 The decisions are many, the choices are few. Four separate characters all hurtling unknowingly toward the same ultimate end. Over the course of a few days, all four characters will find themselves directly involved in the investigation of the Origami Killer. Every drop of rain brings them one step closer to the end.
1. Gameplay
Way back in ancient history, video games became popular. This is way before you were born. I’m talking about 1970s and 80s. There might be a few people still alive who lived through those times, but they’re probably all encased in carbonite just in case scientists ever discover the secret to immortality or necromancy (same thing). It was around this time that movie developers started looking at games and trying to come up with the best way to merge the two most popular modern media. So they created the “interactive movie”. Games like Fahrenheit, Quantum Gate, and Star Wars: Rebel Assault hit the shelves and were almost all total disasters. There just didn’t seem to be an effective way to marry the narrative heavy motion picture with the interaction heavy video game.  Everything Fahrenheit should have been and more. Heavy Rain is exactly what big budget movie executives like Steven Spielberg envisioned when they tried to get into video games. It is a truly interactive narrative. What the other movie games failed to understand, though, is that the main difference between movies and video games is not just the level of interactivity. A game can be interactive, but if it plays itself out the players will see it as a passive experience, which for a video game is extremely boring. Players have to become emotionally invested in the storyline of the game, and that means one thing. The game has to include choice.  And more than just black and white. Choice includes the difficult grey options. Heavy Rain can be an extremely stressful experience because not only does it include choice but it also includes failure, something that almost every game avoids like the plague. Yes, a player can fail to do a task in almost every game, but if the player fails the game goes back to a previous checkpoint and forces the player to retry until he gets it right. Heavy Rain allows the player to make mistakes and continues on as if those mistakes were supposed to happen. There are many situations where one of the four main characters can die and the game changes to take this into account. There were a number of situations where I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat trying to make sure I hit all of the button prompts at the right time not because I was afraid that I would be sent back to the beginning of a challenge but because I was afraid that my failure would result in the death of a character, something the perfectionist in me would not allow under any circumstance.  Too close... But the emotional attachment the player feels with this game goes beyond just wanting to keep everyone alive. Heavy Rain does an amazing job of making simple elements rewarding in surprising ways. There was one scene where one of the characters can teach his son how to use a boomerang. I took the time to attempt this task. Not only did I feel fulfilled by having successfully thrown the boomerang myself, but I was ecstatic when my character’s son managed to throw it too. Playing with your character’s kids or saving another character’s life wasn’t just an objective, it was an active decision. I could choose whether I wanted my son to do his homework, eat a good dinner, and go to bed on time, or whether I wanted to simply not care and let him watch TV all night. It was entirely up to me.  My decisions involved teddy bears. This game has rocketed into my “Top 10 Must Play” list. It’s unfortunate that it’s a Playstation exclusive, but it’s worth picking up a PS3 just to get a chance to play this game. I cannot say enough about how awesome this game was.
This game is very long and has high replay value even without having a multiplayer. There are an absurd number of different endings, and the way that the player approaches conversations and sections can create entirely different results. Within each chapter there are many minor choices that can be made, and while each choice usually comes together for an ultimate decision, there are plenty of different twists that each player can take. There are four different main characters, each of which will have multiple endings depending on what actions the player takes over the course of the campaign. For example, Ethan has seven different potential endings. It would take weeks to cover every possible ending, excluding all of the different minor choices the player can make.
This game can get very frustrating at times. I went through the game on easy because of my relative lack of familiarity with the buttons, but even then things were very tense. I was worried about whether or not I made the right choice or whether or not I made the best choice. It was insane at times wondering if I’d done the best that I could. Because this game doesn’t truly acknowledge failure in the same way that most games do, I could end up doing something completely wrong and not really know it. This made my perfectionist side extremely unhappy.  Frick... But aside from the tension, there were only two things that frustrated me regularly. The first is that the different options I could choose from had a tendency to float around the screen relatively freely. This was a problem because in certain scenes the options would be completely offscreen for a time, giving me very little time to see them, recognize the button, and press it before I failed. The other problem I had was the way that my characters moved. They would tend to move in the direction that their head was facing, but this wasn’t always the direction that I was pushing. Camera angles change often, so while pushing up might have the player walking away from the camera in one section, after the camera switched it would have the player walking toward the camera. But the controls don’t change until you release the walk button and push it down again. This meant that my characters would often spin around in circles looking like idiots while I tried to get them to go in the desired direction. 2. Parental Notices
There are very few games when the instances of violence are less noticeable than the instances of sexuality, but Heavy Rain is one of these games. The player will get in some violent conflicts, but they’re not the “player takes on the world” events that most games portray. Most of the fights are fist fights using random weaponry found in the environment. Each fight is a quicktime event that the player can fail. If he does so, his character can die, but there is almost never any blood.  I'm practically twice his size. Why am I losing? There are only a few sequences where the violence goes beyond fist fights. These are usually much more stressful struggles involving an obvious fight for one’s life against an enemy or group of enemies that clearly have the upper hand. For example, one character is awake in her home when a few knife-wielding men break in to try and kill her. The player will always lose this fight (it turns out to be only a dream). When I lost, her throat was slit, but she wakes up immediately after this.  Pixilated knife wounds! Eeeeew! Over the course of the entire story, one of the characters is given some increasingly difficult choices. One of these choices involves cutting off the end of his pinky finger in order to get more information for the address of where his child is being held. If the player goes through with it, there are a number of “tools” in the area that the player can use to cut off his own finger. I chose to use a hatchet, but there are also scissors, pliers, and other sharp objects that can get the job done.  I imagined that this would have significantly more blood. In a later choice, the character is ordered to kill a drug dealing father in order to get more information. If the player goes through with it, he will shoot the man in the head. There is some blood with this but no gore.  It's either his life or your son's. Another section involves one of the characters going on a revenge-based killing spree in a mansion. He drives his car through the window of the mansion and proceeds to shoot every single one of the mansion’s security team. It’s almost comical since this one character is able to take out a dozen younger men with one bullet each and because there is no blood when the shots land.  It's like airsoft, but in collared shirts. A different part of the game involves one of the characters investigating a former doctor who owns an apartment complex involved in the crimes. The player will eventually be knocked out and taken into a sort of torture dungeon area. After a bit, the player must fight back against the doctor or she will be killed. If the player succeeds in fighting off the doctor, she will us a drill to stab and drill the doctor through the heart.  X marks the spot. Despite all of this, most of the gameplay will be spent in conversations, investigations, or other nonviolent activities. The events depicted above are just a small portion of the hours and hours of potential gameplay.
Sexuality is, at times, a serious factor in this game. Much of what the player sees for all categories listed will be based on the player’s decisions, but there are some things that all players will end up seeing no matter what. For example, the game opens with male character needing to take a shower. The player will have to lead the character to the bathroom and take a shower. There will be some nudity, but the game never gives frontal “lower area” nudity. Buttocks and bare chests are present though.  His shower doesn't have a door? Odd. In a later scene, the player can have the only playable female character take a shower as well. Again, only bare chest and buttocks can be seen.  Though not as odd as her bathroom, which seemed to have been made for a gymnasium. In a later chapter, the female character goes to a night club to try and get more information. In order to do so, she must “make herself sexier” and dance provocatively to get the attention of the club’s owner. This just involves tearing her skirt to a shorter length, putting on makeup, messing up her hair, and then dancing by herself on top of a short platform. Either way, it gets the attention of the club owner.  Not creepy at all. The owner invites her upstairs and then tells her to strip for him. When she hesitates, he pulls a gun and orders her to strip for him. She will then have to strip for the character. If a player is quick enough at picking the correct thought option, she will only have to take off one article of clothing. At worst, the player will take off three, leaving her topless, braless, and skirtless. She will never be able to take off her underwear.  In this case the zebra-striped lampshade is just as disgusting as the club owner, so it's really the same option. A second, much more violent scene involves the same female character. She is knocked out and taken to a basement torture chamber by an insane former doctor. During the course of the fight for her life, she feigns being knocked out. The doctor sees her butt and begins to talk and indicate that he wants to rape her, at which time she shoves a drill through his chest (as shown in the previous “Violence” section).  Crazy people are so easily distracted. If the player chooses, he can have one of the main characters enter a relationship with another character. If the player picks the correct conversation options (which is much easier than it sounds), these characters will engage in a sex scene. Exactly how much the player sees in this scene, though, depends on what actions the player takes over the course of the scene. The player can choose things like kissing the woman or taking her top off. If the player selects the appropriate options, he can get the woman completely topless. After that, the two characters roll together on the floor and, after a camera shift, end up completely naked (made evident by the fact that their pants suddenly disappear). The player can never see any of the sex, any of the nudity after the two characters become completely naked, and does not have any conversation or action options during the extremely brief scene.  I'd at least take my shoes off first.
