Heavy Rain Hands-on Preview

Norman Jayden is a man with a problem. He’s a troubled detective on the hunt for the Origami Killer – a serial murderer who likes to leave little paper mementos in the hands of his victims. At this current moment in time he’s standing in a dilapidated junkyard, catching a cold in the drizzling rain. He’s also having problems walking in a straight line – but this has less to do with his secret drug addiction, and more to do with the fact that I’m a bit rubbish at controlling him.

Heavy Rain is a highly unusual experience, an oddity that occupies a space somewhere between the graphic adventure genre and an interactive movie. Its story – which still largely remains a mystery – is told through the exploits of four characters, each of them motivated by different goals and personality traits. The game is divided into open-ended scenes that can unfold in several different ways depending on your actions, and no one path can be considered to be the “right” one. There are clues to discover, people to interrogate and threats to be overcome, but the story will progress regardless of whether you succeed or fail in these actions. Not even death itself can stop the narrative from continuing, since the plot can continue even when only one of the main players is left alive. It might even carry on when everyone is dead and buried. Perhaps.

This unconventional concept takes a lot of getting used to, but the truth is we still don’t know exactly how Heavy Rain will work. All we have to go on is a lot of mysterious chatter from developer Quantic Dream, that jaw-dropping demo from Leipzig last year… and now poor Mr Jayden, still standing in the rain. And since he’s the only part of the whole project that I’ve had hands-on experience with, it’s to him we’ll now turn.

As with most third-person games, Heavy Rain is controlled using twin analogue sticks. The left one is largely used to govern your movement, while the right, along with the face buttons, is for a vast number of contextual actions. You actually have to hold down R2 to start walking, and once you’re on the move your character will move in whichever direction you select with the left stick. All movement is conducted relative to your current view of the action – so in other words pushing up will cause you to walk towards whatever happens to occupying the top half of the screen. It seems odd at first but it’s absolutely necessary since your perspective frequently jumps about, much as it would do in a film or TV show. You’ve always got the option of at least two camera angles, switchable via one of the shoulder buttons, and you soon fall into the habit of adjusting to a perspective that feels comfortable for whatever you’re trying to do.

As you explore scenes you’ll frequently see little icons appearing by parts of your body or by objects in the gameworld. Each of these symbols denotes an action you can take by pushing the relevant button or making a specific stick movement. Some of these actions are relatively pedestrian – opening a car door, for example – while others allow quick reflex-responses to incoming threats. As with the camera and movement controls, these contextual actions seem a bit strange initially but soon become second nature – leaving you to get absorbed into the story at hand. And believe me, as a result of the stunning graphics, intelligent writing and top-class voice acting, you’ll probably get sucked in pretty quickly.

At the start of Quantic’s E3 demo, Norman Jayden is investigating a dodgy character named Mad Jack, the owner of the aforementioned scrapyard. People with the word “mad” in their name tend to be a bit unhinged, and this guy’s no exception: you know that he’s had dealings with a car you’re looking for, but Jack’s a tattooed thug with a criminal history, so it’s unlikely he’ll be too happy to see you. Indeed, these concerns are one of many things running through Norman’s mind at the start of the scene. By holding L1, a selection of words will appear swirling around the detective’s head. Hit the relevant button, and you’ll hear what’s on his mind. These thoughts can give you a useful incite into the situation at hand, and at times they’ll even save your life – more on this later.

After leaving the safety of his car and having a bit of a think, Norman wanders over to a hefty JCB and calls out to Jack. The big man jumps down and growls some terse answers to Norman’s questions – it doesn’t seem that I have much choice over the dialogue here. After Jack slinks off, Norman enters the yard’s workshop. By following a simple command, I get our hero to equip his ARI – a futuristic piece of forensic equipment that gives our man a CSI-like view of hidden stains and fingerprints. Having donned a natty set of shades and an electronic glove, Norman is now able to scan his surroundings at regular intervals, with interesting discoveries highlighted for further inspection; taking a closer look at a clue will also summon boxes of information that “hang” in mid-air, in a style reminiscent of Minority Report (or perhaps Dead Space). A set of tire tracks catches my eye, but it turns out that they’re not from our missing vehicle. Then Norman reveals a set of bloody footprints… a macabre trail that leads right up to a dissolving skull in a nearby acid bath.

A gun appears at the back of our hero’s head. Jack’s back – and boy is he pissed. He explains that the melty bonce belonged to another cop who came poking around, and now he plans to give you a similar Extreme Makeover. As he’s dragged away to his doom Norman tries to kick a metal tray under Jack’s feet – but I fluff the command and the villain merely mocks my attempts at escape. Things are looking serious until I suddenly manage to give Jack the slip by hitting him in the face with a hook hanging from a cable. A tense fight commences: Jack’s clearly the tougher man, whaling into Norman with an iron bar; meanwhile I’m desperately trying to keep our hero alive. I foul-up another command and Norman takes a heavy blow- a weighty attack that looks horribly painful. Then my reflexes wake up and I start to turn the tide. I dodge a swipe that sends Jack crashing into a car windscreen. There’s a desperate struggle for the gun, then Norman emerges in control.

At this point, we get to interrogate Jack. He refuses to co-operate, and I’m presented with several options to pursue. I try being forceful in my words; Jack tells me where to go – and not politely, either. I threaten to shoot one of the gasoline barrels near where the thug is slumped, and this time he relents. Things are going well until Norman’s nose starts bleeding. Unfortunately Jayden is addicted to a drug called Triptocaine: you can choose to take it during his scenes, but doing so also worsens his overall habit. Our junkie cop manages to drop his fix, and Jack clocks that he’s in trouble. I fail a quicktime challenge to grab the fumbled drugs, and the tables are turned once more. Norman collapses, and Jack knocks him out with a savage kick to the head.

When he comes to, Norman is handcuffed to the steering wheel of his car, which is in turn being carried towards an evil-looking crushing device. If I don’t do something quickly, Norman’s buggered – and unfortunately, I’m panicking. It turns out that I’m not the only one: the detective’s thoughts now appear as a-near unreadable swirl of randomly changing letters, making it tricky to lock-on to a sensible course of action. I try honking the horn – a grimly hilarious mistake that cuts to a long shot of the hooting car, moving ever closer to a crunchy death. I tug at the cuffs, haul myself about… but it’s no use. The vehicle drops into the grinder, and Norman Jayden is mulched into cat food.

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.

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.