Before we go any further, please note that the title of this article “Have Faith In Heavy Rain” is not the name of the latest adult movie starring the main character from Mirror’s Edge. No, if that’s how you get your kicks, then you have to trawl through some much darker corners of the internets. Heavy Rain is a PS3 exclusive game produced by Quantic Dream. The game is a dark thriller style adventure game, that has you on the trail of a serial killer.

As the games release gets ever closer, it has been getting a fair amount of attention, but a lot of people are voicing concerns, particularly over the apparent over use of Quick Time Events (QTE’s) To see why I don’t share those concerns and why you shouldn’t either, join me after the jump…

Aside from a visually arresting early tech demo and a more gameplay orientated trailer first shown at the 2008 Leipzig Games convention, there was very little of the game that had been shown to the public during the early development cycle. Nothing from the tech demo or any of the scene shown in the Leipzig demo is in the final version of the game. Many of the features and gameplay elements are being closely guarded with French games director, David Cage, keeping things closer to his chest than boobs on a booth babe.

(ABOVE) Scene from the tech demo – this character does not appear in the final game

So, what does give me faith in Heavy Rain? Quantic Dream’s first project was a game called Omnikron: The Nomad Soul, a David Bowie infused futuristic adventure game. While it was fairly ambitious, it did not fully deliver on some of the promising ideas it exhibited and received some mixed review scores. The PC version got some decent reviews, but the Dreamcast port was so buggy the review score got dragged down to a sub standard, sub 7 score. With the Playstation version being subsequently canned, most console gamers would be forgiven for thinking this game had failed miserably.

Quantic Dreams‘ next game was much better received. The game was called Fahrenheit, except in the US where the name was changed to The Indigo Prophecy to avoid confusion with the film Fahrenheit 9/11. At the same time, a number of more adult scenes were removed from the American version including an interactive sex scene and an unlockable strip tease of one of the in game characters, which ‘climaxes’ in a full frontal nude shot – as we all know sex does not happen in America and there are no nude people.

It is this game that gives me so much faith in Heavy Rain, so much so that it actually annoys me to have to see David Cage get so defensive when being interviewed about the game. Fahrenheit was far from a perfect game, although I am not one of those people that felt the game was ruined by a shock twist at the end — it really was not that much of a shock, in fact, if you were paying attention, it was pretty much on the cards since the first scene — but Fahrenheit was doing more imaginative stuff with QTE’s, as well as controls, than most games have managed ever since.

(ABOVE) A scene from the final game involving Private Eye, Scott Shelby

The Quick Time Event has been heavily criticized in recent years, in games such as Ninja Blade and The Bourne Conspiracy but has been used to better effect in games such as The Force Unleashed – who pretty much copied all of their best ideas from the God of War series. However, I have yet to see a game that made as good as use of QTE’s in making you feel more immersed in the actions of your on screen persona than Fahrenheit had managed all those years ago.

The attention to detail put into the control methods; the unrelenting assault on marching us further across the uncanny valley than anyone else has previously managed; the unquestioning desire to make an adult orientated game in a medium that the mainstream press STILL regard as a pass time for kids and the want to make not just an an original game but more a new sub genre – are all things we, as gamers, say we want and should all be applauding and supporting – and are all the reasons that I have faith in Heavy Rain.

If you are still not convinced then just bear in mind that an Englishman is telling you to listen to a Frenchman and I bought my PS3 with this game in mind – that should convince you more than the opinion of a few fair weather gaming fans who are scared of the impending Rain.

(ABOVE) And if you don’t buy this game, FBI Agent, Norman Jayden will be on your case

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