If you’ve been on our site for a while, you would know that our article titles are usually quite deceiving. So we confess here right now that we aren’t just dissecting the Taxidermist DLC of Heavy Rain but also the full game itself. First we’ll talk about the DLC, which comes with the pre-order of Heavy Rain — but if you belong to one of those morons that didn’t pay for it in advance, you’d have to shell out another 5 bucks for it. Taxidermist will last a typical gamer from 10 minutes to an hour depending on whether you are trying to play it thoroughly and see everything that it has to offer, but if you aren’t one of those fellows who judge a book by its thickness (or a game by its ability to waste your time), Taxidermist is worth your every cent. In fact, we think, as a game, it is far better than Heavy Rain itself.
Taxidermist sets out to accomplish what Heavy Rain couldn’t — that the game fuses with you psychologically and makes you feel on edge the whole way — and to fully explain that, we will first have to talk about what kind of game Heavy Rain truly is. Heavy Rain, no doubt stems from PC point-and-click graphic adventures and if you grew up with them like we did, you would be very happy with how Heavy Rain turned out to be, even though it is far from being an adventure game — what other journalists would call an interactive drama — we call it an on-rail adventure game (just like an on-rail shooter). What you lack in Heavy Rain is the freedom of movement and exploration — you are often confined to a single room and you will never get stuck for more than a few minutes (unless you are impossible at games); all the interactive objects are highlighted and you can hear the protagonist’s thoughts anytime (in other words you are asking yourself for hints). If you breakdown Heavy Rain further, it is in essence a choose your own adventure book in the form of an adventure game. And when you aren’t in the exploration phase of the game, you will experience the action phase of the game, which really has its roots stemmed from Dragon’s Lair (the first ever QTE game) — you press a series of buttons or directions or the correct motion of your PS3 six-axis controller, to advance. Yes, before we talk about how we absolutely hate Quick-Time Events, from Shen Mue to God of War and anything in between, we don’t necessarily find the ones in Heavy Rain overly distasteful. What Heavy Rain represents is the evolution of QTE, that it is QTE that makes sense — you will never be asked to repeat QTEs unless it made sense to do so, like frying an egg and applying bandages, if you mess up you will try again until the plot deems you unworthy of doing so; but while it is during the sequences that make a difference, like escaping the killer or catching the culprit in a chase, how you respond to the QTE events will determine the fate of the protagonists and how events play out — and you don’t get a second chance unless you voluntary exit to the main menu to reload from the last checkpoint; then you are breaking the flow of the game voluntarily; but the game never breaks that flow itself — it is truly a movie experience that you can only move forward and forward alone, it is playing Dragon’s Lair without ever dying and retrying. Developer Quantic Dream does get an applaud from us, for making something quite different than anything we have ever played before, for advancing the genre.
What Heavy Rain suffers from, is the lack of a wii-mote, and a very boring beginning — if a player can’t get past the first 30 minutes of performing very menial task of brushing the protagonist’s teeth, pouring coffee, even working, with the 6-axis; yes the game would have bit a tad bit more enjoyable with a wii-mote (not to say this game would work at all on the Wii with its last generation graphics). Given that we can’t judge a book by its introduction alone, the middle part all the way to the ending is exciting and well written — despite a few plot holes here and then; I guess those who want to avoid spoilers should stop reading here and skip to the last paragraph. What Heavy Rain is — a serial murder novel in the form of an interactive medium. The story isn’t poorly written, it is far from that, David Cage’s writing is top-notch, but perhaps the plotting leaves something to be desired. And yes, there’s a huge difference between plot and writing. Poor writing stains a good plot, but a bad plot ruins good writing. The Plot of Heavy Rain relies on the twist (that David Cage being a fan of M Night is no surprise) — that one of the protagonists is really the Origami killer, that you should expect right from the beginning if your brain houses any braincells. Yet the plot tries to throw you off a couple times with one of the central protagonist’s periodic episodes of blackouts and visions of murders and origami figures in his hand; at some point even the protagonist admitted himself that he believed he was the killer, just like the Dark-Half from Stephen King. Of course when the twist is revealed, to nobody’s surprise, he isn’t the killer. Yet none of those psychotic episodes are truly explained — coincidences? Coincidences are OK in real life, but they are bad in fiction, that’s writing 101. Of course if we were to write the story, perhaps insert a common factor in there to tie the killer and the psychotic episodes together — a psychologists manipulating his memories, hypnosis or something, use your imagination, sealing plot holes isn’t rocket science, plan before you write. Oh, and don’t get me started with the worst and most awkward sex scene ever written in any medium ever (porn aside).
Another criticism we have for Heavy Rain is of course none of the exciting QTE events really matter for the first 80% of the story, because the protagonists can’t really die for that section of the game, not until near the ending, when they could finally perish, giving rise to a plethora of different ending scenes. The problem of emotionally connecting the player to the QTE events is somewhat of a failure, for the protagonists weren’t really in any kind of mortal danger — not until the end, but even then, the Origami Killer wasn’t a menacing figure, he was no Hannibal Lector. For Pete’s sake, he kidnaps kids and drown them in rain water. Why would any sane adult fear a guy like this?
Which brings us to appreciate the Taxidermist DLC — even though it only lasts about 20 min, it fully captures what Heavy Rain set out to do, but loses its vision along the way, and at the end it was exactly like how we thought about the Resident Evil 5 Lost in Nightmare DLC over the original game; it is vastly superior. Right at the start, Taxidermist throws you into a horror situation — investing the home of a very dangerous serial killer — the terror unfolds there when you run into a bloody dead body in the bathtub; and that doesn’t end there, not by a long shot. You will see some really disturbing stuff, and along with that a pretty awesome Easter egg from Indigo Prophecy, then the killer comes back. The Taxidermist makes the Origami Killer look like a wimp, like juxtaposing a lion next to a pussy cat. And trying to get out of his house unnoticed, with the squeaky floorboards, reminded me of that exciting scene from the Lovely Bones (the book, not the crappy movie).
At the end of the day, it is truly a shame that they can’t fit that kind of excitement and gameplay from the Taxidermist into the main thread of Heavy Rain. To adventure fans, the main game is still worth a purchase and to go through once, if not to just so that they can get their hands on the fine DLC. Years ago we were captivated by Omikron: The Nomad Soul — a game which set out to accomplish too much but ended up being flawed; and then we fell in love with Indigo Prophecy despite its ridiculous Matrix 3 like ending. Years later, Heavy Rain is a very artistic and fine take on the thriller and adventure genre, something that graphic adventure Still Life set out to do but failed to conclude. If it wasn’t for the potential of the Taxidermist, we would have thought that Heavy Rain was too casual a game for adventure fans, even though its story was for dark and mature — but only for those who can stomach the slightly weak gameplay and look past the plot holes to enjoy the great voice acting and writing and a truly great atmosphere and production.
