'Heavy Rain' review: It's not big and it's not clever

I know I am massively out of step with popular critical opinion here, but it is with a heavy heart that I must say, I didn’t like Heavy Rain, the PS3 exclusive title which has promised so much since it was announced at E3 2006. It gives me no pleasure at all to say that many fears people had about the game being nothing more than a series of QTE’s have proven correct. As I said in my last post, after a few hours of playing I had found the “drama” aspect fairly comical and heavy handed, and it didn’t improve from there, with multiple sequences that REALLY stretch all credibility, including a major plot twist that comes from nowhere, and is a far cry from being the game which would make you cry (see video below for Mega64's take on this!).

Admittedly, Heavy Rain does get you doing some novel things for a video game (brushing your teeth; applying mascara; changing a nappy) but none of them are fun or involving or emotional and all revolve around pressing the right control stick in various directions. Failure to get the prompt right usually just results in doing it again and the whole thing is completely pointless. If the intention is to make a drama which just happens to be a video game, then it completely fails on that level. If you play the game imagining it is a film then you are just left with the most hackneyed series of derivative thriller-movie sequences. The whole thing is also quite smug. It is almost insulting how clever Heavy Rain thinks it is whilst being nothing more than a boring Dragon’s Lair clone. I applaud the ambition, and think developer's should be encouraged to aim for the stars more often, but the opening credit sequence, with sad people standing in the rain, or the moment when a red balloon ascends into the sky, are super pretentious and laughable as a result.

Oh, and it is boring and then some. There were so many times when I wished I could run somewhere rather than slowly walk (however "cinematic" walking in the rain might be). There were so many times when I couldn’t care less about a conversation which was happening on screen. But where Heavy Rain really, truly fails is in an area so many ambitious games have failed to master before: that is in meeting actions with consequences, with the intended result of making choices difficult. There are apparently more than twenty possible outcomes, but these are mostly reflected in an end of game “news report”, similar to the bit at the end of Fallout 3 where a few sentences have been recorded for each variant and all get stuck together in the final speech to reflect your path. Most of the time Heavy Rain is asking you to choose whether you want to have orange juice or not... and this has no consequence whatsoever.

Indeed, there were many times I wanted to make a game changing choice (like shooting somebody you have pulled a gun on, rather than waiting for the obligatory bit where they hit it out of your hand and you have to scuffle about on the floor) only to find that there was no option. There was a (stupid) scene where a “bad cop” pulled a gun on my FBI agent during an interrogation of a suspect, and infuriatingly I couldn’t fight him, or tell anyone he’d done it, or turn on the video camera behind the two-way glass to show him beating the suspect... it was completely out of my control. I could go and make myself a coffee, but that would be POINTLESS!

I have nothing against pointless details if they add to an atmosphere (I’ll never forget standing at a bus stop on a cold Yokosuka morning in Shenmue, for example) but the lack of any choice in terms of where the characters go (I never knew why my characters were turning up at various locations for half the game) and generally not having any meaningful input in what will eventually happen (bar a few key moments) took me right out of the game and cut the atmosphere dead.



I don’t want to completely bash this game, however this reads. Heavy Rain is commendable for its ambition and for the fact that there isn’t another game quite like it (previous QTE games have generally used them for action and not tooth-brushing or French-kissing). The titular rain is really well realised and the motion capture work is superb. There were a couple of really entertaining moments, which usually involved running away from/after someone. I also quite liked using the FBI agent character, who has a pair of futuristic glasses that allow him to find forensic evidence quite easily. These bits felt the most like I was playing a game and not watching a generic Channel 5 thriller. I also liked the Kubrick-inspired art design in one key location, which I won't spoil here.

But most of the time the game is stupefyingly repetitive and bland. How many times must I check a bathroom medicine cabinet in a single video game? It felt like every other scene in Heavy Rain involved doing just that. Why is every fight sequence the same (people pick up objects and try to bash you with them or throw them at you, and when you fall to the floor you have to pummel ‘x’ to stand up again). The first time I had one of these fights, it was entertaining. But the novelty quickly wore off.

