Heavy Rain (PS3)

Heavy Rain (PS3)

Sudeep Naik, Apr 03, 2010 1000 hrs IST

An engaging interactive story

Unique controls and gameplay, character actions affect the story, character modeling

Character animation needs refinements, variations in character tones would have made it better, long loading times - especially towards the end

Expert Rating :

Expert Review

The reason our game reviewer is not writing this piece is because he is lazy, doped up and a purist!

According to him, Heavy Rain isn't a game. It's an interactive movie and so, technically, he can't "play" it and so it doesn't qualify as his "work". Funny part is, I agree with him; at least with the part that this is not a game but most definitely an interactive story and narrative.

Heavy Rain is an interactive drama that will absorb you in the plot with great narrative, unique controls and the fact the story will adapt to the decisions and actions your character performs in the game. Be warned though, all this comes to effect only after about 90 minutes of boring buildup and acclimatizing yourself with the controls.

Characters

There are four main playable characters.

Ethan Mars (played by PascalLangdale) is an architect with a wife and two sons. He lives a comfortable live in a beautiful house with his wife and two sons. An accident leaves him in a coma while killing his eldest son Jason. Grief-stricken and depressed, he separated from his wife and has no emotional connect with his younger son Shaun.

Soon enough, Shaun is kidnapped by the Origami killer forcing Ethan to go extreme lengths to save him.

Madison Paige (voiced by is Judi Beecher, mocap Jacqui Ainsley) is a hot journalist. She suffers from chronic insomnia; occasionally checking into motels, as that's the only place she can sleep peacefully. Eventually, she gets involved with the Shaun Mars case and starts conducting her own investigations.

Norman Jayden (played byLeon Ockenden) is a FBI profiler sent to assist the police with their investigation into the Origami Killer. He possesses a set of augmented reality glasses called an "Added Reality Interface", or ARI that port him to a virtual workspace and allow him to investigate crime scenes and analyze evidence. He is also addicted to the drugtriptocaine.