Heavy rain is a game I didn’t think I would buy, play, nor like. I thought the only good thing about it would be the story. I was wrong on all accounts. I described my experience with the game to a friend as “the game to me. I was spazzing out in my chair, like a kid trying to make moves by twisting and turning the old NES controller”. “Ah yes”, he replied, “the old Mario Maneuver” (i.e. trying to get Mario to jump a little further by jerking the controller itself over). Exactly.
And now, with out revealing the killer, into the spoilers….
Heavy Rain starts off slow. You begin as Ethan, you wake up, brush teeth, get dressed, and generally waste time until your wife and kids come home. This is all designed as a tutorial, just to get you familiar with the controls. Then you can help your wife or play with the kids. In a bit you’ll be at a mall, where the kid you are watching wonders off. Twice. Because he is a Moron. The kid starts walking away, and you are a FOOT a way from him and yell, but he doesn’t respond. He was slowly not getting away from you, like a zombie. Maybe he was looking at a tv (The boob-tube as my parents call it). Either way, I would have yelled at and put the fear god in him. Instead, Ethan sounds like HAL-9000 when Dave was ignoring him “what are you doing Dave…. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do”. Guess you he wanted a balloon. He gets it and immediately wonders off again. Followed by 10 minutes of “Jaaaaaaaaaaaaa-son!” as you search for him. Why did they only record the 1 call? Why not have 3 or 4 variations of the call, so it didn’t sound so ridiculous? Lazy. Anyways, the moron LEFT THE MALL AND CROSSED THE STREET. He can’t hear you when you are a foot away, but he can hear you from across the street on a busy road and 2 busy sidewalks. The moron then runs back across the street to you. Into traffic. So Ethan jumps out and tries to shield his son from the blow of the oncoming car with his body.
6+2 some months later, Ethan is a manic depressive standing in the rain outside a school yard. Only 1 of his sons comes out and they drive off. Oh, so that first kid died. Thanks for the info. More boring stuff happens, I’m assuming it’s to set the tone for the rest of the game. Game is 4 people looking for the Origami Killer, and his latest kidnapped victim, Ethan’s other son Shaun, before Shaun becomes the latest murder victim.
I’m not going through the game for you. You can read the Synopsis here.
Your decisions and actions during the game will affect the narrative; certain actions may lead to different scenes and endings. There are 4 characters that you play as through out the game. This isn’t a choice, as long as that character lives. Oh did I not mention that? Yay, any of those 4 characters (plus some key NPC’s) can die, and the game/story will continue. That’s important to know ahead of time, because there were plenty of things were I was like “shit, I screwed up! oh god, (s)he is going to die!)”.
What’s that? Did I just insinuate that I cared about something in the game? Hells yes I did. This game got me hooked. Just make it through the first 2 or so chapters, and you will be too. Let me just say, there are some TENSE moments in the game. Every fight scene was tense. My heart was pumping. Those are weak words that, unfortunately, will fail to sway any to play this game. But if you ever have the chance, play it for yourself, and you will see what I’m talking about.
Yes, I fail at describe heart racing action in a video game. Fuck off.
But onward to my bitching! (because that is why you read this).
A) the voices of the kids (there are 4 in the game) are all horrible. They are French accent-lisped voices on American Kids, in the an “east coast city, USA” (reportedly Philly). They would have been fine if they just said it was in London or something, and had accents all over the place. They also spoke with words and phrases, and in styles, that kids, especially those from the US, would never say. It’s jarring and threatened to completely take me out of the experience.
On the other hand, I found almost all the adults fine to listen too, with the noted exception being Lauren, the mother of a previous victim of the Origami Killer (she just as bad as those damn kids).
B) Plot holes. I’m not going to say what, because most will, if not say who the killer, will imply who the killer is not. Since you are friends and not the mindless internet (so far unaware of us. yay?), I am trying not to spoil any plot points. Let me know if you have finished the game and then we can talk (note to self, update this post in a 6-12 months, regardless of if others finished it yet). I’ll try to give a general example of one. One character finds something out and needs to call someone. You have the choice of calling person A or person B. The problem is this character HAS NEVER MET PERSON B!!! How do they know about them? The only thing I can think of is that I missed some action or made a wrong decision that prevented the 2 from meeting. But they designed the game this way (remember all playable characters can die, they don’t all have to be alive at the end of the game), so they should have accounted for 2 people never meeting.
C) Possible actions are associated with a button or control movement, but are not explained and you have no idea what they are really going to do, despite how obvious you think the choice might be. I believe this comic highlights exactly what I’m talking about.
Arrghh… why am I so nice. You fuckers better hurry up and play this game. All the juicy shit that I wanted to talk about I ended up taking out so as to not ruin the game for you. RAAAAGGGEEEE!!!!! contained.
