming experience more gripping and involved.

The token female character is reporter Madison Paige, who is introduced to us getting beaten up by masked men in her underwear. I did have fleeting thoughts of this developing into some kind of snuff narrative before the twist came in at the end of the scene.

Another unfortunate - Norman Jayden - seems to be a rather ineffectual FBI profiler with a massive drug problem (I had fun plying him with tripto at every opportunity).

Finally there is poor old asthmatic private detective Scott Shelby, who seems to be this story’s punching bag.

Heavy Rain Playstation 3

When I'm cleaning windows

Loving it..

It's a VERY different game, and very refreshing (if depressing at times).

It's got ALOT of replay value, as you need to play it several times to see the effects of your decision. Every once in a while, a game turns up that redefines a genre, and this is one of them. It certainly deserves more than a 85% IMHO. More like a 95%.

There were a couple of bugs in the initial release, so make sure you go online and get the patch that sorts these out.

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Interesting...

...who is introduced to us getting beaten up by masked men in her underwear....

Why were the masked men wearing her underwear?

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Makes a change from the usual title releases...

...more please.

(Can characters please walk faster though).

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