Substances do come up a number of times, but most of these instances are just references or subtle visuals that are only briefly included for the environment. For example, there’s a party that includes drinking and drug use, but most of these are just in references that the characters make about certain people being high or using cocaine.  I'm not much for the party scene. Some characters can occasionally be seen smoking or drinking, but this is a very small part of the overall content. The most obvious substance in the game is a blue liquid called “triptocaine”. Because one of the main characters is addicted to it, it is brought up a number of times. The player will have a few instances where he can choose to try and resist the withdrawal symptoms from overuse of the drug or give in to the addiction. If the player avoids the drug whenever possible and achieves a successful ending, Norman (the character) will end up kicking his drug habit.  It looks like glitter. And it's surprisingly solid. However, if the player fails, Norman will overdose and die.  Wait, is it a gas? Then why does it look like a liquid?
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
There is one section in the game where one of the characters is investigating potential suspects. One of the suspects is a paranoid schizophrenic who has a serious attachment to the Christian religion. His apartment is filled with crosses and cruicifixes. He will recite biblical stories (even accusing one of the cops of being the anti-christ). This is the only time religion is in the game.  Quite a collection.
One of the characters is the prime suspect in a series of heinous murders of young boys. As a result, the police are constantly on this character’s tail. The player will have to make numerous attempts at evading and escaping the local police. If the player is unsuccessful, the character will be arrested and put in jail.  Guess who's in the hot seat... There is one lieutenant police officer who has some very questionable methods of searching for information. He often ignores laws about warrants and Miranda Rights and simply uses brute force to obtain information from anyone he suspects of holding out on him. This often leads to violent situations that the player will have to deal with.
There is no multiplayer portion to this game.
Extreme sports isn’t much of a factor in this game with a couple of exceptions. There is one scene where the player must drive a car at high speed on the wrong side of a freeway for five miles. It’s an extremely stressful scene because the player can fail if he doesn’t hit the right buttons at the right time. Failure means the death of the character. The player can choose to avoid the event (ensuring that the character lives), but if the player chooses to not go through with it he will end up not getting valuable information.  Screenshot from the next Need for Speed. There are also a number of scenes where characters have to evade the police. These scenes usually involve free running chases and very dangerous leaps. Somehow these characters can always avoid capture, provided the player hits the right button at the right time.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Kidnapping Kidnapping is the central element in the main plot. An insane killer has been going around the city kidnapping young boys and drowning them in rain water. Most of the game focuses on the kidnapping of one of the main character’s son and how the other characters are involved in the crime. Torture There are two specific instances of torture in this game. The most obvious is when one of the characters is knocked out and taken to an underground dungeon area. In this dungeon, an insane former doctor is going to torture her to death and makes sure to point out another man who has already been tortured to death.  He's not coming back in the sequel. The second instance of torture is much more subtle. The “Origami Killer” progressively tortures his victim by leaving the child to drown in a storm drain, but also tortures the father of the child by having the man undergo insane challenges in order to prove how much the father loves his kidnapped son. The father in this case has to do everything from driving at high speed on the wrong side of the freeway to cutting off part of his finger to crawling over broken glass and through live wires. It’s seriously sick and sadistic.  It's okay to touch the wires, just don't cross the streams. Suicide If the player fails to save the boy but the father lives, the father will always commit suicide. This either involves the father shooting himself in the head or hanging himself in jail. If the player does everything correctly, he will never see these.  Bad end. Prostitution
One of the characters in the game is a prostitute. When the player goes to her apartment, she assumes that he is a client. She lists off a series of rules and a price. However, this is the only time when prostitution is included in the game.
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