Basically, Heavy Rain is quite a stupid game with delusions of grandeur, aspiring clearly to win some sort of industry Oscars. If you want to watch a drama about a serial killer, then lord knows there are plenty of them and most of them are better than this one in more or less every way imaginable. Or if you want to see games as an art form than I would, again, direct you to Flower or Shadow of the Colossus. I would love to know someone who genuinely cried at some point during Heavy Rain. I am easily moved to tears, and yet I found myself laughing at every terribly acted “poignant” scene in the game. It takes a real effort to take the tragedy out of child murder, but hats off to the guys at developer Quantic Dream for making it happen.

In summary: top marks for trying... but please don’t try again. Also, the "sexy" female journalist character, Madison, looks unsettlingly like the 1980s Scotch tape skeleton.



Heavy Rain is out now and is rated '15' by the BBFC!

Grow Up Australia!

Pardon the inflammatory title, but “Grow Up Australia” is the name of a high-profile campaign which is seeking to persuade the Australian government to allow the introduction of an ‘18+’ age rating for in-game content (read the full news item here). This has been a hot issue in Australia for many years, with a great deal of moral panic generated by the media and politicians regarding the dangerous moral sewer that is the video gaming industry. There are lots of good articles about the history of video game censorship in Australia and the video below depicts a notorious recent example of this policy in action, with footage of the Australian version of Left 4 Dead 2, released with significant changes to its content last year.



I won't get into whether or not media images can turn children into serial killers (though, for the record, I doubt it) as that is an issue for another day and a longer post. I am just baffled by the fact that this debate is even happening in modern day Australia. Censorship is an unpopular idea when it comes to limiting freedom of expression, so how is it possible for video games to be singled out in this way? Well, because they are still not are still not seen as a form of artistic expression and so they are easier to censor or ban than a book or a film, especially as they are still perceived by many to be children's toys. In the UK, many parents I have spoken to (whilst working in games retail) will happily buy their young children BBFC-rated '18' games, whilst they may be less keen on them seeing a film with the same certification. People simply assume that a video game is something produced for children. When I have explained to parents that a game they are buying include the similar content to that of a violent film, they often express surprise that a video game might contain such graphic content.

Isn't the video games industry partly to blame for this perception? Because whatever their content, most games are still too juvenile to be taken seriously. It is the games industry, as well as Australia, that needs to grow up, and once that happens games may be able to confidently contain the same content as a graphic movie, perhaps even with the consent of the Australian government.

The official "Grow Up Australia" website is full of information about the history and future of Australian video game censorship and those interested should check it out!

Heavy Rain demo available!

Anyone who read my first post on this blog will know I am keenly awaiting Heavy Rain, the PS3 exclusive crime-thriller game. Developed under the direction of David Cage (the man responsible for the interesting Fahrenheit as well as the underappreciated Omikron: The Nomad Soul), Heavy Rain has attracted a lot of interest since it was announced way back in 2006. Much of this interest has been raised by the games mission to be a genuinely emotional experience, with realistic and interesting characters.

Personally, Heavy Rain excites me for many reasons, the first and most frivolous being that it bears some resemblance to the notorious Dreamcast flop, Shenmue (one of my favourite games of all time - pictured above). The resemblance, as I see it, is in the way both games feature mundane actions as gameplay elements. For example, Shenmue saw players waiting at a bus stop on their way to work every morning. You could also open pointless drawers and pick up the various pots and pans... for no reason whatsoever. Heavy Rain seems to allow similar scope for relatively pointless moments, such as playing with your son or opening a fridge. Of course, none of these moments are pointless within the context of the game, as they create a world and an atmosphere. The other similarity both games seem to share is a reliance on reaction times in responding to on-screen button prompts, popularly known as QTE’s (quick timer events).

Shenmue likeness aside, the main reason I am excited by Heavy Rain is that I want to see whether it lives up to its ambitious goal, and makes me cry (or at least feel something for the characters). In that earlier post, I discussed whether games could be considered art, and I see Heavy Rain as a potentially interesting chapter in that ongoing saga.

