Heavy Rain – Monsoon of Murders

In my never-failing wisdom, I thought it was time to try out David Cage’s Heavy Rain on Steam. Now, I wouldn’t say it’s an entirely bad game, but if you have a heavy allergy to quick-time events, stay far away! The overload of this mechanic will probably kill within a few nanoseconds. I’m immune thanks to my passion for adventure games with a moody story. The problem with Heavy Rain, for my part is the extremely slow pacing, the fractured story with plot-holes, and the absolute lack of any challenging puzzles.

It’s raining
The story of Heavy Rain is essentially a murder story. A thriller where you get to follow 4 characters, all with a connection to the murders at hand. It starts with Ethan Mars, a happy-go-lucky man with two small sons, a good wife and a seemingly perfect suburban life. This life is however destroyed when his son is hit by a car and dies. Ethan puts the blame on himself, as he sees himself as a failure that couldn’t protect his son. His wife eventually leaves him, and he goes from the shiny life of suburbia with a green perfect lawn to a shoddy, broken down house on Crack Street USA. Life isn’t good, and it’s clear Ethan is suffering from a deep depression, but he loves his remaining son. Despite it all, he still tries to carve out a life for himself, until one day…

Origami killer
Lightening apparently strikes twice, as Ethan can’t catch a break. His remaining son is kidnapped by the infamous Origami killer, which already has a high kill tally. So, things are not looking good for Ethan or his son. The killer kidnaps young male kids, then slowly drowns them in the pouring, heavy rain. As for why? You have to play the game to find out. I won’t spoil anything except a few things regarding the ending when we come to that. During the chase for the killer, Ethan has to succeed in a bunch of trials set up by the murderer. These get progressively worse, and will take a heavy toll, on both Ethan and people around him. 

From here on out, you will switch between 4 characters, with Ethan being one of them. The others are Scott Shelby, a private investigator that has been hired by the parents of the victims to find out who killed their kids. Then we have Madison Paige, who kinda just stumbles into the plot, and becomes Ethan’s confidant and helper. And finally, Norman Jayden, an FBI agent sent to the local precinct from Washington to help the investigation of the murders. The characters are somewhat established throughout the story, but by having 4 characters, it becomes a bit messy, seeing as the events jump around all over the place. There is an easy thread to follow, as most of the characters involved want the same thing. However, everyone has a different way of investigating, and a specific personality, which can become grating if you don’t particularly like that character that you are forced to control next.

I liked the detective, and the FBI agent the most, as they work mostly as the typical whodunit protagonists – working a case. Ethan’s despair is also interesting, seeing how he must take worse and worse risks to get closer to saving his son’s life. Madison Paige felt the most random, and frankly unbelievable, until it makes some sense in the plot. But it only makes some sense, as her affection with Ethan comes off as weird. There is no reason for her to care about Ethan, past what is revealed later.

The pacing, plot-holes & puzzles
One out of the three main problems with that narrative is the extremely slow pacing, on top of its fractured nature. It takes forever to establish the main events of this interactive thriller, and from then actually going anywhere. It’s almost like watching 4 thriller movies at the same time, with the protagonists (of their personal story) going their own way to come to the same conclusion. It makes it hard to follow periodically, and paradoxically redundant, as you might already have been told that information. Going through the motions is a common thing across the game. Many scenes tell you nothing new.

To be fair, this is thanks to the fact that the main characters can die during the game, which alters how the others come across crucial findings. This is very cool, admittedly, as the story has a let-go mentality. Failure does not mean a game over, and can actually change the narration to a more captivating alternative story-line.

Another major issue is the plot-holes, that to me makes no sense and ruins the story in retrospect. I will try to minimize the spoilers, but there will be a major reveal in this segment. One example of the plot-holes is that in my playthrough, Ethan kills an “innocent” man to complete one of the trails. At the end of the game, when Ethan finds and rescues his son, I was sure I was about to get a bittersweet ending thanks to this. That is entirely ignored, and instead of getting charged for murder, Ethan is given a medal, with his life ending happily with his son and Madison. It can be explained that the cops couldn’t connect the dots of that specific murder, perhaps. However, Ethan’s blood and fingerprints would be all over the crime-scene, making it a slam-dunk case.

The third, and final nail in the coffin, is that the puzzles are so simple a blind monkey with dementia could solve them. The only gameplay that requires any kind of input is the quick-time events. The mystery is basically solved without your help. It’s a major-missed opportunity in a high budget adventure game like this. The only thing that requires the noggin’ upstairs is pressing the right button when required, and watching the story unfold. There is some serious underestimation of the target audience here. It’s such a waste, because they really nailed the atmosphere.

Noir
The visuals are great, which is the one thing they certainly nailed throughout the Heavy Rain experience. Well, except for the occasionally uncanny valley moments here and there, with characters staring dead-eyed into space while talking. The thing that sets the atmosphere is the color tone, and the relentless rain that is part of virtually every scene. It’s oppressive and works well. It’s clear they went for a feeling of noir here. Beyond that, the lighting, textures and the general environments are very impressive, especially for a PS3 title originally. It looks great, and so do the faces of the characters.

While the music, and environmental ambient sound is excellent, the voice acting comes off as weird sporadically. It seems they used European voice actors for an American setting, and it’s really jarring when it comes through. The actors try their best, but considering half the characters you meet have a middle-European accent is immersion shattering to say the least. For such a high budget game, and a title that lives and dies on its narration, this is a baffling decision.

I have to add a few points on the technical side of things. The game ran fine, but I had to adjust some of the controls through Steam, so I could actually perform the quick-time events. You can find out how on a Steam forum post by user morone. Got to say, it’s an oddity, as you would think someone would have tested the game so it actually runs correctly. Another problem I was having was a few random crashes. They always happened between scene transitions. Luckily, the game auto-saves before the crash, but annoying nonetheless.

Conclusion
Heavy Rain has great visuals and presentation for a typical adventure game. However, where it’s required to shine, aka the story, it fails for the most part. Having choices matter, with the possibility of the main characters dying off thanks to the player messing up, should be applauded. It’s cool to see the story continue, even when the important playable FBI agent falls into a metal crusher to be turned into meat balls. Yet the fractured story structure, with its many main characters, make it a fairly shallow experience overall. The ending twist will probably also put people off, but I didn’t think it was that bad. The blatant plot-holes in the story is much worse, as it will have you question if any of the narrative paths was actually thought through on a developer level. Do I recommend it? Nope. With an absolutely no-way for full price. I got it for 5 euros, and while I would say I got my money’s worth, it wasn’t very satisfying.

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas