Heavy Rain - some thoughts

I've been playing, apocalyps3 excepted, Heavy Rain over the last few evenings. It's a compelling game and, such is its reliance on narrative, I'll not go into any plot details. I've avoided all reviews of the game in order not to spoil the experience and it would be churlish of me to then spoil it here. I figure that it must be a very difficult game for a journalist to review - to convey the writer's thoughts on the game, without giving anything away on the plot.

I'm not going to attempt anything so arduous as that. Instead I'm going to talk about the emotions that I felt during those parts of the game that I have played so far. I'm about 5-6 hours in and I would be lying if I said that it had been a fun experience, in the normal sense of the word. The feel of the game is very similar to the film Se7en, another intelligent, claustrophic, uncomfortable but at the same time very enjoyable experience.

Rather, playing the game has been compelling to the point of discomfort - in several places I've felt my heart beat faster as a result of the on-screen action and, like with a good horror movie, I've wanted it to end, while at the same time enjoying the experience.

I wonder if this cinematic feel is partly due to a slight disconnection between the player and the onscreen avatar. Much of the time the player is in full control of the action onscreen, but at the key, most action-filled points - an assault, for example - the play goes 'on rails' and control is maintained via a series of prompted button presses, which have to be executed within an exacting time limit. Much the same thing happened in Quantic Dream's previous game, the interesting, if flawed, Fahrenheit (aka, for reasons beyond me, Indigo Prophecy).

Although the phrase 'interactive movie' sounds a death knell for gameplay, the game is movie-like at these points. I feel, as with a movie, that I'm a viewer - with some interaction admittedly, - rather than a player during these phases.

I think this is part of the reason why I'm not as far into the game as I would expect for a recently-purchased AAA game. I tend to game at nightime, after my daughter has gone to bed (not including playing kid-friendly titles, which Heavy Rain certainly isn't) having, at the other end of the day, got up at 530am for work. While the passive activity of watching TV can make me feel drowsy (I never understood, as a kid, how my parents could fall asleep in front of the telly - I do now), gaming generally keeps me alert. I'm no scientist ('O' level biology doesn't really count, does it?) but I figure that brain activity is far higher when you are gaming, concentrating intently on the screen with your eyes, while working the controller with your hands) as opposed to zombied out in front of UK daytime TV hell 'Loose Women'.

However, Heavy Rain doesn't keep my drowsiness at bay - I've been feeling 'TV tired' while playing it. This has meant that I haven't been having long sessions on it 'til stupid o'clock in the morning, as would normally be the case with a new game.

That's not to say it is in any way boring - far from it. The shortish bursts I've been playing, I've thoroughly enjoyed. Graphically, It is as good as anything I've ever played and storywise it is as strong as Bioshock (currently - hopefully it won't go silly in the last third like Fahrenheit did). The voice acting is of variable quality - some very good, some decidedly average - but that may just be in comparison with the last game that I played, Uncharted 2 (for which the voice acting was near perfect).

Overall, it is an experience that I'd recommend to anyone that is interested in a game that tries to do something different within the gaming medium, but don't expect it to deliver on normal videogame conventions.