Power Hour Reviews are a new NYMG feature in which we spend one intense hour playing newly released games in order to get a sense not only of game mechanics and characterization, but narrative as well. Let us spend our time first, so that you don’t have to waste yours.
This week I played I played the much anticipated (by me anyway) puzzle based game, Rain, on the PS3. The trailer bills this game as one where you play an invisible little boy who chases an invisible little girl through town in the rain while helping her to avoid invisible monsters that chase her through the night. A substantial part of the puzzling comes from the fact that the invisible children (and the monsters) become visible as silhouettes in the rain. All of this is wrapped in beautiful graphics that are reminiscent of a watercolor painting of Paris in the early 20th century and the music and sound effects are spellbinding. The underlying soundtrack compliments the quiet, echoing footsteps and soft pitter patter of raindrops. The first time that I fired up this game I found myself just sitting at the start screen absorbing the ambiance for a good twenty minutes (no, I didn’t count that as a part of my hour). Check out the trailer to see a bit of it for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS0mpDh5aO4
And then the game started. The narrative unfolds with a young boy who stays home in bed with a fever while everyone else in his family goes out and his chasing after an invisible little girl that appears outside of his window. And that’s when it hit me. OH MY GOD!!! THIS IS ANOTHER DEAD KID GAME!!! What is it about games and dead children recently? Can I get a dead kid warning on the back of the label? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind murdering folks…in the game. Or even watching folks get murdered, but murdered, dead, or suffering children really just hit too close to home for me. The Last of Us took me fast, Brothers had me sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for a resurrection, and I didn’t even pick up the second Bioshock game because it gave off a vibe of child molestation that just made me too uncomfortable. But that aside let’s talk about the game.
Rain is a puzzler that involves figuring out how to move around the city in the pouring rain without being seen by invisible monsters that are bent on your destruction. You also have to work to keep a fellow traveler, who doesn’t recognize that you are there or trying to help her, safe as well. In the hour that I played I made it through the first three chapters of the game and most of the puzzles simply repeat themselves. And it goes a little something like this: draw the monster out, run through the rain, find cover and become invisible again, wait for the monster to walk away, and repeat. Some of these steps have a little twist to them from time to time, but for the most part the puzzles are just a bit repetitive.
The beauty of this game lies not so much in the puzzles themselves but in the unwinding of the narrative itself. I won’t spoil it for you, but it is a properly bleak 1900-ish French story that is quite compelling. Definitely something that you might want to pick up and play through, but I might wait until it goes on sale or goes cheap/free on PS+…and only if you don’t mind apparently dead children.
