side note: if they ever make a sequel or something, they should call it that

DISCLAIMER: MINOR SPOILERS!

Heavy Rain, for those of you who haven't been either eating it up like madmen or being yelled at about it by said madmen, is a nine hour long interactive drama made by Quantic Dream, the same group that cranked out Indigo Prophecy(or Fahrenheit depending on your location). Both games are similar in the sense that they both use QTE mechanics for the entirety of the game. Also note that both involve the silliest concept in which the weather is not only tied to the title; Fahrenheit involving severe blizzards and a dangerous decline in temperature while Heavy Rain involves...well....lots of rain. Both make use of the insane weather conditions to be prime factors that drives the story to critical moments(to which I will retain for those who have yet to play the games).

Moving on.

Now Heavy Rain, being the steaming pile of pretentiousness that it is, toots is horn heavily on the fact that it wants you to know that the story is the most dominant aspect of the "gameplay." I think that the developers hammered so much of the game to be all story it becomes more of a movie and less of a game. A really shitty movie at that. Its like they tweeked it just enough so that its as close to a movie as possible and to prevent it from being torn apart like one(because its shitty) that they added enough gameplay to it to save it from any hardball perspectives.

So lets talk about the gameplay for a minute here.

This game is 90% QTE with the other 10% being you, the player, shuffling about with tank like controls moving the character you are playing from one QTE to another. The one thing that baffles me about the whole concept of QTEs is that they are indeed scripted and by Quantic Dream's standards; as long as there is a shit ton of them, then we can say that you can have multiple options. Which is horse shit because it is an illusion to the fact that no matter what you do in most parts of the game, the result will be the same. This is so because they still want to shoe horn their flimsy story even if it means that your involvement has to be removed in order to do so. But its ok because they throw a crap load of worthless QTEs to keep you distracted from the fact that you have about a much involvement in how a story progresses as a actor does when the director says "NO! Fuck you, we are sticking to how I want to do it regardless of your input!" Now when I say worthless QTEs I really do mean QTEs that have NO reason being there, being done, or even happening in the first place. I won't even spoil anything in giving you an example: one of the characters you play is an FBI investigator on the case and you meet with the Chief of Police on his way to a press conference and he makes you TIE HIS TIE while you talk to him. What makes this stupid is that you are an FBI agent that can easily pull authority over him and he is a lowly Chief of this shit town that rains all the god damn time and HE is the one making YOU tie his tie like you were his wife. Also he is in such a rush to make this press conference when he should in fact be talking to your character more in depth about the case because well you're FUCKING FBI. Besides the useless QTEs the rest are faster paced QTE fights or panic points in which your reaction time is consequential to the resulting aesthetic appearance of the character albeit bruises, cuts or silly things like mud in your pants. In my honest opinion toward the use of QTEs here in comparison to other games, I think it handles it well in the sense that you aren't suddenly surprised by it(RE4 anyone?) and that some of it is some what clever. I will say that some of the actions, the pressing of buttons or moving of analog, is rough because the styling of the notifications are so hard to discern that you end up accidentally doing one thing instead of another.

Ok onto the story.

I am going to say this outright; the whole idea that they tout on about "your decisions have consequences" is a load of shit. That thought can only work in the events that are most convenient to the story and no where else. This isn't like ME2 where saying the wrong thing can make a character just not wanting to have anything to do with you(and telling you to fuck off literally too). This is more like decisions made at the end of the game that decide predetermined outcomes(i.e. who lives or dies), other than that the game unfolds the same way every single time. This game is, via illusion, trying to tell you that the killer could be anyone. They give you alot of red herrings that are not only, by the players perspective, could be incredibly indicative of who is the killer but they are also thrown out about as fast as you see them. The throwing out of the red herrings gives way to a shit ton of plot holes. This is not a game of Clue like they lead you to believe when you start playing it because it will always fold out the same no matter what you do. They never really explain why it is that person thoroughly enough for me to be convinced but once they unveil it to you the person becomes the most dastardly villain that is as crazy as the other suspects you run into.

Speaking of Characters.

In the game you play 4 characters; Ethan Mars(average joe), Madison Paige(journalist who is presumably psychic because of the plot holes), Norman Jayden(FBI detective) and Scott Shelby(Private detective). I'm going to skip over the other three and jump right on Norman Jayden because he is the silliest one of them all. This guy is investigating the case with a device called ARI which convinces me that in contrast with the technology of EVERYTHING else in the game that he is in fact from the future. This device is so ridiculously advanced that it makes me wonder why in the hell was there a part of the game where Ethan took his son to the park when they could of have been sitting on their couch playing hand ball with the ARI device attached to their heads. It's just mind boggling that Norman is investigating the killings with this device with such accuracy that I have no idea as to why they haven't already caught the guy because hes been killing for a few years. This little quirk along with his drug addiction(which technically you'd think the FBI would do drug tests on their agents) and terrible voice acting makes him the most out of place character in the whole game. Even the over the top bad guys you run into in the game fit more into that world than Norman. I swear that guy is from the future.

Overall this game's content quality does not hold well with all of the hype that it has generated over the years. The shoddy and forceful story telling and tedious QTEs takes a lot of player agency from the game. It feels more like a crappy movie than a decent game. I would say rent it if you want to see what you missed with Indigo Prophecy in a more realistic setting but to me its not worth a buy because of the lack of replay value due to its unchanging story.