But they carried over its flaws, too: its gratuitous shower scenes and emotional tone-deafness. But there is no reason to be charitable at all.īoth games carried over features from Heavy Rain : its slow-going gameplay, interactive control schemes and branching narrative arcs. Being charitable, I suppose you could interpret the game’s sexism as a misjudged homage to the insipid female archetypes found in old (and many not-so-old) detective films. Women in Heavy Rain are defined almost entirely by their capacitiy for sex and motherhood. Madison is one of few women of note in the game the second-biggest female role takes the form of Lauren Winter, a sex worker whose son had been murdered by the “Origami Killer” years before. Another crass non-sequitur sees her drugged and tied up in a man’s basement. After applying makeup and ripping her skirt, she inveigles her way into the club’s back office and stripteases to land what she can only assume is the big scoop. One low point sees her re-routed to a seedy nightclub for a side-quest of spurious journalistic value. Madison Paige, the game’s sole female player-character, is continuously leered at by the camera it takes only a few minutes of playing as Madison for the game to ask her to undress and shower. 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. 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.
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