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Heavy Rain does not need to be presented: along with God of War 3 This game is the most anticipated PS3 exclusive next year. Interactive thriller from authors Fahrenheit (the best game of 2005 according to the version of “Gambling”), in which the player not only solves puzzles and goes through Quick Time Events, but physically repeats every any significant effect of the hero, and all his actions somehow affect the plot of the tragedy that is played out On the screen. A detailed story about the background of the project and its place in the modern gaming industry can be read in the big material that we published in Light Gamery No. 5/2009.

In anticipation of a quick release, we spent several hours alone with the Heavy Rain preview version and carefully studied several episodes from the first half of the game.

Morning in the pine forest

The main question, which demo version does not answer: is that cunning system of causal relationships that David Cage has been working with such perseverance in every interview? Apparently, this will finally become clear only after the release: in order to understand how the actions of some heroes affect the fate of others, the game must be passed entirely, preferably – several times.

Today, Heavy Rain looks more like a matured fahrenheit: https://god-odds-casino.co.uk/ there are no dizzying jumps from a flying helicopter to a roller gas outlet, but everything related to the plot, characters and directing is about ten times intensified about ten times. However, the developers begin from afar: Itan Mars, a successful architect, wakes up a sunny morning in the bedroom of his own suburban house. On the floor in front of the door – a note from his wife: she left to take the children from school and will return soon to prepare everything necessary for a party on the occasion of the birthday of their eldest son, Jason.

The prologue lasts about ten minutes, and all this time the players will impatiently fidget in the chair: how so, where the promised mysterious killings? Instead of unraveling the ominous secrets, we are offered to wander around the house, admire the balcony for a wonderful summer day, brush your teeth (also a small QTE), and also shows the buttocks of Itan while it takes a shower.

Quantic Dream pumps the atmosphere deliberately slowly, like a professional Spanish inquisitor, leisurely stretching the sacrifice on the rack. First, they show us a scene full of drama, in which Itan loses Jason in a human hypermarket, moves through the crowd for a long time and calls his son. He does not hear, leaves the shopping center, and at the nearest intersection, the car knocks it down to death.

Then one more unbearably long episode follows. A few years after the tragedy, Itan survived a painful gap with his wife and was forced to move to a close lup in the industrial zone. In this scene, he takes Sean, the youngest son, from school, prepares dinner for him, makes lessons with him, is looking for a plush bear around the house and puts to sleep. The “Origami-killer” recalls only the title in the newspaper, which Mars finds in the hallway, and a strange letter in which the unknown writes some nonsense about children who have not returned from school.

Night of long knives

Until this moment, Heavy Rain does not at all excite the imagination: the actors play it no matter, the main characters do not want to empathize (Itan, similar to the sad double of Russell Crowe, pulls the plowman for his eternal acidic mine), and the maniac killer is still in no hurry.

However, the next few chapters are completely dedicated to the FBI agent Norman Jayden and the private detective Scott Shelby-these two independently investigate the “Origami-killer” case. This is where it becomes clear what the creators of Fahrenheit have been doing all these years. Quantic Dream perform in a familiar genre and their favorite scenery: dirty streets, industrial areas, dilapidated corridors of cheap motels. Prostitution. Corrupt practices. Despair. Disgusting weather – in Fahrenheit it was continuously snowing, but then everything does not want to stop rain.

Tragic episodes are played before our eyes one after another. Shelby comes to a shabby clip to interrogate an important witness – a prostitute whose son became a victim of a maniac. Here he is trying to protect her from an aggressive client – follows a spectacular scene of a fight with a fight of dishes and a bang of furniture. Jaden, sitting in a car, with a trembling hand, takes a glass test tube with an incomprehensible substance of bright blue color from his pocket (we suspect that he is a drug addict) and sharply hides it back. And after fifteen minutes, Itan Mars reappears on the screen and performs in a completely new role: it turns out that after the death of the eldest son of the architect, strange failures began to torment in memory that happened to him during the rain.

During all this time, we are shown only one scene of violence (a fight in the apartment of prostitutes), they do not show a single corpse, even there is no blood really. Perhaps the developers want to save all this for the second half of the game, but it is also possible that Quantic Dream is simply in no hurry to attract the player's attention to the anatomical details and offer to focus on the heroes and invisible threads of fate that connect them.

By the way, Heavy Rain characters look very cool. Even secondary ones seem to be endowed with their own character and insignificant, but interesting details. The lively chief of the police, having lived to the gray hair, did not learn how to tie a tie and asks for help from a federal agent. The psychoanalyst is barely noticeably whispering, and a cunning half -smile always plays on his lips. On the toilet table in the dwelling of a prostitute, right next to pink beads and a fluffy fan, is a photograph of the murdered son ..

Groundhog Day

And of course, we cannot ignore non -linearity. Within the framework of each scene, the character can behave differently. There are much more behavior options in comparison with Fahrenheit, and inattentive players risk missing a lot: if a private detective tries to bribe a grief mother, she will drive him out in a mear. And if Itan decides to send his son to sleep ahead of time, then in his next replica he will hear the annoyed notes of an approaching transitional age (“You do not give me freedom! I hate you!") – this would not have happened if we allowed the child to sit a little by the TV.

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As planned by the authors, all our actions should somehow influence the plot of the game. In demo, we saw several prerequisites for this: what, for example, will happen if the detective forgets to leave his business card to the witness? What will happen if the agent misses one of the evidence at the crime scene? Will something change in the fate of the hero if he does not tell the therapist about inexplicable failures in memory? While these are just hints: we repeat, you can fully evaluate the picture only by going through the game. But even if Heavy Rain turns out to be a high -tech variation on the Fahrenheit topic, we will not be offended by the developers, the main thing is to tell you how the matter ends! And it would be nice to quickly.

Game Formula: 50% fahrenheit + 50% of modern technologies

While you are waiting:

• The Last Express – PC
• Mor. Utopia – PC (5/10, "Gambling" No. 7/2005)
• Braid – PC , Xbox 360 , PS3 (9/10, "Gambling Light" No. 2/2009)

Percentage of readiness: 80%

Exit date: 2010