Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain is a game developed by Quantic Dream. It tells the story of the Origami Killer, from the perspective of four characters who are entwined in the killer’s wrongdoings. The game could be best classified as interactive fiction; the choices you make during the game affect the outcome, and there are no game overs. Because it doesn’t fit squarely into any genre, an analysis of its game feel is interesting because there is really no other game to compare it to.
Real-Time Control
Heavy Rain relies on these mechanics:
- Walking
- Thinking
- Interacting
- Quick-time Events
Both interacting and quick-time events comprise doing any imaginable action, such that although the input methods vary from scene to scene, the actions performed are not consistent.
Heavy Rain is roughly equally divided into two separate control scenarios: a “real-time” scenario where you directly move and control the character, and a “quick-time” scenario where events are unfolding and button prompts affect specific actions. Real-time control is easily Heavy Rain’s weakest of the 3 areas of game feel.
Walking: You can only walk in “real-time” mode. The control scheme for walking is awkward; pressing a button moves your character forward, and the left stick changes the direction the character is facing. On top of this unnecessarily non-standard control scheme, the animations (while admittedly smooth) take too long to start, resulting in a lack of continuity of control. These running animations also lock out the player from interacting.
Thinking: At any time while in “real-time” mode, you can press a button and monitor your characters thoughts. This is responsive, but offers no continuity of control because you are simply selecting a specific thought to read from up to 4 that float around the characters’ heads.
Interacting: While in “real-time” mode, when you approach certain objects button prompts will appear. By pressing the button shown, your character performs an action related to the object. This is responsive, but beginning to perform an action locks the player out of any other control, and often there are several interactions you can perform (such that if you began the wrong action, you would be stuck attempting that action until it timed out).
Quick-time Events: The “quick-time” mode presents a movie-like scene where pressing buttons when prompted can affect the outcome of the scene. In these scenes, you have no control except when prompted. The inputs are very responsive, as they need to be because they are often in quick succession, but there are sometimes long stretches of time in which there are no inputs.
Simulated Space
During the “real-time” parts of the game, there is simulated space as the character walks around the environment and interacts with the objects therein. The character collides with any obstacles, and the interactions with the objects in the scene allow the player to change their environment dynamically.
Polish
The game has plenty of polish; sound effects are always as expected for whatever interaction is occurring, the result of interactions is always clear, and in a nice extra touch the characters will actively look at interesting objects.
Overall
Heavy Rain fits squarely into the overlap of simulated space and polish. Real-time control is not a priority at all in Heavy Rain; thus, it does not perfectly fit our definition of game feel.
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