The Nail

Parkour!

Season Eight's opener for The Office is the worst season opener so far. As any fan of The Office should have recognized, the cold opening, with its references to planking, is fairly close in proximity to Season Six's opening where Andy, Dwight, and Michael imitate parkour. Just like Season Six, planking is an outdated internet sensation. There's a charm to that, but it suggests that the hilariously outdated references were not limited to just Michael. This is a fallacy. Every outdated reference on The Office prior to the opening of Season Eight is attributed to Michael. Why are these outdated references continuing on The Office? I don't know, but without Michael, they shouldn't.
And this is how the episode begins. It begins with a retread. It begins with a mistake. Michael is gone. He's never coming back, and they shouldn't even suggest that he might with this misguided humor. Andy, the new boss, is not Michael, and they went for the safe choice in having him be the boss. Both Andy and Michael are lovable oafs, real-life disciples of The Daily Show, and big movie stars. Daryl, long time underused patron of the show, could have been the boss. Or, Jim. But Andy was the safe and obvious choice.

This is a mistake for two reasons. First off, Andy is too similar to Michael. After the writers decided to completely change Andy's character from a ticking time bomb of hostility to super saccharine loser, he has become almost a spitting image of Michael. Steve Carrel was amazing on the show, and just like Apple shouldn't find the next Steve Jobs, the Office shouldn't replace Steve Carrel with the next thing closest to him. Secondly, it is grossly inappropriate for the boss of the office to be engaged with an inter-office romance. This poisons the force subplot of Erin/Gabe/Andy love triangle. Enough instance of real life sexual abuse and harassment of office managers and their workers ruin any fun and fantasy that could have been exploited from the Andy/Erin romance. Now, it is just icky. But, because the writers are mostly male, or mostly out of touch, and they probably won't explore this avenue of awfulness, or even know it exists. Which, in the minds of some, can be viewed as sexist, or pathetic (if Erin doesn't recognize it).

Nevertheless, the show goes on, with the sudden plot twists in the first two minutes. How did James Spader persuade Kathy Bates to give up her position as CEO to him? Rather than start with the planking portion of the episode, the cold open should have been Kathy Bates offering James Spader the position of boss, him turning it down, and subsequently convincing her to let him take of the company, with her departure. This accomplishes several things. First of all, On screen finality is given to Kathy Bates. She was a major character in the previous season, and major characters should never be dealt with off screen (unless that is the point, a la No Country for Old Men with James Brolin). Secondly, it would have replaced the planking joke with something fresh. Not only would the joke from Season Six be discarded, but the audience would have been thrown for a loop with the introduction of James Spader as boss, and then his succession to CEO. Lastly, James Spader's interview in the last episode of Season Seven was the best moment in the episode. This conversation between Kathy Bates and James Spader would have allowed for a continuation of his magnificent and malevolent oratory skills previously witnessed. Instead, we never see this strength again, which will be addressed later.

The other surprise in the opening, apart from Andy being the boss and James Spader as CEO is the dual pregnancies of Pam and Angela. There were three episodes primarily concerning Pam and Jim's baby: The birth episode, the Sweeny Todd episode, and the episode where they exploit their baby to win the affection of Will Farrel. Three episodes in a 22-ish episode season is hardly enough for them to recycle the pregnancy angle. Sure, Jenna Fischer's real life pregnancy might be the cause of such an inclusion, but it damages the show and the characters. And, why did Angela's wedding to the gay senator occur off screen as well? Again, this could have yielded great humor, such as Dwight or Oscar trying to ruin the wedding.

Also, why did James Spader make Andy the boss, a person who has a lousy sales record, and whom he almost instantly puts in the "loser" category of his diary list? Yes, he was originally in the "winner" category, but without any hesitation, he moves Andy onto the other side. Is James Spader, the mastermind from Season Seven's closer and the guy who convinced the CEO of her own company to quit, really that bad at judging people? It makes no sense.

And, why is Erin looking through his diary in the first place, when in earlier episodes she forced Pam to hand her faxes upside-down so Erin would not accidentally read them?

These inconsistencies illuminate the problems with later episodes to earlier (even as late as Season Six) episodes.

[Complete side note: do all pregnant women clasp their hands together under their belly to signal that they are pregnant?]

There's some great jokes in the episode, don't get me wrong. Dwight throwing Jim's phone like a fastball is not only in character, but hilarious. Stanley's forced catch phrase is just plain silly. James Spader's "I might as well be sketching a cube" rebuff to Andy is in perfect character to the previous version of his character. Kevin's "WARNING!" is a riot. But, Pam's constant crying isn't very funny. The commercial she is crying at is kinda heart warming, so it isn't a stretch for her to be crying at it. Maybe, she should have been weeping at something else, something completely indefensible? The lunch scene with James Spader is a wash except for Toby's leaving, which underscores Toby's greatness on the show. Kevin's text isn't bad either.