I read somewhere (but definitely heard in Zero Punctuation) that there are tough choices you have to make in this game, really tough choices. care to divulge? I’m curious but don’t want to scour message boards.
From what I played of Indigo Prophecy (I reached a point in the game that I somehow quickly passed through what the commends were and was essentially stuck), I enjoyed that. This is probably a game I’d enjoy but likely because you can just be a jerk to everyone. I’d make the guy drink instead of playing basketball with his son, etc.
GasFace says:
I finished Heavy Rain this weekend. I loved it but had a problem with two glaring plot holes. I have yet to read Dans critique, and will right again after i do.
FAT DAN says:
My Critique was more of a “fuck… some one else play this so I can critique it and we can talk all about the stuff I can’t talk about yet because no one else has finished it”
GasFace says:
I finished it on Sat. The two things that bothered me were The fact that you were controlling Scott the whole time in the clock fixers store, and yet somehow Scott is the one who killed him. If I remember correctly, the old guys goes out back and you still control Scott. Then all of a sudden he is dead. Also the guy fighting Norman in the club is not big enough to be Scott.
Also the whole forgetting about the blackouts and Ethan waking up with origami figures
The game hooked me as well. I wont be playing for other endings though. Too much tedium to play again. I saved the kid and had a relationship with Madison.
Good enough for me. Good Guy ending i guess.
PS. I loved the blunder trophy when i killed the religious guy. Big Woops, reminded me of pulp fiction. “oh damn, i just shot Marvin in the face!”
FAT DAN says:
Haha, I ended up not killing the religious guy. I thought it might have been a trap, and i really wanted to shoot the other cop, because he was such a dick.
The guy fighting Jayden was totally big enough. You are just stuck on the silhouette of Shelby with the trench coat. I had to reply watch scenes of the clock repair shop to figure that other part out. You are NOT always in control of Shelby. There is a part when you have to go answer the phone. Then the old guy goes into the back room and a cut scene plays where Lauren is playing with the music box. THEN you go and check on the guy. The part that bothered me was that I know I cleaned everything off, and we leave. the for no reason explained, we are in the police station going “we left because we wanted to avoid sitting here for 4 hours explaining that we are innocent” “oh. ok… you can go now”. Zero consequence… awkward scene…. and waste of time.
There were soooo many plot holes. Ethan’s blackouts never explained outside of “he was in a coma for 6th months” implying that there were some lingering effects. But that doesn’t explain why he wakes up in front of the same warehouse, nor why he’s holding an origami figure.
Also, not sure how your game played out, but in my game, after Madison gets out of the Shelby’s apartment she has to call someone to let them know who it was, with the choices being Ethan or Jayden. She never even MET Jayden, how does she know to call him? You can even select to call him and she’ll think something before you are asked to confirm your choice. She said “I have to call Jayden, he’s the only one I trust”. WTF? All this trust in someone that you don’t even know exist, much less met!
My ending had 3 of the 4 dead. I screwed up on the Madison Motorcycle scene when she’s trying to convince them that Ethan is not the killer, so she got arrested. Jayden died by getting knocked out with a sledgehammer to the head fighting Shelby on the conveyor belt. Shelby stepped off of it while Jayden rolled along until his body was dumped into the giant chipper/grinder thing. Because Madison was in cuffs in a police car, and Jayden dead, there was no one to stop the cops from shooting Ethan. They had a sniper take him out…. and then they all opened fire on him and shot him about 20 times. His son watched from just inside the door. The epilogue had a report saying that Ethan was killed in a police incident that is under investigation, and the body (chopped up body?) of FBI Agent Jayden was found at the same scene, and that the identity of the Origami Killer is still unknow (which is crap, because Madison is alive an knows who it is. They can go and search the burnt out apartment). Madison writes a book about it, but is challenged by a supposedly new killer, who you don’t see (”perhaps you need a more vicious target” or something like that. I SMELL SEQUAL!). I was able to save Lauren for the car, so in the epilogue after beating Jayden, Shelby is just walking up to Lauren in the street (how she found him? I don’t know, since he doesn’t have an apartment anymore). She goes “You were never hired by the other families. I called all of them. You were just collecting the evidence from them. I swore to you that I intended to kill the bastard myself. I still do”. Then holds a magnum up to his face. It cuts to black as you hear the gun shot.
GasFace says:
Yeah, my ending was way different. Jayden seemed to die becasue of ari overdose. Shelby was shot by ethan, when shelby was stalking madison at the plant.
I now have to replay this, or at least the ending, to get the “hey you didn’t suck and get all the wrong killed” ending.