The reason for writing this now is that a playable demo has arrived on Playstation Network. In it you are allowed to play two brief scenarios, which introduce you to the games control system, as well as setting up two of its characters. I have played this demo and can now give my proper first impressions on the title.

I’ll start with the bad. Well, nothing I played was truly bad. The one thing I really wasn’t sure about was the control system. Pressing the “R2” button (the lower-right trigger on the control pad) causes your character to move forwards (this is again similar to Shenmue) and this took some time getting used to. Moving your character in this way lacks fluidity and this seems to undermine the realism of the game, as my character changes direction like a robot. The QTE’s themselves work well, but I was thrown by their inconsistency. For example, at one point in the demo I was told that pressing down “L2” would always present the option of hearing my characters thoughts. However, this didn’t prove to be the case more than half of the time. Another minor gripe is that the early previews of the game made the characters facial animations appear much more detailed and fluid then they would seem to be in the final game.

The single worst thing I can say about Heavy Rain, so far, is this: the all-important believable story and characters are falling into the trap of aiming for “cinematic”. The story and the dialogue do indeed feel cinematic, but only because they feel cliché. In one section of the demo I played as an FBI agent, complete with the standard banter with local law enforcement about jurisdictions and people saying “look, just remember we’re both on the same team here”. All the dialogue, from what I’ve played in the demo, seems directly ripped out of a million cop shows and movies. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t groundbreaking either. It certainly isn’t “realistic”. Within a minute of starting the demo I was asking a hotel receptionist whether Abe Lincoln would jog his memory. It’s that sort of thing.



It was all curiously affecting, however. Once the demo was over I was surprised that I was really hungry for more, despite having some reservations about what I’d seen. Most encouragingly I was left feeling that even though I had only spent limited time with them I knew both the characters I had been playing as. This will be vital in a game which splits between multiple characters fairly frequently. The game also had a decent atmosphere, with the titular heavy rain lashing down throughout. I must also say that the QTE fight scene I had in the first half of the demo was pretty good. I missed lots of prompts and was rewarded with bruises and busted limbs, rather than having to replay the section as with other games that feature QTE’s. I need to replay the demo and check this out, but it certainly felt like I could have walked away and not had the fight at all, or like I could have come out of it without taking a beating or even that I could have been truly smashed up by the end of it. One of the most intriguing elements of all this is seeing how these different outcomes will affect the remainder of the story. Of course, the demo gives me no insight into this.

It remains to be seem whether the story is emotionally affecting, but overall I am left excited by the prospect of getting deeper into it and I am looking forward to playing the full game (and reviewing it here) later this month.

Heavy Rain is released on Playstation 3 on the 26th of February and was rated a 15 by the BBFC.

American age rating body calls new Dead or Alive game "creepy"...

I am posting this up as it relates to an article I wrote a short while ago about video games and sex and the tastelessness of it all. Basically the ESRB, who rate video games for violence and sexual content in North America have branded the latest Dead or Alive swimsuit simulator as "creepy voyeurism". For more details check out the full story at Eurogamer or simply become a creepy voyeur youself by watching the trailer for the game in question.

I'm sure this is an issue that will run and run on this blog.

Why are games still embarrassing me?

