In Brief: Heavy Rain

This is a nitpick. Let's get that straight. Heavy Rain is an excellent game and everyone should play it.

After all, to really bitch about a game, you have to love it first.

So with that in mind, here is the thing: for a mystery game, Heavy Rain is awful light on the mystery.

I don't mean the big mystery, of course. The game wants you to wonder who the Origami Killer is, and you do wonder, despite the obvious freaking clues pointing at him with giant metaphorical neon arrows, mostly because the game actively doesn't just mislead you but rather actively lies about key events.

But it is a big mystery. It's a mystery that gets introduced about five scenes in and isn't resolved until the final act. Everything in between involves gathering clues, and talking to suspects, and (in the case of journalist Madison) being threatened with rape on three separate occasions. There's car chases and fistfights and a nasty bit of business involving a choice of surgical implements, but you don't resolve that central mystery, or even any subset of it, until right at the end, even on a perfect playthrough.

So what's keeping the player going? Where's the payoff? Scene after scene goes by with no questions answered. I can only speak for myself, but I found it exhausting. After you quicktime your way through your third desperate knife battle in as many conversations, and find yourself still with no new information, you're a long way from being in the coveted "just one more level" zone of addictive play.

So this is what I mean when I say it sucks at the mystery. It needs little questions. It needs little answers. It needs them scattered up and down the spine of the game, because if your gameplay is narrative then you need to offer narrative rewards.

And the questions are there. What's the deal with the cop's addictions? I don't know. The game doesn't explain. Why can't Madison sleep? What's the significance of the killer's poem? Heavy Rain throws these issues out there, and even has them drive plot points, but then seems to forget about them, or at least think that explanations aren't necessary. Properly handled, these could have given the game the sense of structure that occasionally feels missing. They could at least have turned the grim march towards the endgame into something that felt less like a joyless descent into failure.

Heavy Rain is a huge improvement on Fahrenheit, the last game from David Cage and his team at Quantic Dream. But it's still got a way to go in learning to tell a satisfying story. I'm looking forward to their next attempt. Will they continue to improve? Really, that's the mystery that's keeping me engaged here.

Heavy Rain: Where Is It?

News out of Paris GDC is that French developer Quantic Dream is still working on their PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain, which prompts the question: when will it be done?

These are the people who made Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy and as far as I'm concerned they can't release a new game fast enough. Lead developer David Cage is still involved in Heavy Rain, so it's almost certain to be a game worth seeing.

The game debuted with an impressive tech demo at E3 2006 which famously featured an uncanny-valley-esque lead actress. Quantic reported that same year that they'd halted production on their sequel to Omikron: The Nomad Soul in order to focus exclusively on Heavy Rain.

Between this and Alan Wake, it's seeming like all the games I'm most excited about are stuck in development limbo.

Whatever Happened To Alan Wake?

I bumped into my MP3 of the theme from Max Payne this morning, and was reminded that talented Max Payne developer Remedy Entertainment had been working on another game a while back.

Called Alan Wake, it was to tell the tale of a writer haunted by his past who finds his writings are being reflected in the small town he is staying in. Influenced by the likes of Stephen King and David Lynch, it promised to be more than a little different from your average top-shelf game.

Unfortunately, after some impressive trailers at E3 2006, Alan Wake fell off the radar. There's really been no showing of the game since, and while apparently it's still being worked on, the official release date is "when it's done". A projected release of 2008 seems to be slipping, which is a shame as this is one of the few upcoming games I'm really looking forward to.

At least it's not alone; Heavy Rain, the new game from Quantic Dream (Fahrenheit) has also vanished from scopes since 2006, with no word on whether it will reach shelves in 2008.

Assorted Stuff

Yes, it's time for assorted stuff. Everyone likes stuff, right?

* In case you've missed it in the last two weeks, for all you Dynasty Warriors fans who aren't already over the moon about Dynasty Warriors Gundam, there's also word of Warriors Orochi, which is basically just a new Dynasty Warriors game featuring the entire cast of the Dynasty Warriors franchise plus the crew from Samurai Warriors, united at last. Plus if you read this article in the right way you can interpret it as meaning there'll be three-player co-op. Awesome.

* My favourite developer that nobody loves, Quantic Dream, are not only following up their fantastic PS2 title Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) with a PS3 release called Heavy Rain (old news), but they're also for some reason doing a PS3-exclusive sequel to their unanimously reviled Dreamcast relic Omikron: The Nomad Soul. That's great; while they're at it maybe they can get the rights to Phantasmagoria off Sierra and release a few more redundant iterations of that franchise too.

* I'm working my way through F.E.A.R (again at least a good year behind the hype), and I absolutely can't believe how you can pour as much raw talent and technical genius into a game as has obviously made its way into F.E.A.R. and still produce such a charmless and unmemorable end product. I'd be writing it off completely, if only it weren't so darned fun unloading my shotgun into those Replicas. The completely-tacked-on attempts at scariness just make me wish I had a new Silent Hill game to play.

* And in case you weren't excited about Rock Band yet, here's another big helping of huzzah.