Heavy Rain - It's Never Rained so Hard.

WOW.... oh wait you want me to write more, sure.

Heavy rain, is a PS3 Adventure game based on the idea of, "How far will you go to save the one you love?" Let me tell you right now, that it is going to have to be quite far! I rented this game last night, and got to start playing it at 10pm, which I could not put down till 2am! Man is this game awesome.


As with most adventure games you have to do some mundane things to get the story going. But Heavy rain manages to take these mundane situations and make them interactive and enjoyable to watch. Take for instance the fact of changing a baby, and feeding it. Through the simple, yet complex control system of the ps3, the mix of holding buttons and slowly rocking the controller produce the motions of calming a baby. And don't think Resident Evil on me here, it isnt just a bunch of walking around and then Frantically pressing XXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOO to save your life. Be prepared to shake your whole body!

You follow 3 characters, although some how I counted 4, but anyway. The drama, romance, and suspense is so wonderfully played out through the scenes you follow that you just seem to never get the opportunity to press "start" and put the controller down. I love games that do this, as it is no longer a game but a interactive movie. I don't want to go into too much detail about the game because the idea of it is that it is your story. Every action you do has a reaction, choose to ask about shoes, and who knows, you might have to recall what color those shoes were to the police.

The story line is rather dark, as the name might suggest. In your city there is a killer who prey's on 9-13 year old boys, drowning them in rain water. His Clues are a Origami figure in the hand and a orchid on the chest, leaving the bodies by the train tracks in empty lots. But the story goes deeper than hunting this killer down. The killer may be one of the characters, and you may be helping him. The Killer also has a alternative motive, which you will learn about, and returns you to the question of "how far will you go?" Which got me to figure out, that how far did the previous victims family's get?

Although the main graphics are stunning, and the skin textures and volumetric rain fall is Beyond what I have ever seen in a video game. There still is a underlying layer of low poly models, and jerking animation. It's almost like they rigged up a robot with really sharp motors and the actions can be choppy. At one scene I saw 100 people at a stand still then just start walking all at once. Don't be fooled, this game is a heavy rain of emotions. At one moment you will forget to breath, and at another you may get a little left behind wondering what to do. No problem just press a button and hear what your character is thinking.

I have to say that the Fight scenes in Heavy Rain are Cinematic to the core. You can be fighting a character and be winning the battle and miss a button to press and your back in the fight. The controls are based heavy on using the thumb stick to create actions and pressing X,O, Square and Triangle. I found myself having to use both my hands as your forced to hold down more than 7 buttons at a time. Then you have to shake the controller, side to side, up down all over. It is intense, and I can see that they really wanted to open up the controls to a more "wii" mentality of fans. The only down side I found to the controls, was the case of walking. Pressing R2 enables you to walk but I found in certain areas that my area of walking was highly controlled and became frustrated when I could not approach the door. This lead to my deductive reasoning that me being trapped inside a apartment full of crazy things, was most likely part of the plot, and I should wait around.

Back in the day, and even sometimes today, Video games were either, cool to look at, or a deep controlled story. It is rare to get both, and time was spent to make sure that the inter mingling is made very clear. I praise the designers of the game, and the team that made sure that you can have your Cake and eat it in the rain.

On one last note, and again I don't want to ruin the Fantastic Scenery of the game for you, but playing as the FBI agent has to be one of the most Fantastic Technological Fantasy moments I have ever experienced. Once you get to the Dark and dismal Office space, you will understand.

after 5 hours of play, I can only assume there is about 20 more hours to go!