A while back on an edition of BBC 2’s ‘The Culture Show’ UK film critic Mark Kermode was asked to look at video games. After a spot of Wii Tennis, he was asked to give his thoughts on the subject. He said “I’ve never played a video game before, and I hope I never do again.” Ok, now that is a snooty thing to say (not to mention pretentious) but it is interesting to look at exactly why somebody like Mark Kermode would want to distance himself from the whole medium so fully. It isn’t because of the violence inherent in modern games and the surrounding moral panic. On his blog he recently posted a video where he likens the media furore over recent violent games to the video nasties coverage of certain horror films, so I don’t think that’s his problem here, because Kermode loves his video nasties. No, I think it has rather more to do with a major image problem games seem to have. Despite the fact that unprecedented numbers of girls and people at both extremes of the age spectrum seem to be playing video games now (mainly thanks to Nintendo) and despite the fact that they rival films as a form of mainstream entertainment (certainly in commercial terms) video games are continually marketed towards fifteen year-old boys. Yes, I know, fifteen year-old boys aren’t supposed to be playing Gears of War 2, it’s an ‘18’ rated game: but in terms of its attitude toward violence, its character designs and its dialogue, Gears of War is at least trying to appeal to the fifteen year-old boy inside of the 18-25 year-old audience. The machismo of it. The blood splatter on the ‘camera’. The great big gun with a chainsaw on the end (above seen in the arms of a "booth babe" from a game expo). There are only two kinds of people you find who seriously love Gears of War (I mean the kind of people who buy the hoodie and the action figures etc): teenage boys and slightly older boys with the personalities of teenage boys. This ties in a little with my previous topic, on games as art, in which I suggested that labelling a game as ‘adult’ is really only a way of saying the game contains violence and sex. These things are not in themselves adult. There isn’t really anything adult in the themes or ideas of Gears of War. It doesn’t demand any great level of intellectual development to understand.

This immaturity in games extends itself to the depiction of female characters. Have you ever used a character creation tool in a fighting game, sports sim or an RPG? If you have ever used one to create a female you’ll know that generally they can’t sport a healthy weight around the hips and the minimum bust size is usually at some kind of post-op proportion. Games like Dead or Alive or Ninja Gaiden (both by the same studio, Team Ninja) exploit their big breasted female characters to the maximum, with the former title boasting customizable amounts of breast jiggle (and providing the basis for a series of spin-off games involving collecting bikini’s and playing beach volleyball, as pictured above). The latter title, in its most recent PS3 incarnation, has the gameplay “function” of tilting the motion sensitive PS3 controller to manually manipulate the onscreen bosoms. But surely this is a joke, right? I mean, it isn’t a major selling point; it’s just a little bit of fun, yeah? Well, no. In Japan the game was trailed on television with an ad exclusively focussed on this groundbreaking feature. Is it any wonder that Mark Kermode doesn’t want anything to do with us game playing sad cases? I feel like blowing off my own head in mock disgust.

Yeah, I know, the truth is he’d hate games whatever they were like, just because he needs to show us how serious he is. This much is probably obvious. But games like these don’t half provide an excuse to pour scorn on games and the people who play them.

It’s not just the hyper- crass examples above that support those who’d happily see games dismissed out of hand as the preserve of those without social skills. Take a recent and critically lauded game like Bayonetta (Edge Magazine gave it 10/10) as an example of a superb, technically polished and well made game with its own burgeoning acne problem. It stars a sultry lady with a pistol extending from her high-heels and a colossal bust, whose magical powers make her very clothes disappear (pictured). Let me make this clear: I’m not being a prude. Of course games can handle sex and feature sexy characters (something that, with varying degrees of success, BioWare have been trying to do for years). But these images seem regressive to me. They seem to be blind to the fact that so many more people are open to playing games now. It seems like video games have a lack of self-confidence, either that or a lack of faith in their audience, who, in the main, are prepared for something genuinely mature by now (I’d like to think).

Granted, Bayonetta has sold really well, and I don’t begrudge it that. By all accounts it’s a decent game. And I know at least two women who love it, so I don’t think it’s upsetting lady-gamers or anything. Nor do I put myself above the likes of Gears of War or Dead or Alive: I have played and enjoyed both titles over the years. But games have come a long way in a short space of time in terms of technology and in terms of the demographics they appeal to. So why are they so behind in terms of their gender politics or just in terms of “good taste”? Why are they still marketed towards this fictional, Nuts-subscribing fifteen year-old boy?

It’s a shame Kermode and his BBC chums didn’t give their Wii a bit more of a chance. After all, with a range of “games” to do with fitness, numeracy, learning a foreign language, as well as the more traditional likes of Mario (Brothers/Galaxy/Kart), Zak and Wiki and Metroid, the Wii is arguably closer than any of its rivals in fulfilling the BBC’s own brief: to inform, educate and entertain. Too bad the critics focus on all the fat, sweary kids salivating over a chainsaw kill on Gears of War, calling somebody a "faggot" online, and generally making the rest of us look bad.