His drug habit, however, is treated with all the worst cliches, and the withdrawal tends to surface in such jarring bursts that it’s always tempting to trigger a relapse just to end the scene quicker. His is intended to be a narrative of addiction, which the player can either opt to overcome, or succumb to, depending on the merest press of a button. FBI agent Norman spends the game suffering withdrawals from a fictional drug called “triptocaine”. Indulgent cruelty is far from the game’s only problem, however. This was exactly the sort of game I had been craving. There was no “Game Over” screen if one of your characters died the story simply continued without them. That is to say it was a game with no real technical challenge, where enjoyment was derived from the strength of the story, the knowledge that you can pull the narrative in different directions or nudge it off-course with an errant judgement. Released 10 years ago on 23 February 2010, Heavy Rain was described ubiquitously as an “ interactive film”. Here was a PS3 game that let you experience a deadly mystery for yourself, placing you in the shoes of four interconnected characters who orbit a spree of child murders.
#Heavy rain video games serial
As a teenager who grew up obsessively watching police procedurals like The Shield and NYPD Blue, and noirish serial killer films such as Se7en and Zodiac, I felt like Heavy Rain was designed specifically for me.