HEAVY RAIN DAY – The game that breaks your heart and your dick.

After buying Heavy Rain and feeling up for a challenge my friend Julian proposed that we play the whole game from start to finish, rumoured to take around 10 hours we thought this would be a breeze, casually playing the game with a few beers and some snacks. How wrong we were.

Heavy Rain is a revolutionary RPG where you play four different characters who are each investigating a spate of murders carried out by the Origami Killer who kidnaps and drowns young boys, paedo anyone? More like an interactive movie than a game, you control the player’s movement and as you move to an object you are given a prompt to initiate an action. Every decision you make will alter how your experience progresses making an endless amount of finales to your story which will surely send some poor obsessed gamer insane.

Press X to touch some kids

The game starts simple enough press O to juggle some balls, press X to take a piss, it’s like being taught how to live all over again when you come out of a coma. Your playing as Ethan a soon to be deadbeat dad who is waiting for his wife and kids to come home, a sickening portrayal of American suburbia follows where you have to either help the wife with the dishes or hit your kids with plastic swords, we of course opted for the child violence.
Fast forward a few days to a day out at the mall where somehow the useless dad that is Ethan loses one of his sons, Jason, you frantically search the mall until you see him leave the mall and cross the road only to be met with an oncoming car, killing the child and putting Ethan in a coma. Horror was met with euphoria, we weren’t ready for such an early brutal death but then again we really hated Jason, dumb bastard.

We regained our composure and mopped up the spilt beer as we were propelled two years into the future where you play as the new un-improved weekend Dad version of Ethan, crying all the time over his dead kid, drinking (especially when prompted) and trying to reconnect with his other son Shaun, who thinks he’s a fag for not saving his brother. After some really tedious gameplay like cooking a pizza and doing the washing you take little Shaun to the park where somehow, SOMEHOW!! You loose Shaun as he rides the carousel two feet in front of you. Ethan is the worst dad Ever!!

And so begins the endeavour to search for Shaun before the killer elaborately drowns him with rain water, as well as Ethan you play as three other playable characters; Scott Shelby, a Charles Bronson like former cop turned P.I to investigate the Origami Killings, Norman Jaden, a whining, pussy, drug addict F.B.I agent drafted to help the local police force and Madison Paige, a journalist writing a story who gets naked, A LOT. And guys it’s totally ok to crack one off over her because she actually looks like the woman used for the motion capture, thanks technology, you rule!!

Unfortunately it was Ju who was the lucky one to receive the pad at the time you get to control Madison take a shower and immediately after take part in an awesome fight scene in her apartment. This is the problem with playing pass the pad with a friend, I end up doing all the dumb shit like changing nappies and giving first aid whereas Ju got to have fist fights and shoot people but then again it’s not the sort of game you play on your own, like going to the cinema on your own, it’s just lame.

After about 6 hours of gaming, 15 bottles of Budweiser, several Tesco value pasties Ju got a booty call and so we decided on a short break, not even HEAVY RAIN DAY could stop this boy from easing his drought. Unfortunately after all the sights of Madison Naked and the constant feeling of anxiety and monumental survival pressure, tragedy befell Ju in the bedroom and he left the room with a broken cock and the young woman sheepishly shuffling out the flat, pretty much the most hilarious yet unsettling moment of the day so far, get well soon buddy.

Once the bleeding had stopped, we got back to the game where the groin torture didn’t stop as we were subjected to a scene where you had to evade a crazy former surgeon who was attempting to attack Madison’s perfectly pixilated Vagina with a power drill, Ju’s face was of pure horror, luckily we saved Madison’s vagina but that wasn’t the last torture scene we had to endure. Later on, again with Madison, you have to seduce a nightclub owner, first by dancing provocatively on a podium, press X to shake yer butt, after that didn’t work we had to learn to apply mascara, shake controller to apply perfectly, apparently the club owner who was sat 20 ft away noticed the mascara and beckoned her over. Once we were taken back to the private room we were forced at gunpoint to strip, we duly obliged and again we got to see Madison’s tits (kinda got bored off them at this point) we then beat the club owner over the head and subjected him to some serious ball torture to extract some info, being a male and being asked to continually tap O to squeeze a man’s balls made me feel pretty sick. Other torture scenes include having to torture yourself while playing as Ethan, frantically tapping square to hack off your finger while the clock ticks away, soul destroying.

The developers, Quantic Dream, had obviously done their homework, the sense of urgency and anxiety as you play is constant and unlike conventional RPG’s you can’t just re-load the game after you die, if one of the characters get’s killed it will completely alter the other characters experiences and thus limit your ability to complete the tasks, You get attached to the characters (not Jaden) like a pet or a likeable family member, when they die you get upset, really upset, heartbroken even, try doing that repeatedly for 16 hours, I am an emotionless husk.