Review: Heavy Rain

Introduction
I didn’t buy Heavy Rain when it came out, largely because it was described by many as, essentially, being one huge eight-hour long quicktime event. Me and quicktime events have never gotten on since I first played Dragon’s Lair, on one of those huge, laserdisc arcade machines and died, horribly, many times. I have serious issues with authority and when there’s ‘one right way’ to do something, whether it be in a game or in real life, I rail against it and get bloody annoyed. Heavy Rain, then, seemed to me to be a nightmarish game which would be the total opposite of anything I might ever want to play, however innovative, however artistic and hower stylishly French it might be.

I was wrong.

Not completely wrong, but I was wrong.

Story
Talking about the story of Heavy Rain without being spoilerific is difficult and I don’t want to give spoilers even though it’s now an ‘older’ game and most people who will have wanted to play it will have played it. I’ll try my best.

You take on several roles throughout the game:

• Ethan Mars, bereaved father whose second child is kidnapped by the mysterious Origami Killer who then screws with him throughout the story, testing him.
• Madison Page, feisty, sexy investigative reporter, looking into the Origami Killer murders.
• Norman Jayden, FBI profiler and massive geek.
• Scott Shelby, private eye, also looking into the Origami Killer murders.

This gives you several different viewpoints on the ongoing plot but the main thrust is through the eyes of Ethan Mars and the main theme of the story is to ask ‘what would you do to protect your child?’ with the tests that the Origami Killer gives you becoming harder and harder as the story wears on towards its climax and its resolution.

Gameplay
You progress through the game via exploration within each section and via progress through quicktime events, moving the thumbsticks or pressing the buttons according to particular order or timing in order to get through the various scenes which might be anything from shaving your face to staving off the attentions of an insane doctor with a bonesaw. You’ll also be called upon to remember things from the various scenes from time to time, so the game requires you to pay close attention to it all the time which can be oddly exhausting, mentally and emotionally.

Unlike quicktime events which are crowbarred into other games, Heavy Rain doesn’t quite have the same punishing level of ‘get this right or you’re toast’ that those have. In most scenes there’s room for a couple of mistakes and even if you do mess up and die horribly, often the game can continue to progress even without one or more of the main characters still being alive. The variety of outcomes and the possibility to continue regardless massively mitigates many of the problems with normal quicktime events and makes Heavy Rain much more playable.

Controls
The quicktime events work well but the more normal scenes – where you’re exploring and investigating – don’t work to the same degree. The movement feels like the early Resident Evil games with the same issue where you go spinning off in a crescent and bashing into things. That breaks the immersion that exists through much of the rest of the game and is a shame and a big source of annoyance.

Atmosphere
Heavy Rain scores highly in its atmospherics, though the ‘uncanny valley’ effect is in evidence, a barrier to empathising with the characters completley. The contrast between the clean, tidy opening to the game and the grime, filth and terror of the rest of the game is effective, though a few more beats of happiness in the later game may have made the darkness more effective.

The game does draw you in and does manage to make you engage with the characters, despite often being understated and despite the barriers of the graphics and the control system. It takes a while but, eventually, you find yourself genuinely caring about the characters and the outcome of their individual stories.

Graphics
Despite the uncanny valley effect of the characters (the main problem seems to be the mouths, rather than the eyes, oddly) the graphics are excellent throughout the game. This may be a side effect of most scenes being enclosed, so a lot of computing power can be brought to bear upon a relatively small area. The animations are fluid and effective and the mocap work is excellent.

Conclusion
This was a very innovative game and we need more of this, however if I had bought it new I wouldn’t have felt that it would have been worth the price as the replay value, I feel, isn’t there. Despite there being something like 20 different possible endings. I think a playthrough after the first time simply wouldn’t have the same emotional connection for the player.

On the Plus Side

• Engaging story.
• Solution to the quicktime ‘issue’.
• It settles the ‘can a game be art?’ question, once and for all – if you accept that it’s a game.

On the Minus Side

• Lacking replay value.
• Uncanny valley is a big obstacle.
• Non-quicktime controls are a bit of a pig.

Score
Style 5
Substance 4
Overall 4.5

Review: Dead Nation

Introduction
Who doesn’t like to kill zombies? Dead Nation lets you gun down masses and masses of zombies – thousands even – and collects your efforts with everyone else from your nation, relative to its population, so that collectively you can slaughter MILLIONS of zombies and compare your country’s e-peen with that of others for zombie-slaying bragging rights.

I’m proud to report that at time of writing the UK has the second biggest virtual schlong in the world and that US console gamers have no. fucking, lives.

Story
There’s been a massive zombie outbreak, which it’s hinted is down to a military contractor called Egogate, and now almost the whole world is overrun by the living dead save for small enclaves of survivors holed up here and there. You are miraculously immune and have been hiding out but now you need to get out of town as your supplies are down and you’re about to be overrun. There’s a truck which could get you out of there… if you can get to it. When you do it turns out the truck has a radio and that ends up hooking you up with Egogate and the remains of the military in search of a cure.

Gameplay
You progress through one level after another from a start point to an end point, gunning down hundreds and thousands of zombies of various kinds and accomplishing goals along the way (Find a truck, find a police radio, climb a tower to get a clearer signal and so on). There’s a few neat little tricks you can employ along the way, raiding candy machines, setting off car alarms and so on.

As you progress through the levels you can loot ‘cash’ which can be spent on new weapons and items and on upgrading the ones you have. You start out with a basic rifle which has infinite ammo and can be ‘charged up’ for a headshot but you can also get an SMG, a shotgun, a flamethrower (not recommended as it means the zombies eating your face are now on fire), a bazooka, a blade-firing gun and a shocker as well as supplementary weapons such as grenades, explosives, landmines and flares.

You can play one or two player, online or offline but if you play offline your kills won’t be added to your national total. Bragging rights come in individual score and kills and collective national kills, which take you through various ‘cycles’ of the disease (basically each time the nation’s kills equal its population in the real world).

Controls
One thumbstick moves, the other aims in a direction on a flat plane, which is nice since it allows you to run like a motherfucker in the opposite direction while firing into the oncoming horde of zombies. Weapons and items are changed with the thumbpad and objects are thrown and weapons used with the shoulder buttons, you can also do a melee attack, which is more or less powerful depending what armour you’re wearing.

Atmosphere
There’s not much a story, really, though what there is is told through vaguely animated cutscenes between levels. The atmosphere comes while you play and that is very effective indeed, even though it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Even though the graphics are relatively small you do get a good sense of a dark, destroyed world and since most of the light in any given level comes only from the torch strapped to your weapon, everything is dark and scary and almost any shadow has you hitting your trigger button.

The darkness and grime does have a way of making the levels look a little too similar (and why you go out at night when you can’t see anything I have no idea) but this is compensated for by the variety of zombies, both normal cannon fodder and the larger, biological experiments that are much nastier (Exploding zombies, hulk zombies, blade-armed zombies, running zombies and so on). You’ll run into all sorts of normal zombies and what makes it particularly fun is the little dark sense of humour and appropriate themes when you run into crashed football coaches, a little funfair or a police station.

Graphics
While the graphics are small this helps prevent you from picking up on the repeat zombies in the large hordes – and they do get to be very large hordes now and then. The small graphics also mean that there’s plenty happening on screen and there’s lots of room to manouevre on screen. The presentation is broadly top-down semi-isometric, though it is true 3D and the camera swings around to try and keep you in view, though this doesn’t always work so well in two-player. What really makes the game are the lighting effects from burning cars and your flashlight, constantly on the lookout for ambushes and moving shadows, something that keeps you focussed – somewhat exhaustingly – on the game.

Conclusion
A good, mindless, zombie-smashing antidote to the more cerebral and difficult horror games, excellent for cathartic mass killings and national bragging rights.

On the Plus Side

• Cathartic.
• Atmospheric lighting.
• Multiplayer feel without having to deal with arseholes directly.

On the Minus Side

• Small graphics.
• Blandly similar levels – a little.
• No real depth.

Score
Style 4
Substance 3
Overall 3.5

Review: Eat Them

Introduction
This game is available on PSN for download and is, in many ways, the spiritual successor to the old classic game ‘Rampage’. Essentially it’s a Kaiju game where you play a massive monster, smashing your way around a city and annihilating it, eating people and blowing up any military or police who have the temerity to get in your way.

Story
Let’s face it, story isn’t really that important when you’re playing a multi-story monster. Still, there is a threadbare thread of plot connecting the various missions in that you’re a mad scientist, originally employed by a company to produce giant monsters for military use, doublecrossed and then turning against them in a quest for revenge. Yadda, yadda, who really cares? Various aspects of the missions relate to this quest as you work to build up your monster possibilities by rescuing fellow mad scientists, robbing banks and so forth.

Gameplay
Your quest for revenge takes you around different parts of the city where you do your level best – generally – to smash them to pieces while the police and the military do their best to stop you. You construct your kaiju monster in the monster lab, bolting together different arms, legs, heads, bodies, legs and back-plates to have all the abilities you want and then lay into the missions.

There’s a few different types of mission:

• Destroy as much as possible.
• Destroy specific targets as fast as possible.
• Race from checlpoint to checkpoint.

There’s also a few specific special or story missions, such as covering your minions while they rob banks, rescuing zoo animals and so on.

The play is a little repetitive, but the different city zones and the different enemies help to keep it reasonably fresh.

What checks you – a little – in your rampaging is that you have a constant need for energy (which relates to monster health) and the more powerful your monster the more energy it needs. You get energy by eating people, so you have to be a little careful in your destructive urges, lest you leave yourself no munchies.

You can play up to four-player multiplayer on a split screen, which is fun, but highly chaotic.

Controls
You run around using the thumbsticks and the four shoulder buttons control left arm, right arm, legs and back for doing attacks. You can also use the various other buttons for eating people, shooting supplementary head weapons, jumping and so forth. This can get a bit fiddly when you want to make all-out attacks but otherwise works just fine.

Atmosphere
The game is very cartoonish, which suits the threadbare plot and ridiculous nature of some of the missions and monster parts just fine. It’s not particularly atmospheric per se, due to its stylistic choices, but they do make the game fun.

Graphics
Eat Them uses cel-shaded graphics which are quite well done. While a lot of the details of the game are small compared to your giant monster, the monster is usually well realised, though I felt there wasn’t quite enough effort that had been gone into in some of the monster part animations – particularly the snake ‘legs’. The little cut-scenes are fun and the overall style works very well.

Conclusion
A fun, little destructive game that’s worth a couple of days of laughs and which you’ll want to complete – well – at each level in order to earn the new monster parts. It’s just a shame that stylistic choices (like wanting to make a monster that looks like Godzilla) have to take second place to effective, utility builds. Also, the monsters lack a tail, which I found unreasonably disappointing.

On the Plus Side

• Shiny cel-shading.
• Terrific fun.
• MASS DESTRUCTION!

On the Minus Side

• No plot.
• A little short.
• Not enough story missions.

Score
Style 4
Substance 3 (For what it is)
Overall 3.5