Blame it on the Rain, yeah yeah. Well, I don’t know what Rob and Fab have to do with me withdrawling from society. But I do know that the latest PS3 exclusive from Quantic Dream will take you for a ride from start to finish. The game is directed by Quantic Dream’s founder and CEO David Cage, who also brought us Indigo Prophecy. This game, if you can call it that, is better than any book could be because you see the stories unfold, make any of the four protagonist do things that they may not want to do. It is described by Cage as ”a very dark film noir thriller with mature themes¹.” Well, mature themes is right. There is sex, cutting off of limbs, kids drowning in rain water, and higher than kite FBI agents, and so much more to go on about. THIS IS NOT A GAME!!! It is most definitely a experience, that feels like you have made the events unfold due to the actions you made the characters perform. In the movie “Big“, Tom Hanks talks about making a comic book that has a small screen inside, so you can put a small disc inside and make different choices so that the hero does different things. Well, Heavy Rain is that book, except the graphic in Heavy Rain are much better than that 1 inch tv from ‘88.
Cage has gone out of his way to make an experience much like that of a movie, instead of that from a game. In a fastcompany.com interview he describes why his city is nameless among other things. “Not having your story in a specific place helps to make it more universal, but also to reflect the state of mind of everybody; they are all lost in one way or another. I am a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies like Unbreakable and Six Sense; I discovered they were shot in Philadelphia. I was just in the writing process and had no specific idea regarding the background–I knew I wanted a place that would say something. I didn’t want just a postcard in the back–make my story happen in New York, or in Miami. So we took a plane to Philadelphia, hired this movie scout that worked on the movie Philadelphia. We asked him, “Could you take us to some poor houses and meet poor people?” Cage goes on by saying, “What we discovered in Philadelphia was beyond anything we could imagine. We saw despair. We saw violence. We saw fear. We saw poverty, in a way that no one in Europe could imagine takes place in the U.S. And we saw all these huge factories near people’s houses, these big chimneys with black smoke. You know where Ethan looks for his son near the school, big chimneys just behind it? This is something we saw in Philadelphia.”²
If this is how far this guy goes when just trying to fond out on how he wants the backdrop to be…well that should tell you about the rest of the game.
Gameplay - 9 - Once again, the work “gameplay” is not true to this title. You don’t just run around with the left analog stick. You use the R2 bumper to control how fast you walk forward with the left stick used to simply change direction. The coolest thing about this game is the difficulty selection. There are 3 to choose from and they are not easy, medium, hard, but how familiar with the PS3 motion controller you are. The QTEs (quick time events) are not so fast you can’t do the action, so it makes the action sequences pleasurable. The controls just work and that is really all you need for this game.
Sound - 9 - It’s not going to wow you by any means but it does what it is supposed to do. and it does what i consider on of the best things sound can do…not let you know it’s there, distraction wise i mean. Voice overs were a little wonky sometimes but hey, I didn’t give it a 10 geez. And the Music lead me into the feeling i was supposed to feel. Overall great job.
Graphics - 8.5 - Some of it looks fantastic and then some of it looks clunky. The character models look great but move unnatural sometimes.
Presentation - 9 - Holy cow the install time, just like MLB the Show, was insane but then again that is like most PS3 games, so big deal i just play my 360 while it installs. The really cool thing about Heavy Rain is that while the initial game boot up installs, the game tells you to look in your game box and take out the paper in it and then instructs you on how to make the game’s poster’s origami figure….um …can you say cool. The game didn’t even boot and it is drawing you in. And it is written and presented up to you on a cloud.
Durability - 7 - After you beat it once you might not go back to look at the 487 gazillion endings in the game. But on the plus side one play-through is 8-10 hours. I like that, and hey, it’s not a multi-player game. Get over it.
OVERALL GAMERCOACH SCORE - 8.5 w/Durability — 9 w/o Durability
-----------Games Editor For GamerCoach.com-----------Xbox Live Gamertag: MAY0R (thats m-a-y-zero-r)
If you have any suggestion, comments or topics for any upcoming Mayor’s Office, email me at Mayor@gamercoach.com, message my gamercoach profile, post on our facebook, Tweet us @GamerCoach or hit me up on xbox live. Click my gamercard to pull up my gamercard and profile to add me to your friends list.
Sony announced that up to twenty compatible games will be available in the launch window. A few of the standouts seem to be SOCOM 4, Little Big Planet, Sports Champion which seems to be a wii sports clone, and Motion Fighter. Here is the official GDC trailer showing a few of the ways to play. 
_-_The_Alien.jpg)
