(That Jayden’s drug problems are right out of Jeff Noon’s early-’90s cyberpunk novel Vurt comes as jarring, since there are very few indicators otherwise that Heavy Rain occurs in the dystopian near-future.) Finally, there is Scott Shelby-private eye!-who suffers from… asthma. The aforementioned criminal profiler, FBI agent Norman Jayden, is a closet drug addict who suffers from some futuristic form of DTs. His new best friend Madison Paige suffers from insomnia and night terrors. Heavy Rain’s lead protagonist, Ethan Mars, suffers from agoraphobia, we are told, and he is also given to fits of blackout-panic-presumably brought on by his having inexplicably misplaced not one but both sons.
BEYOND TWO SOULS DUO MODE SERIES
(I now understand what people mean when they joke about “press X to Jason” during what ought to’ve been a tense sequence in Heavy Rain, I laughed so hard I cried.) Then, later, during a romance scene, I started chuckling about “oh God, what if it’s a series of complicated quicktime events to unhook a bra”-and, seconds later, I stopped chuckling, because that is exactly what the player is made to do. Mechanically, too, the game is just so stilted, so awkward. From the very outset, I was startled by how “paper doll” Heavy Rain really looks-how much Quantic Dream’s technology has improved within a few short years, maybe. My catalogue of complaints is interminable.
And Heavy Rain is not one of those games. I’m willing to allow that Heavy Rain is an important game, important for people to see and play-but few games can profess to be “art,” unfortunately.
I must be in the minority, here the original PlayStation 3 release averages a Metacritic metascore of 87, which is pretty damned high. Yes, Heavy Rain-a critical darling of 2010-put me to sleep, repeatedly. I couldn’t stay awake long enough to even feign interest.) (Every time criminal profiler Norman Jayden appeared onscreen I would immediately fall unconscious, as if by hypnosis. I’ve lost count but, in total, I think I fell asleep seven (!) times. Heavy Rain, we did not play in a single sitting.
Since I so enjoyed Beyond: Two Souls, and because I am also a huge fan of “noir,” Ted insisted we play Heavy Rain right away. Last month, my husband Ted and I played Beyond: Two Souls together in “Duo Mode”-Ted playing Ellen Page, and I playing her ghost-friend Aiden-in one single sitting. I had also, until last month, never played Beyond: Two Souls, Quantic Dream’s 2013 follow-up to Heavy Rain. (Turns out, Quantic Dream released the game in 2010-which, to me, still qualifies as “just yesterday”). Old fart that I am, I believed the game launched only a couple years ago. Until last month, I had never played Heavy Rain.
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