But, this was an important episode. This wasn't just the first episode of Season Eight, it was the first episode, the first true episode (the few last season don't count), without Steve Carrel. At this point, are we to believe that this is the best representation of the post-Michael episodes of the Office? Hands down, the best moment of the episode was Andy's dedication to the workers with his pointed defense of each second-tier cast member to James Spader. This move by Andy was classic Michael, and classic Office. But, moments later the show ends with what should have been a classic Pam/Jim moment. Jim drops a note, mimicking James Spader's list of Winners/Losers, but with Pam, Pipa, and the new baby in the win column, and "everything" in the losing column. It's sweet, and something that would feel right at home in Season Five. But, it is played for laughs. It is played just like the horrid baby episode.This was no Dundies drunken nodding moment, or rooftop pizza moment, or campfire confession, or Jim asking Pam out for the first time moment. This was dumb.

And that's how it ends. To quote Monkey Island, rest in piece and all that.

Kick-Ass and the Poochie Generation

The movie begins by asking the question "why has no one else thought of/done this before?" This is not so much the teenage narrator asking this question, but the boastful writer/director as well. What an original concept: ordinary kids and teenagers dress up like superheroes in the real world. Surely, no one has thought of this before. But of course, others have, in comics, but also in an episode of South Park that aired near the release of The Dark Knight. And, if my memory is correct, is not this the premise to the start of Mystery Men? That is not the issue, but it is just a comment to deflate some bloated egos. The real issue is that this premise is begging us to ask this question in real world dynamics. This is not supposed to be "why has no one else thought of/done this before in movies", but why not in real life as well. Moments later, in what is supposed to be the movie's first laugh, that is if it was not telegraphed so far in advance by the movie's own pompous opening question that no one in my theater even chuckled, someone dressed in heroic garb jumps from the building and plummets to a violent death on a car. This is what would happen in real life, right?

The movie reminds us that in the real world, there are bad guys. We see a drug deal interrogation go wrong. No laughs in this scene. Rather, the laughs come after as the boss who ordered a man's finger cut off ponders what he will order for a movie snack as his son, who was sitting in a limo outside the building where the violence just took place, drives off. Damn, they will miss the movie trailers!

After some 15 minutes of exposition using pseudo-teenage banter (thanks a lot, Juno), the narrator gets his costume via Amazon and goes out to train on a roof, similar to that of Spiderman. Like Spidey, training does not go well and he is sort of disappointed. A real kid trying to be a real superhero would not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound or suddenly have the courage to try to. Expected. The movie is playing by its own rules. Trying to stop a carjacking, he gets stabbed, then needlessly hit by a car (I guess being stabbed is not violent and shocking enough, or funny enough). He is rushed to the ER in a broken state. 

By this time the movie has established itself as another "subversive" action/comedy. The second interrogation scene blows up a guy in an industrial sized microwave with his bloody splattering everywhere. Nicholas Cage shoots a girl in the chest because he is her father and wants her to not be afraid of getting shot by bad guys; he is also training her in lethal weaponry to which she is gifted. The father of the narrator who got hit by the car moments earlier is more concern that his son might have been raped by the two (surprise) minority carjackers instead of his physical injuries resulting from the accident. Rape and fags are funny. Hahaha.

What could have been a wonderfully inventive and entertaining movie with a rarely used, not unique, premise would have been entertaining. It could have been subversive as well. It could have been many things. Scream was funny and scary at the same time. Scream was paying homage to its genre as well as subverting it. Scream had wit. It had class. 

It is not that the movie Kick-Ass itself is bad and without redemption or merit. I enjoyed the first thirty minutes of the film quite a bit and some of the later action scenes are properly choreographed and shocking. Prior to seeing the movie, I had anticipation because of its premise and energetic trailer. But, it is childish in the worst qualities. Cynicism, smarminess, and snarkiness is not a substitute for subversion and wit. Having a child be a knife/gun expert and swearing is not original nor subversive. It is lame. And adding a campy, poppy, child-sung song over the violence is not new or clever or anything but predicable. It is a tired joke dressed up to be hip with all the wrong attitude of what is supposed to be clever. Remember, when the pretty girl speaks to the dorky guy, it's funny... because she thinks he's gay. Haha. 

There is something I like to call the Poochie Effect. Back when The Simpsons was immensely more popular and creative than what it was today, they created the character "Poochie", a talking dog, to make fun of the pseudo "hipness" and "coolness" that other failed cartoons shows were trying to do. Remember Fish Police? Thought not. Poochie was dreamed up by cynical and creatively bankrupt network heads screaming "Attitude! Attitude!" and "Ee needs sunglasses!" because this is their idea of hipness. Poochie wore baggy pants, sunglasses, spoke in slang, mildly swore (it is TV, after all, not HBO) and proclaimed himself to be "half Joe Camel and a third Fonzarelli". The Simpsons was making fun of this type of character and the children on the show saw through this BS. A decade or so later, the creators of this episode who had children expressed with dismay in an audio commentary that their own children and their children's friends all love Poochie.

