Heavy Rain -- Final Opinion.

I have completed Heavy Rain earning the platinum trophy along the way. For me, I'd say Heavy Rain is a flawed success. Despite claims to the contrary by David Cage, Heavy Rain never escapes its video game nature. It doesn't quite reach his lofty goals. But the term interactive drama does indeed fit. Heavy Rain's overall tone sells the game for me. Cage was aiming for a hard boiled noir thriller that tries to genuinely move your emotions. I'll admit that I've felt things I've never experienced in gaming before in Heavy Rain. Most of those came during the segments where you play as the female journalist. As a male I can't say that I've felt the general vulnerabilities of being female all that often, nor have I had such a sense of humiliation conveyed in gaming. Heavy Rain manages to pull both off surprisingly well. The game also managed to make me cringe. The problems inherent with gaming are what detract most from Heavy Rain. There are eighteen potential epilogues to discover. A handful of the epilogues are mixed and matched based on your actions in the game to form the ending. That's eighteen aspects to the ending. Which means the story has to accommodate all of those potentialities. Which expands the potential for plot holes and the like. David Cage is no Agatha Christie. I will say that the identity of the killer actually came as a surprise to me which is a rarity. If you want to nitpick every detail then you can pick apart the story. If you're able to overlook those kinds of issues you should find an enjoyable ride. I more had issues with the strange voice acting and the weird technology and everything that goes along with it that the profiler character employs. As often is the case with these sorts of games you'll want to reach out and slap some of the characters because they're stuck going down the path the writer wants them to go down all the while avoiding common sense. For the most part the quick time events work well. The characters never really move outside of the realm of clunky. It's a pain to move them around from start to finish. I also don't understand why there was so much screen tearing in the game. Even in segments where nothing is going on. I enjoyed my time with Heavy Rain. While not quite the future of gaming experience its creator believes it to be, Heavy Rain proved to be a decently fun ride. It does give a glimpse of a possible future where interactive drama could very well be a viable genre. And I for one wouldn't mind that. It's just going to take a stronger creative force in both story and game design to really push it through to the masses. I'm giving Heavy Rain for the PlayStation 3 an 8.