My blogging schedule has been irregular lately due to attending Gen Con in Indianapolis last weekend. Gen Con was one of the best conventions I have ever attended and I do plan to write about my experience soon. Hopefully, my blog posts will be on a more regular schedule since I don’t have any more out of town vacations or conventions to go to. I took this Monday off from work because I figured I would need a day to recover from the convention. Besides catching up on house work, I decided to finish playing Heavy Rain which is a game I started almost two months ago, but I couldn’t find the time to finish. Heavy Rain had a mysterious story, but terrible controls.

Heavy Rain is a psychological thriller launched by game developer Quantic Dream. The game centralizes on four playable characters: Ethan, a father suffering from mental illness, Scott Shelby a PI, Norman Jayden, a FBI agent and Madison, a photojournalist. All of these characters are wrapped up in solving the mystery of the “Origami Killer”. The Origami Killer kidnaps boys and forces the parents to perform trials to see how much they love their kids. If the parents fail their trials, they won’t be able to save their son from drowning in a sewer grate. Various chapters are told from the character’s as they uncover little by little the secret to the Origami Killer’s identity.

The story itself is rather creepy. There were a couple chapters with jump scares, but it was far and few in between. I hate playing video games with jump scares because then I can’t focus on the game. I wasn’t expecting how the story was going to play out which allowed me to feel surprised by the reveal of the killer’s identity. As the chapters continue, the chance of killing one of the playable characters becomes higher. On my first play through, one of my characters died in a silly way which left me feeling annoyed by their death.

The number one deterrent for me wanting to replay this game is the controls. The controls feel unnatural. For moving each of the characters, you have to hold down the right trigger for the entire movement. I would rather use a joystick to move my character because it’s more seamless with the controller. Another slightly annoying factor with the controls is all the QTE. QTE or Quick Time Events is when a series of buttons comes up in rapid succession which means the player has to hit the buttons on the controller in response. I don’t mind QTE sequences, but the buttons during some of the chapters felt really weird. There were times where the QTE were trying to direct me to move my controller in a certain way and I wasn’t comprehending what I was supposed to do. As a result, there were certain QTE I had to replay more than others and that became obnoxious.

It’s a shame because Heavy Rain had potential, but because of the controls set in the game, it made me dislike the game. I purchased Heavy Rain in a two pack with Beyond Two Souls. I’m planning to play Beyond Two Souls despite Heavy Rain’s terrible control settings. It’s worth it to play Heavy Rain at least once, but make sure to buy it used.