Tarantino loves movies and famously praises bad movies as triumphant works of art. He is a great filmmaker. He is a subversive filmmaker. He sometimes has bad taste. However, those without taste and those who envy him and his kind do the same. They elevate middling commercial films as works of art, prematurely declaring them masterpieces because of the Poochie Effect. Why does Kick-Ass court the Comicon crowd? Why does Kick-Ass need to use the already tired phrase "hardcore gamer" to describe its protagonist so much? Why the specific namedropping of Scott Pilgrim? Why the hustling for the redband trailer, the trailer that allows swearing and more violence? Because marketing works, people fall victim to its shallow opium, and the Poochie Generation is created and instantly lost. 

A lot of ground has been lost since The Graduate.

L.A. Noire and the tenets of great adventure gaming

Graphic adventures are some of the best games ever made. When LucasArts was king, it gave to the masses Monkey Island, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. The company did release a few blemishes in their amazing 1990s run, particularly The Dig, but for their time, no other company delivered as many hits as they did. Compare LucasArts to Valve, and maybe you have something approaching resemblance, but Valve has not released as many games. LucasArts used to be the best.

Sadly, in an ironic fashion, they remained in the past when they attempted to evolve from the "Star Wars and graphic adventures" company. A former president of the company announced that LucasArts would not hold to its roots and continue to move forward! Or, whatever. What he meant to say is that LucasArts will only make Star Wars games from now on. The liar eventually left the company. Shortly after, the graphic adventures were released on Steam to much acclaim and success.

Since the 90s, Europe has picked up the slack when it comes to making adventure games. A few good games have risen to the top of a, sadly, general crap pile, like The Train and The Longest Journey. But it is not the 90s. Even TaleTale with their graphic adventure game factory cannot emulate the past. Maybe if they stopped and focused heavily on just one game, they would have more success, but they do not for many reasons, most of which is that the genre is not that popular and financially lucrative.

What is popular is Grand Theft Auto. So, it is a treat when the publishers of that juggernaut produce through Team Bondi of Australia what amounts to a neo-graphic adventure set in 1940s Los Angeles, City of the Angels. And, because it is a graphic adventure game, you play as a good guy, specifically a detective. Now that I think of it, I personally cannot recall a successful adventure game where the player is evil (Heavy Rain does not count since the parts where you play as the "villain" makes no sense. God, that dumb clock store scene is so stupid. That game had such great moments that is spoiled by such stupidity and arrogance from the director David Cage. Urg). Anyway, you can read details of the game elsewhere. Button layouts for controllers and product reviews are a bore.

Ultimately, L.A. Noire is a disappointment. Imagine what makes those 90s adventure games so successful. First of all, there are no incorrect answers. Sure, Sierra games had false leads and deaths, but I'm talking about good adventure games (take that, Kings Quest and Space Quest!). What is also important to consider is that because there are no wrong answers or dead ends, the game does not constantly inform you that you have made a mistake and done something not intended by the game designers. Lastly, most take you to new locals where you constantly run into new and interesting characters throughout a great story.

These are the tenets of a great graphic adventure. These are story games, and if you tell the player they are messing up the story or provide an illogical story (logic within the game world), then it is a failure as a graphic adventure game.

Due praise should be given to L.A. Noire for its highly detailed facial animation system during the interrogation sequences in the game. However, any such advances in technology are diminished because the first and second tenets of graphic adventures are broken during these sequences. The musical notifications after each question and answer sequence immediately informs the player that they have correctly or incorrectly chosen a wrong answer. Moreover, the notepad with its checks and x's give another reminder of the player's success or failure. Rather, no audible or visual notification should be given during these scenes because there is nothing to be gained by the player other than the desire to turn off the system and restart the sequence in its entire. Nothing is learned when a question is missed because the player is left with many questions on why they failed. Did the player read the visual ticks of the actor wrong? Well, they may act differently with the next question so it does not give the player a fail-proof approach for the next question. Should I have chosen doubt or lie? The distinction between doubt and lie is already thin, and sometimes the necessary clue to prove a lie is either questionable itself or another piece of evidence might seemingly be the correct option. That second problem is also found in the Phoenix Wright series and not specific only to L.A. Noire. For example, a piece of bloody cloth could easily link a person to the crime scene, but the game requires the shoe evidence because the question sets up that and that alone as the correct option.

