Heavy Rain (PS3)

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There appears to be great variety in the scenes

Normally the story would carry on at this point, but since this was a limited E3 demo I was playing, my only option is to start again. So, I go back through the scene taking a different path this time. On my second attempt I’m more comfortable with the controls, and I also know exactly where to go. I head straight over to the stains near the acid bath, ignoring Jack completely. This time he comes to me, no doubt panicking when I make a beeline for his skeleton-in-the-bath. Before long, he’s got the gun to Norman’s head again. On this attempt I succeed in stumbling him with the kicked tool, whacking him with a hammer and swiftly overpowering him in combat. And yet I still end up in the same interrogation position. Instead of making the barrel threat, I simply break Jack’s nose with my gun. But I still get the withdrawal shakes, and I still fail to pull myself together in time.

More embarrassingly, I also fail to escape the doomed car. I manage to get Norman to kick open the glove compartment, revealing a gun, but somehow I can’t get him to reach it. I suspect that I’m failing the context action in some way, since apparently some actions must be performed at a slow, steady speed. At any rate, I’m rubbish and poor old Norm gets chomped into mince confetti. Again.

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By this point, I’m more concerned with the fact that I seem to have gone through pretty much the same scene twice: sure, the details were different, but the meat-and-spuds action was largely identical. To be fair, I was rushing through the scenario, and in both cases I was starting from the same kick-off point. In the full-game, your story will be determined by whatever you did previously, with your progression affected by the clues you did or didn’t find, the choices you made or that were made for you. Okay, so there’s a possibility that Heavy Rain will turn out to just be a very lush version of those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 1980s, but I don’t reckon this will be the case. There’s something genuinely exciting going on here, and Quantic Dream has yet to fully reveal its hand.

More than anything else on our radar, this was the game I most wanted to see at E3 – and I’m not disappointed. It’s smart, odd, creepy, and remarkably engaging on an emotional level. While Norman and Jack fall just short of being photorealistic, they’re certainly the closest thing we’ve seen in any video game to date, and the way they act and move is simply incredible. And we’ve still not touched upon what else the game might have in store: aside from the playable confrontation in the junkyard, Sony and Quantic Dream were also demoing a sequence involving Madison Paige, the character from last year’s Leipzig showcase. Where Norman’s scene was heavy on combat and exploration, Madison’s scene involved a more puzzle-like approach, requiring her to first meet and then manipulate a seedy nightclub owner. But perhaps that’s a story for another day. For now, the bottom line is that Heavy Rain continues to tickle my sense of expectation. It’s the most interesting concept I’ve seen in a video game for years, and after a little taste of the action, I want more.

Heavy Rain is expected for release in 2010, only on PS3.

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