Heavy Rain - PS3

When you're saying anything at all about Heavy Rain, the first thing you need to say is that it's bold. Quantic Dream has set out to produce an interactive noir thriller that's truly cinematic in scope with masses of tension, very human (and flawed) characters and multiple branching pathways for players to wind their way along.

So, a quick plot rundown – a difficult job without giving away spoilers but, here we go: in Heavy Rain the basic aim is to save someone from death and to catch the person who put the victim in the position whereby they could die. Oh, and the perpetrator happens to be a serial killer. He or she is "The Origami Killer". You achieve these tasks by conversing (if you're not a fan of the Mass Effects or Monkey Islands of the gaming world, you may want to stop reading now) and by completing "quicktime events".

Unlike most games, you control five characters: a father, a female journalist, a male FBI profiler, a male private eye and one further character. You do this in different parts of the game, not simultaneously.

With the control system, it must be said that Quantic Dream has produced an imaginative and pleasant-to-use method of getting the most from the PS3 controller. It has also got to be said that Heavy Rain is probably the first game where a developer has had the gumption to make the motion capabilities of the PS3 controller properly useful. As well as certain basic movements for getting about the game, you'll use the Sixaxis at certain moments to follow on-screen prompts that can be deceptively tricky. Getting them wrong can mean anything from failing to sit down to sudden death.

Death in Heavy Rain is unlike that which you see in other games. There is no miraculous resurrection - once a character is dead the game continues without them, adjusting the plot to accommodate their untimely departure. You can actually allow all the playable characters to die and still see the ending of the game, such is the branching nature of the story.

Heavy Rain could well draw you deeper into a game than you've ever gone before.