Most Violent Video Game Ever Made – Heavy Rain

On February 23, 2020, Heavy Rain, one of the most violent video games ever, celebrated its 10th anniversary. I want to remind you about this game, not about remakes, but the original game on the PS3. 

Quantic Dream’s slow-going PS3 noir felt like a breath of fresh air when it was released 10 years ago. For teenagers who grew up on police series and detective stories, the game Heavy Rain was one of those detective sex games PS.

This game is not a game at all, it is rather an interactive movie where you direct the stories of several characters and do not control everything. There is no constant linearity. If one of the characters dies by your mistake, you won’t see the “Game Over” text, you will simply continue further by changing the course of the plot without them.

On the other hand, the plot and the game are full of drama, fear, psychological stress and cruelty. I think that Heavy Rain is the most violent PS3 game. Forget about GTA or Manhunt.

Let’s Talk about the Plot

The police have bad news: it looks like the kid was kidnapped by an “origami killer”, a serial maniac who activates in the rainy season. His victims are children. 

Their death does not occur immediately, so the police conclude that the victims are kept somewhere where the water level slowly rises due to heavy rains. The main character finds out that the maniac gives him a chance to save his son, but the father has to pass several difficult trials…

The ending depends on our actions at a certain point in the plot: one of the characters may not live to see the end. And the ending of a sad story will suddenly be completely unexpected.

Heavy Rain begins with a sunny summer prologue. With the further development of the plot, not only the weather deteriorates but also the relationship between the characters.

After the death of his son, architect Ethan Mars divorces his wife, quits work, and for the second year in a row has been living in a state of deep depression trying to somehow establish relations with his second child Sean. Ethan is tormented by the ghosts of the past, memory lapses and nightmares, he only remembers the rain and the silhouettes of someone else’s bodies lying in the water. After another obscurity, he wakes up on the roadway and discovers that Sean has disappeared. The next day, Ethan receives a box, with colored paper stripes of origami folded in the shape of fancy animals and birds. There he finds detailed instructions printed in neat letters on what needs to be done to save his son…

So We Start Our Detective Story of The Most Violent Video Game

This is a story with quite obvious motivation and purpose. Next, we follow the video game serial killer`s marks, we change characters from time to time. Yes, we have to play with four characters. The FBI agent Norman Jayden is on the official line through the local police department; private investigator Scott Shelby solves the case of the previous abduction of heavy rain killer and finds unexpected evidence. Finally, journalist Madison Page collects material for a book about the Origami Master and does not even suspect what she’s got into.

Rainfall does not stop and rises every day…

The whole story of hunting for a maniac takes five gaming days, which is conditionally divided into ten episodes. Heavy Rain has quite peppy and consistent timing, and the form of presentation resembles modern monumental series such as “24 hours.” The plot winds around and gets confused like a forest path: the main characters move among the scenes and scenery from one key event to another; their paths converge several times and get lost so that lately they cross most bizarrely in one of the episodes.

Theater or Heavy Rain film 

Heavy Rain is very difficult to call a “game”. However, if we describe it in terms familiar to us, then it is rather a very expensive and elegantly set quest with a completely non-linear plot. 

To understand the game, it’s better to imagine not heavy rain film, but a theater ‒ protracted performance is staged, the same actors play the same show… but each time according to a new scenario. The general course of events is more or less monitored “from above”, periodically carefully guiding insanely twisted plot lines to the “right” side, nonetheless, the grand finale of the whole story as well as the fate of the main characters is completely in your hands. 

In the first hours, the opportunities that open up cause a sincere incomparable delight but, having delved into the system, despite the huge number of alternative scenarios of events, in terms of the general structure and mechanics of the plot, Heavy Rain is still just “very Advanced” Fahrenheit. But the “advanced” means there is nowhere else to go. Technical excellence, a well-thought-out story as well as the level of acting beyond the standards of computer games ‒ all this leaves no time for petty geek quibbles.

Sleight of Hand

Heavy Rain has one very important feature: you believe in this game in the same way as you believe in the plot of an interesting book or the reality of a good movie. Moreover, that amazing effect is achieved not only because of the high-quality setting but for much deeper reasons.

The game is oversaturated with details, the level of interactivity of scenery has risen to an unprecedentedly high level compared to Fahrenheit. Speaking quite simply, the gameplay boils down to quickly pressing certain buttons at the moment when their image appears on the screen. However, the well-known types, forms, and combinations of quick-time events are made in Heavy Rain at a fucking unbelievable level of high quality!

During some QTEs, you feel all that happens on the screen almost physically. Of course, you need to get used to the local control, but after half an hour you will be amazed at how natural and simple everything is done. 

Heavy Rain is one of the few games in the description of which you can very seriously use terms like “acting”!

It’s difficult to explain in words: the sensations from some action scenes in the game are so natural that at some moments you start to catch yourself thinking that calm and composure are almost the most important components of the gameplay. What is especially nice, the complexity and frequency of QTE can be changed at any time without leaving the game, so if the Heavy Rain suspense level suddenly seems insufficient to you, just go into the menu. 

On hardcore settings, the game does not give a second chance and requires incredible sleight of hand (for example, in the human language there is no name for the figure into which the author of these lines needed to twist his hands to alternately hold the eight most unexpected gamepad buttons). And vice versa, at the lowest difficulty level, Heavy Rain is easily mastered by people who are infinitely far from video games.

Yeah, maybe some if you were searching for the most violent game ever, the Heavy Rain review ps4, but I’m talking only about my favorite 2010 game because those emotions ten years ago are the most important for memories. Well, it’s one of the most disturbing video games of that time.