Heavy Rain is a bad narrative, a bad game, and a bad influence on game designers and players. It's also one of the more significant games that's I've been delighted to play this year. It's fairly common on this space of mine to say that all modern game design ideas are bad and to chide those who enable them, but I've got no reservations in giving Heavy Rain my notable "Mr. McCarthy's urban underachievers award" with a beaming smile a parent might reserve for their handicapped child after they burn down the kitchen on the pretenses of "cooking like daddy".
Let's break it down.
Playing Heavy Rain taught me that David Cage is apparently both suffering from ADD and slightly autistic at the same time. In a bizzare twist, however, I don't mean these terms as a complete insult, but rather as legitimate descriptors of his so called "writing".
Every scene and decision you make in Heavy Rain unfolds in the same tripartite format every time of: looking/reacting/combating. Those who contest this forms a beautiful narrative when repeated some forty odd times are, with the full weight of an insult, morons.
Heavy Rain's story has no sense of pacing in any fashion beyond the immediate shock value. While critics may argue that the game advances "interactive fiction" or whatever superlative they may be thinking of in describing what is the adventure game yang to Myst.
Case in point is with the female character Madison.
She's a character I felt bad for only because she's stuck in a world written by men with little exposure to how actual women operate. Her characteristics beyond "journalist that is never once seen doing journalist things" is simply "she has tits and an ass". Every scene in which you control her attacks her sexuality and female qualities in some capacity, leading you to remain "uncomfortable" in any scene she takes a part in. You'll be raped with a drill, forced to strip, and even take part in completely unnecessary fucking for the sake of there being fucking.
In short, she's a tool to the detriment of the other characters both male and female. Never once did any of her plot threads lead to any serious conclusions nor did she ever do anything to make herself a particularly interesting character I wanted to see survive beyond a simple "boy I sure don't want a drill stuck in my vag either".
She the figurehead of the aformentioned greater narrative problem as a whole outlined above. Each scene will have you milling about until you obey the adventure game logic to proceed to the next section. Know that the crying baby could probably make use of the bottle lying conspicuously on the table? Well too bad, you can't touch it until the French developers say so.
In the end, the game ultimately boils down to you have not made too many missed button presses and having found around 15 red/blue pages to advance to the "good" ending.
Yeah, that's a second call back to Myst in one post. Want to fight about it?
All this contributes to is a hopeless feeling of noticing the puppet strings hanging all around you. While excellent movies/novels/goddamned real literature may frustrate you with character revelations and decisions, you're supposed to eventually understand these motives and place them within the overarching narrative, thus increasing your respect and enjoyment of the work.
When you're controlling a character who runs against all the logical motives you've been inputting for him, you merely scratch your head and roll your eyes.
As you undergo each progressively "difficult" scene- of which only two actually made me think through the consequences of my actions- you come to realize that David Cage wrote himself into a corner. With nowhere left to go, you're forced to endure scenes of melodrama and pointless theatrics that would have made the writers of Halo blush.
Of course, the melodrama may just be due to the fact David Cage can't write or keep a consistent universe. The game abounds with cultural anachronisms and clashes. We see French style toilets, cars, appliances, and electrical outlets in a city that's supposed to be a cross between Philly and Boston.
Characters murder other people, both innocent and not, in cold blood with absolutely no repercussions to speak of!
Again, let's go back to the journalist.
She's attacked by a crazy doc who wants to stick a drill in her vagina after he's convinced she's a fed. Should you pass the Simon-Says action sequence, she kills him with his own drill. After almost being brutally slaughtered in the most inhumane way possible she merely walks it off and proceeds to the next sequence where she strips for a mob boss.
What?! How?! Why?! More importantly why wouldn't the goddamned police start coming after her! Sure you could argue that nobody would miss a crazy old man.
Except this man is a drug dealer and has local connections and owned property. Madison also touched a dozen odd objects in the building. This is a game where the police have advanced computer glasses that can see through goddamned time and apparently murders just happen everyday? Good lord, did anyone even look at a second draft of this and ask "But what about?".
This is coming from a character who only hours before had been worried about being raped in her sleep and here she goes attempting to stick up a mobster. This is completely inconsistent in her character actions, which nobody bothers to give any motivation to other than she wants to write articles for some weekly shitrag.
Unless she was an embedded reporter in Iraq, her whole character makes no sense at all. This isn't creating a "mysterious femme fatale", this is making a stupid one dimensional cut out.
Then again I should expect much from a game where I survive a bomb blast by hiding in a fridge.
Narrative could be forgive if it was a good game, but it's not. There is no game to speak of. Since the murder is the same berk every time you play, there is no reason to ever return to the game. With absolutely no element of "play" at work beyond binary distinctions that boil down to you not turning the page fast enough, there's nothing one can call a game at work in the systems here.
I guess it's a game in the same way I held my finger on the pages where I had to make a decision in "choose your own adventure" novels. I did that there because I thought I was being so damn clever. Here you can sub that phrase with "hitting the power button on the console".
More damning, perhaps, is that in it's attempts to be a movie there's no distinction for when one should be "active" on the controller or when one is being timed. I guess this is to give the illusion of decisions and consequences being weighed on the fly.
Too bad there's a pause button I can use at any time to game their system. Sorry David, you failed at making suspense.
It doesn't even need to be mentioned that the voice acting and graphics are mediocre at best and downright awful at worst.
So why do I still consider this an excellent title everyone should check out at least once? It's the sign of something much better.
Where Mr Cage failed in his attempts to rip off movies by mashing Saw and Mystic River together, a good writer could step in to deliver bite sized narrative content that delivers an experience one can't get without the "interactive" nature of games.
I'd like to envision a future where titles such as this would come on a blu-ray, dvd, or- God Lord willing- streamed directly through your cable as part of primetime programming. While Heavy Rain shot itself in the foot by arbitrary tying itself to the PS3 console, I could imagine a company such as Pixar taking the interactive features of blu-ray players to deliver experiences that are shaped by you as a viewer.
While this isn't to say I want the death of passive reader narrative in any capacity- I'd probably be annoyed as hell if I had to make a decision every time Peter Griffin made a flashback or Dilbert had to choose which wacky workplace pun to use- I do see this as a viable new medium. I imagine something akin to The Incredibles or Up where decisions don't ever lead to the arbitrary "death" of a character as video games are destined to be constricted by. Instead, I see viewers being able to choose their own narrative arc and path through the story at key points which the writers have dictated as possible branches.
Since players/viewers can and will always choose the jerk option in any game they play, this format would allow writers to keep their artistic control while allowing significant choice by the end consumer. In the end, we'd create a true mutually generated narrative.
It also wouldn't hurt if these pieces were kept short so as to allow unlimited potential in visuals to not be trapped by Heavy Rain's constant texture repeats and rigid animations.
I really enjoyed my time with Heavy Rain. I just hope next time they'll at least throw a curtain up to cover the strings pulling me about.
