Even though adventure games are not my favorite genre, even I heard of (and badly wanted to play) Heavy Rain when it came out. Here was a game-changer, I thought: a crime-thriller that promised grittier, more realistic exposition than your typical adventure game plot; a cast of characters with emotional depth and complex motivations; an intricate, interwoven story that promised to keep you guessing; a truly unique, contextual control scheme that imitated human motion; and a superb presentation to tie it all together...

As the game was a PS3 exclusive on release, for more than a decade it seemed unlikely I would get to experience this amazing title that won (among other awards) best adventure game, best story and best game design; that garnered countless accolades from reviewers and was even declared "one of the best video games of all time."

Then, in 2023, I finally got to play it and – honestly? "Best video game of all time" wasn't my first impression. First thing I thought was – Space Ace?

Maybe Dragon's Lair...

An adventure game needs a good story, solid writing, inventory, puzzles and some degree of freedom to let the player decide where they will go and how they will try to progress within the narrative and, frankly, Heavy Rain has none of that. What it most closely resembles is a movie with prompts or an IF piece where, instead of pressing enter to advance the text, you have to execute a series of Wii-adjacent QTEs. In fact, for an adventure game of the year, Heavy Rain has very little adventure and even less gameplay.

Writing and characters

While a lot of work was obviously put into crafting a deep, coherent story, Heavy Rain's writing is largely formulaic and plagued by recurring "just because" convenience that flies in the face of all that backstory. Characters have depth, but the way they act often contradicts who they are.

Madison Paige, a traumatized photographer terrified of being murdered by strangers, not only regularly leaves the safety of her home to sleep in seedy motels, but also accompanies a bloodied stranger met in one such place into his room...

Scott Shelby, a former police officer turned private detective who oughta have the gift of gab down pat, can't convince anyone to confide in him to save his life, but – no matter! – because he is always presented an out (two fights and an attempted suicide) which makes people change their minds...

Devastated parents who lost their children withhold information that could lead to the capture of a dangerous murderer from the police for years until Teh Plot needs to happen...

And a man racing against the flow of highway traffic dodges several trucks only to run into a police blockade across all lanes the very next instant...

For as intricately woven as the game's narrative appears to be, it's a rich tapestry held together by duct tape that's hard to take with a straight face. There's simply too much sensationalism in the mix and not enough substance – a fact that is exacerbated by the imprecise nature of the game's gimmicky control scheme.

Controls

While a contextual UI is a neat idea, the only way it could work is if the player had the same, innate knowledge of their surroundings as their character (which – they don't). Without it, any action you undertake feels more like guesswork than a decision, leading to a "gameplay" experience that is confusing, difficult to navigate and – often – undermines the tone of any given scene.

For example, early in the game a character buys a balloon for his son in a busy mall. His son runs away with the balloon before he pays for it, leaving him scrabbling to find some cash and catch up. The situation is meant to be tense: a child lost in a crowd, getting further away with each second... Instead, it just feels awkward. I mean, here's a grown man who has to look through all four pants pockets to remember which one has money in it – something he oughta know by virtue of short term memory or even feeling the wallet press against his thigh or butt.

A child lost in the crowd? That's scary and elicits empathy... A child who runs into the crowd even though you keep telling him not to as you struggle to remember where you put your wallet? That's adulthood done badly, mate.

Time and again, Heavy Rain forces the narrative to comply with the limitations of the controls, which is not only backwards but also makes for some truly wacky moments that disrupt the narrative flow (cue the FBI profiler with a space-age VR rig or a psychiatrist with his own futuristic MRI that have no corresponding advancements in the rest of the game world).

"Gameplay"

Instead of letting the player, y'know, play the game, Heavy Rain simply shuffles them from one (admittedly beautiful) set piece to the next where their input is limited to picking an object or person to interact with and accurately inputting a sequence of button-presses and mouse-movements.

There are no clues to gather, no inventory to use and no puzzles to ponder: just UI prompts for QTEs that (sometimes) result in moving the gameplay along.

And though Heavy Rain does include performance-based branchings of the plot, it's more of a movie with multiple endings than an actual game.

Summation

Although the 14-year-old graphics and animations still impress and even exceed expectations, in almost all other respects Heavy Rain is more of a shiny facade devoid of substance than "best video game of all time." It depends on amazing visuals and gimmicky UI to cover for minimal player involvement, lack of gameplay depth and linear narrative structure. In many ways, it's the same approach Space Ace and Dragon's Lair employed in 1983, presenting a wonderfully rendered scene which could only be interacted with via the press of a single button...

The rights to a Heavy Rain movie were sold in 2006 and I can't help but think that would have been the better medium for what Quantic Dream set out to achieve. Can't say it would have made a good movie, but – with how limited of a game it turned out to be – it certainly would have saved everybody some time.

If you want to experience everything Heavy Rain has to offer, do yourself a favor and watch a no-commentary YouTube stream. I didn't and now I'm behind schedule for completing games you actually have to play...