Heavy Rain Review: A Father’s Fear, Still Uncomfortable in the Right Way

Heavy Rain opens on a birthday party, and spends the rest of its running time taking that afternoon apart. Quantic Dream’s 2010 thriller follows four people hunting the Origami Killer, a serial killer who drowns young boys in rainwater and leaves an orchid on their chests. The game shipped on PlayStation 3 in February 2010, came to PlayStation 4 in 2016 and Windows in 2019, and holds an 8 of 10 from the critic aggregate.

Trailer, via PlayStation.

Ethan Mars and the Tests

Ethan Mars is the father at the center of Heavy Rain. After his son Jason is killed by a car and Ethan wakes from a six-month coma, he separates from his wife Grace and moves into a suburban duplex. Two years later he blacks out in a park and his other son, Shaun, is gone.

The killer sends Ethan a shoebox: a mobile phone, a handgun, and five origami figures. Each figure carries instructions for a test. Drive against traffic at speed on the highway. Crawl through broken glass and active electrical pylons. Cut off one of your fingers. Murder drug dealer Brad Silver. Drink poison on camera. Every completed test earns a piece of the address where Shaun is held.

That structure is the game’s best idea. It turns a father’s love into a checklist of degradations and asks the player to decide where the line sits.

Norman Jayden, Madison Paige and the Rain

Norman Jayden, an FBI profiler addicted to a drug called Triptocaine, works the case from the other end. He ties a victim’s death to a violent rainstorm that flooded the cell where the boy was kept, then estimates from weather patterns that Shaun has three days left.

Madison Paige, a journalist, meets Ethan along the way. Scott Shelby, a private eye, rounds out the four. They do not know each other. They share only an interest in the killer.

David Cage wrote the 2,000-page script and directed the four years of development, traveling to Philadelphia to research the setting. Normand Corbeil’s score was recorded at Abbey Road Studios.

The controls are the weak point. Holding R2 to walk, pressing context-sensitive prompts, and working Sixaxis motions with the DualShock 3 or 4 never stops feeling like a translation layer between intent and action. Quick time events decide whether a character lives. A chapter-select screen lets players run scenes again, and difficulty can be changed at any point.

The player’s choices and actions during the game affect the narrative.

That branching is real, and it is why Heavy Rain still matters. Any of the four can die. The plot has holes, and some of the voice acting does not land. The 2,000-page script occasionally mistakes length for depth.

What holds up is the premise that a game can be about a parent’s fear rather than a soldier’s competence. Heavy Rain sold 5.3 million units by January 2018, and its reputation rests on the same thing it did in 2010: the tests. Crawling through glass, cutting a finger, drinking poison on camera — those scenes are the argument, and they are still uncomfortable in the right way.

David Cage · Heavy Rain · narrative games · Origami Killer · PS3 · Quantic Dream