Heavy Rain: If You're OCD, You'll Either Love or Hate This Game

If meta-game award systems like Xbox Live's Achievements and the Playstation Network's Trophies have shown us anything, it's that gamers have addictive, completist personalities. Sure, part of the fun of achievement hunting may be in competing with your peers and spamming the XBL Forums with your gamerscore and questions like "ne1 no when GoW is comin to xbox, I bout it for ps3 but how do u ply for xbox." Still, the heart of trophy hunting really consists of seeking out the secret corners of games and the out-of-the-way items and modes of play that the developers have hidden, as well as beating games skillfully in different ways.

I tend to be pretty completist to the extent of wanting to finish games even if I don't like them, although I'm not huge on achievement/trophy hunting. Don't get it twisted, I definitely check out trophy lists for games that I'm playing and will go out of my way to get an achievement to boost my gamerscore. At the same time, I don't generally pick up a game that I have no interest in simply for easy trophies, although I'll admit to once in a while being tempted to do so (don't think for a second that the Hannah Montana game isn't staring me in the face whenever I go into Gamestop). More than completist, I'm OCD, and I like to complete game tasks in a meticulous fashion, trying to get a sense of how various plot lines, quests, and decisions will pan out in an RPG-type game and act accordingly to achieve a particular outcome.

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Heavy Rain did a number on my OCD tendencies that no room filled with piles of unfolded clothes and off-centered pictures could ever do. Quantic Dream's interactive psychological thriller, which came out earlier this year, presents an interesting and engaging story that evolves based on how you play it and the decisions that you make in it. The game plays out like a murder mystery film through four different characters' perspectives, and uses the PS3 Dualshock controller's sixaxis motion control (or PS Move) for prompts during conversations, investigations, and fight and action scenes.

The game has received a lot of praise for its branching storyline, which continues to evolve as you try to solve the mystery, and small, seemingly inconsequential decisions as well as split-second choices can change the game's outcome drastically. Find yourself getting owned in a fight scene? No problem, the game's story will adjust to your suckiness and lead you down a different plotline, rather than show you a Game Over screen. Feel like snooping around instead of doing other tasks you've been assigned? Go ahead, the game will incorporate your ADD into the storyline. Heavy Rain literally has dozens of possible endings based on your different actions and choices throughout the game, and man, the story along the way definitely packs the same punch as a blockbuster thriller movie.

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Seriously though? I effing hate scary movies. When I was a kid, my cousins and I used to read Scary Stories to Read in the Dark because we thought it was a good idea, and ended up checking behind doors for monsters for a long while afterward. I've seen a couple of the big thrillers, like "The Exorcist" and "The Shining," but when I see a horror flick I usually spend the entire movie holding my shirt over my nose and watching from the corner of my eyes (because that ish is scary, I don't care where you're from). I even got scared at the movie remake of "Doom," which was basically just a series of action scenes with The Rock, Karl Urban and scary music. Something about the eeriness and dissonant sound effects in scary movies and games really does weird things to my imagination. I played the demos for Doom 3, F.E.A.R. and Dead Space, for example, and needed to play at least two levels of Katamari Damacy while listening to the Care Bears theme song to feel right again.

Heavy Rain isn't a scary game per se, but it's definitely moody, and has enough disturbing moments in it that I would have had my shirt over my face if I hadn't been keeping my hands glued to the controller in case of sudden prompts. The game is brutal about requiring you to give a quick input when you think you're just watching a cutscene, which, after getting punched in the face (mostly figuratively) a few times, actually gets you to be even more involved in what's happening.

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This concept may sound pretty cool, and it is for the most part, but actually leads in to one of my complaints about the game, in that the controls, and the way the game interprets them, are not always intuitive. For the most part, Quantic Dream was great about using the Dualshock controller and motion control in ways that make sense: push the analog stick counter-clockwise to open a door, raise the entire controller quickly for a jump prompt, turn the controller when driving, etc. However, at other times the onscreen prompts aren't as clear about what the corresponding action will be - if I shake the controller downwards, is that going to put the gun away or shoot the person in front of me? Granted, like a noob, I chose the most complex level of "difficulty," which basically just requires more controller inputs throughout the game, but there were several times that I had to quit the game and reload from the title screen immediately after I did something that was completely different from what I thought the prompt was indicating.

This is where the OCD really kicks in. As mentioned, Heavy Rain really gets you into the story, and because the story is told in chapters, you can go back any time and play through it differently to see all of the possible story paths without affecting your main save. However, it also autosaves pretty constantly, so if you're trying to play a certain way, and you respond to a prompt that does something completely different from what you were expecting, you're going to freak out and have to wash your dishes three times while arranging your spare change in piles divisible by prime numbers. Well, if you're OCD like me, that is. The game's great for trophy hunting, as it encourages you to play in completely different ways to unlock all of the possible plotlines and endings, but seriously messes with you if you're unclear on some of the prompts.

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Heavy Rain tells an amazing story, but it's not without its plot holes. You'll probably play through it and feel pretty engaged with what's happening, but you might find that you'll be wondering about certain key elements even after beating the game. Some sites, such as GamesRadar, have listed a few of these [Spoilers] plot holes [Spoilers] that you may want to check out if you have questions, but suffice it to say that I went a-Googling after finishing Heavy Rain because I thought a lot of plot points were left hanging.

All in all, Quantic Dream's interactive psychological thriller experiment is a successful one, and we highly recommend that you check it out. If you're a completist or just want to have totally different experiences in the game, there's a lot of replay value here for you to try to unlock all of the possible endings and see the varies plot branches. The best way to experience the game is definitely to play it organically, and allow the different choices that you make to unravel the story naturally. Or, if you're OCD, you can happily restart the game from the title screen whenever you gaffe a prompt, while eating all of the green M&M's in the bag first. Heavy Rain is a stellar game either way, and will keep you engaged for the whole story, any way you play it.