Heavy Rain

Trev recently lamented the heavy use of quick-time events in gaming; if so, he'd probably hate Heavy Rain, which is basically QuickTime Event: The Game. I mean, the genre is apparently called 'interactive movie'. The gameplay is almost like Mass Effect or especially L.A. Noir stripped of all gunfighting, where in dozens of ten-minute vignettes you take control of four different protagonists, all of whom find their lives connected in trying to solve the case of the 'Origami Killer'- a murderer who has been drowning children and leaving sickeningly difficult tests as clues to find him. I guess you could say the games takes some cues from the Saw series, but that trope has been around forever and none of the main characters are really forced into anything. Now that I think of it, I guess it's not far off from the second of those movies, where a man must basically listen to a psychopath and do what he says in order to save his son. What's interesting about Heavy Rain is that it never really stops or resets- now and then you can't progress until you complete the task at hand, but you can't get a "game over" that forces you to restart, even if you're going about the case all wrong. Which is what I did. I wasn't that interested in actually doing things correctly to solve the case, but in making this a believable 'movie' for myself. There's a large combination of endings depending on your choices throughout the game, and I got the darkest of all, one where everyone has failed and the killer remains at large (although you do find out his identity). Is the game even 'beaten?' Heavy Rain seems to think so, as I got an achievement and everything. Simply getting to an ending is enough for them, and there's a complete story no matter what happens. The story in itself was pretty decent- I admit I didn't see the identity of the killer coming at all, and they threw in a number of convincing red herrings that kept things interesting. I guess my only real problem was the voiceover work- most of the time it was decent enough but at times it can just be brutal and end whatever immersion I had- one of the game's most infamous moments is a brutal segment where a father repeatedly calls out his son's name like Michael from LOST, and then you have to do it all over again later! Even though Heavy Rain wasn't perfect, I do hope it signals a new trend- sometimes I want to play through a story, but don't feel like testing my platforming or shooting skills. Will we get more games of the 'interactive movie' variety? Well, I haven't noticed any, but I'll keep an eye out for them.