Video Games, I fucking love you.

Note: long post most of you won't care about.

Last week (I think) I got a Playstation 3 with my birthday money after realizing that they are finally worth owning just for the exclusives. One such game I bought it for was Heavy Rain. The much hyped and shit talked "interactive drama" from Quantic Dream.




If you ever played their other game, Indigo Prophecy, you'll kind of know how Heavy Rain plays. Nearly every action you make with your character requires you to move the control stick or hold buttons in a certain way and much of the action heavy sequences simply rely on you pressing a series of buttons as accurately and quickly as they are displayed on the screen.

This is the largest reason some people are choosing to ignore this game. However, having just experienced it and having my mind blown, I'd like to say that it's more than an "interactive movie"

The game is about a serial killer dubbed the "origami killer" who kills children by drowning them in rain water and leaving origami pieces on their chests. Throughout the game you play as multiple characters including a father who has lost one son, and had his other taken by the killer, an FBI agent trying to catch them, a journalist and a private investigator.

It's all about them and how all the characters sort of collide and it's done so fantastically, here. Like a race against the clock (the HEAVY RAIN threatening to drown the son) and everyone else.

This is a game all about choices and actions and how outcomes are changed based on them. What's cool is that the game proceeds no matter how bad you "fuck up" and the story adapts as you go.

My head spins thinking about all the choices I made and how the story might change if I'd done it differently.

For instance, as Ethan, the father looking for his son, you begin to go though these "trials" the killer has set up in order to track down clues and answer the question "how far would you go to save someone you love?" and some pretty sadistic shit comes around and even though it's a damn game, as the player, you actually sit there, mouth open, saying "holy fuck. what should I do?" and that, is why this game is so fucking brilliant.

All the while the other characters are trying to solve this mystery about who the killer is and how to save the kid and so on. Each and every one of them with some unique problem that makes them more real. It's pretty awesome.

I'm not gonna sit here and talk about how this game will revolutionize gaming like some people might, but I will tell you that Heavy Rain is one of the most intense and emotionally involving experiences I've ever played.

It's not perfect or for everyone, and will probably go down in history as one of the more argued about games, but man oh man, this title alone is worth buying a PS3 for, at least to me.

To anyone who these days doubts gaming as a successful medium for crafting deep, real, mature stories...just go play this game.