Reviews// Heavy Rain

Reviewing this as a video game rather than as a movie vs video game or 'movideogame' discussion, unlike the game I'll cut to the chase. For me it was hours of immersive fun. But it didn't start well.

Early stages of the HR throw up a large number of clichés, some inconsistencies and a control system that so nearly nails it but then throws itself back at you to drag you out of the experience. I very nearly let my own snobbery stop these problems from making me go on. In the long run – with the Hitchcockian (sorry) endings that I experienced , I am grateful that I kept going.

First, then, the cliché count. It's enormous. Everything from dodgy dialogue: “I'm a mother. A mother who wants to catch my child's killer”, “It's a pain killer. It'll ease the pain”; to imagery: a disappearing balloon as symbolic of a dead soul; to characterisations: whore with a golden heart, boozy PI.

But hell, if we're going to start berating video games for using the clichés of other media, we may as well stop here. Even more so if we're going to deride something that seeks to emulate pulp fiction and movies.

Next, 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's also got to be said that it's probably the first time that someone's had the gumption to make the motion capabilities of that controller properly useful.

What does get annoying, however, is basic movement. Pressing R2 and the left analog should be straightforward. Now, either I've got five very sponge-like controllers, or there is a lot of latency in all PS3 controllers when it comes to R2 and the left analog talking to each other. I just couldn't get used to it and its staggered nature often lifted me out of a scene that had been building quite elegantly towards plot development.

Now for the inconsistencies. Let me be clear here. The game's ambition is immense. It really does want to offer the same kind of imagination fuel once achieved by old Infocom or Level 9 adventure games. Back then, playing Knight Orc or, of course, Suspect all you really had was your imagination and some words. These were linear and frustrating titles. But something at the back of your mind told you that somehow the computer, the software and the designers were working together to change outcomes as you played.

Quantic Dream has set out to do this. This can result in situations where at the end of the game (your first run at the end of it at least) you turn to whoever is with you and say, “There was no reason on Earth for that character to have behaved like that. No reason for the black outs/confession/beating/drunken raging (there's a red herring in that list... or maybe more... or not).

These are forgiveable because the next time you play through (and you will) the forking problems due to game choices and reaction times during the QTEs will be different.

What isn't forgiveable is a problem with hooking in your emotions at the start. There's a problem with plates you see. It should have been picked up on. Early on Ethan Mars – the architect, father and “way-in” character – has to find some plates to lay on the table in his own home. This is his home. The place he loves. The place that holds his family and forms the narrative bubble into which you are supposed to breath the life of your emotions. Ethan has to be told where the plates are by his less than engaging wife.

Yes, I know, it's a point so pernickity that I almost baulk from bringing it up. Only it made me ponder just how invested Ethan is in his family. This in turn lead me to wonder why Ethan took what happened to him later on with such grimy, dismal lack of aplomb.

This is the problem with a narrative (it's not simply a plot) that attempts to evoke your emotions in a mature way. Every little point becomes important – even enthralling.