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 plan to write about my experience soon. Hopefully, my blog posts will be on a 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 housework, I decided to finish playing Heavy Rain, a game I started almost two months ago, but couldn’t find time to finish. Heavy Rain had a mysterious story, but it’s a dated game in terms of graphics and the 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 PTSD, Scott Shelby a PI, Norman Jayden, an FBI agent and Madison, a photojournalist. All of the 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 by the characters 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 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 is high. On my first play-through, one of my characters died as that tends to happen in these types of games.

The number one deterrent for wanting to replay this game is the controls. The controls feel unnatural. To move each of the characters, you have to hold down the right trigger for the entire movement. I would much 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 meaning the player has to hit the buttons on the controller in response. I don’t mind QTE sequences, but the buttons during some chapters felt really weird. There were times when the QTE was 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 QTEs I had to replay more than others and that became obnoxious.

Heavy Rain is one of those games that’s dated, but it inspired countless other games since then. I respect Heavy Rain as being a dramatic and well-made game at the time of its release. I struggle with wanting to replay this game again. I purchased Heavy Rain in a two-pack with Beyond Two Souls. I plan to play Beyond Two Souls despite Heavy Rain’s terrible control settings. It’s worth it to play Heavy Rain as the story is worth experiencing.