Heavy Rain is out in February and it could go one of two ways: It could raise the bar in terms of interactivity within games, or it could fail miserably and signal the death of many original IP. It’s Christmas so I’m going for the more optimistic choice of the two. It’s certainly a game that has created much discussion and opinion within the gaming community and it’s probably fair to say that the majority are looking forward to it. But how are we to know what’s in store when even David Cage doesn’t know what Heavy Rain is? Talking to Destructoid, he said:
Heavy Rain is not a videogame anymore in my mind because it breaks with most of the traditional paradigms, but it’s fully interactive.
So it’s not a videogame. A lot of people are labelling it as an ‘interactive movie’, but not David Cage:
Using the term ‘interactive movie’ to describe Heavy Rain has been a tricky question from the beginning
Okay, so what is Heavy Rain?
Heavy Rain is about playing with a story almost in a physical sense, changing it, twisting it, discovering it, making it unique, making it yours…[the player]Â tells the story through his actions. All this is done in a very fluid, seamless way, with no cut scenes, no big flashing sign to make decisions, and this is what makes the game really unique.
That’s a very catchy way of explaining it, David! I don’t know about you but my list of ‘2010’s Most Anticipated Games That Aren’t Games, Nor Interactive Movies’ just increased by one.
If the format becomes successful we will probably have to find a different name for this type of experience.
A new name? How about ‘Pretentious’?
Just to be clear, I’m looking forward to Heavy Rain a lot, it’s just getting very pompous, isn’t it?