Heavy Rain: A Cure for the Common Game?

A couple of years back, I was cruising the video game section of Blockbuster and came upon a game with such cool box art that I had to pick the game up and see what it was about.

That game, Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit, was a brilliant mix of thriller, choose your own adventure and RPG all wrapped up in a beautiful visual package.

I played the hell out of that game and loved it even as it introduced odd side stories, and still loved it even as the ending left me going, “WTF?!”. It was one of those games that you play and love and try to ignore the ending because the ending is SO weird that you just don’t want to think about it.

I still love Indigo Prophecy but it’s become the bench mark for me when it comes to how a game ends. It almost seemed like the creator, Quantic Dream, had a bunch of writers in a room who were fighting to get their own storyline included and no one wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings so ALL of the storylines were included.

Like I said, it was weird and you’ll just have to play it yourself to know what I’m talking about.

Jump forward a bit and you have the announcement of Origami Killer announced at E3 ‘06 and then nothing. There was buzz all around the internet wondering when the game would be released, what the game was going to be like, and I personally couldn’t help but wonder if Quantic was going to end up with a repeat of Indigo Prophecy – starts out strong and then finishes with a whimper?

Now, we have Heavy Rain:The Origami Killer.

Same game just with a snazzier title and it was brought back to E3 this year for a better look at what we can expect out of the game when it’s released in early 2010.

You have four different characters that you can play and each has their own special take on a situation. It’s been announced that death is final in Heavy Rain. You will no longer have access to the dead character’s perception on what’s going on in the game and isn’t that how it should be anyway?

While I do occasionally enjoy the game where you can camp hide hang out somewhere and heal, the ability to run like hell and heal adds a big “cheat factor” to a game. You can just about get your ass killed and after a few minutes, you’re back to good.

I don’t know about you, but that leads me to make stupid decisions without thinking them out first and there are no repercussions for my actions.

I haven’t played the demo for Heavy Rain; I’ve only seen the demo videos and read the articles by people who have played the demos. But, I gotta say that I don’t think that “being dead forever” will be a bad thing. Quantic has a knack for reality [even if that reality is skewed by supernatural events] and I’m SO looking forward to a game with a hell of a story.

Let’s just cross our fingers that they don’t do a repeat of Indigo Prophecy’s ending.

Here’s a video of a Heavy Rain demo from E3 of this year. Skip to like 1:34 to get past the camera panning over the E3 floor.

Image|Quantic Dream