I avoided playing Heavy Rain, a PS3 exclusive title, for the longest time.  The story intrigued me, to be sure, but I knew next to nothing about how this "game" was played.  Add to the fact that most of my friends absolutely hated the game, and I was quite skeptical for the first couple of months Heavy Rain was on store shelves.  I finally broke down and played it, however, my curiosity overcoming my initial aversion to the game.

Now, before I go further, let me just say I went into this experience with a very negative attitude.  I fully expected to, at the very least, dislike this game.  My mindset was such that I was feeling predisposed to hating it.  I thought this game never stood a chance.

Five minutes into the opening scene and I was ready to start pounding my head against a wall.  What in the hell am I supposed to be doing?  The character I was playing as at the time, Ethan Mars, mentioned working either on a project or in the garden.  But where are these things located?  I couldn't find any garden wandering out in the backyard, and I no sooner took a step out the front door then the character looked around and headed right back in.  And Ethan couldn't even travel at anything faster than a somewhat meandering walk.  There was no run button.  But then I (finally) found myself in Ethan's work room.  So I sat him down and got him to work on his architectural drawing, which turned into a small Quick Time Event, or QTE.

I don't really have too many issues with QTEs.  They have crept into many of today's games, though, and many times detract from the experience.  I didn't find this to be the case in Heavy Rain.  It was actually a nice reprieve from all the walking around.  Eventually Ethan's family came home, and some more walking around and QTEs ensued, getting me used to the way this game would play out.

Despite all of my efforts to hate the game, I found that the more I played Heavy Rain, the more I found myself getting sucked into the story.  It was slow at first, but the way the intertwining stories of the four characters I played as unfolded kept me playing.  There were some issues I had with the voice acting, but overall the voice acting wasn't all that bad.  And the developer, Quantic Dream, did a really good job of keeping the tension and mystery in the forefront. 

It's only now that I've had some time away from the game that I can formulate my opinions clearly.  I don't really view Heavy Rain as a traditional game by any sense of the term.  Even the developers refer to Heavy Rain as an Interactive Story.  It's something of a hybrid between a traditional Adventure game and a solely QTE based game (such as Dragon's Lair).  The marriage of these two styles worked, I think.  Heavy Rain did well manipulating my emotions.  During the course of the game I felt fear, tension, desperation and betrayal.

While Heavy Rain may not be thought of a traditional game, it does what it sets out to do.  I'll be keeping my eye on future offerings from Quantic Dream.  Keep up the good work, guys.