The third tenet is a bit more subjective since it requires someone to have decent enough taste to discern a good or interesting story, characters, and locations from bad ones (or normal game ones). L.A. Noire lives entirely within the confines of 1940s Los Angeles, so its singular location should not be held against the game. Rather, the characters are wholly derivative of L.A. Confidential, and when the story pushes certain plot devices onto them, they clearly do not match. Consider the love triangle (affair?) in L.A. Confidential. Russell Crowe is in love and sleeping with Kim Basinger when Guy Pearce forces himself (not entirely unwelcomed) on Kim Basinger. It is somewhat of a sudden scene, but Basinger says to him as he forcefully kisses her that "fucking [her] and fucking [Russell Crowe's character] aren't the same thing". Immediately, the audience understands the dynamic being set up and the motivations of Guy Pearce. This never happens in L.A. Noire. Rather, Phelps is thrown rather quickly and clumsily into an affair with a german singer that leads to a demotion, blackmail, and divorce. In fact, the first time the character is explicitly shown to be in the middle of the affair is during an important case. Right after interrogating mobster Mickey Cohen, Phelps becomes angry and annoyed, and tells his partner to pick him up early tomorrow because “he has to go see about something” or whatever. Well, Phelps goes straight to the german singer. Why? To have rough sex with her? To be consoled? No indication is given because prior to this important scene; he’s barely spoken any words to the lady. It is bizarre, and it does not work.

And ultimately this leads to the greatest problem with the game, and games in general, is that everything must compound into a finale. Imagine Law and Order if each season culminated into one giant case and each season led directly to the finale. It would be a disaster. Sure, The Wire was able to achieve this, but that is because it was conceived from the beginning to do this. Law and Order could never do this because it did not start off with that goal. Same for the Sopranos. Same for Lost, which is a crappy show that people liked and retconned their affinity for it after the finale left them with all of those questions (people watched for answers to the shows questions, not the poorly developed characters. Anyone who tells you they watched for the characters is a liar and is only justifying their wasted years watching that garbage). In a previous blog post, I suggested that developers should model their games in the episodic format. Alan Wake and L.A. Noire do this. However, Alan Wake was bogged down by stupidity and an overly complicated story (hi again, Lost), and did not really see the thing through to the end. L.A. Noire could have just been episodic, endless, and a cash cow for DLC for the developers. Each case should be its own story. Maybe have 2 or 3 case arches to push a "grander" story forward, but the entire game does not need to have an overarching plot.

The game should not have the stupid war stuff either. It should not try to be L.A. Confidential. It should not ape the conflict in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It should have been just 10 or 15 episodes in the life of one particular cop. And it should just end. No grand finale. But, if an ending is needed, have the final case by multipart with the cop getting shot. Maybe he dies or lives, it does not matter, but it ends.

The endgame of Red Dead Redemption will be a case study for years to come that flawlessly resolves a larger story in a satisfying manner that is entirely consistent with the entire game.

Sam and Max are tone deaf

Graphic adventure games live and die on the written word. That’s it. The games can be ugly. They can be janky. They can feature some of the more annoying controls in gaming (GRIM FANDANGO!!!) but as long as they are written wonderfully and have excellent stories, they can get by with a whole heck of a lot.

During my break from updating this website, I went and played some adventure games. Specifically, I played for the first time Sam and Max Seasons 2 and 3, The Dig, and I went and replayed Monkey Island 2 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Here are some micro-reviews along with what I learned about the genre overall.

Let’s begin with the goods. Monkey Island 2 is an undisputed masterpiece (at least, undisputed by non-idiots). It’s funny, charming, and features clever puzzles without the need of any frustration. Now that Dom Armato has gone and recorded voice for the new special editions, much of the jokes come alive due to the talkie aspect of these re-imaginations. I still maintain that the correct order of Monkey Island games remains 3>2>1>Tales>$, but the fact is that the gap between 3 and 2 is much shorter now that we have vocalized acting on all the characters (even though I don’t think Wally is voiced correctly, but whatever).

Sam and Max Season 2 is also great. The first season was clunky as hell to control, the puzzles simple and lame, and the written dialogue and story forgettable at best, obnoxious at worst. Season 2 is a wonderful refinement, fixing the graphic/control/setting issues and increasing the pace of the story, the jokes, and the characters. Sequels should only exist if they improve, not continue, a story. Sam and Max Season 2 probably inches past the original 1993 classic Sam and Max Hit the Road for the best entry in the series.

Lastly, I wrote earlier in another blog entry about Fate of Atlantis, so I won’t go much more into it except to say that I understand, replaying it, that the issues people have with the voice dialogue are more valid than I previously gave credence to; yes, some of the voice actors are plain bad, and the sound quality fluctuates greatly at time.

Now, let us examine the bad (or, rather the “not as good”). The Dig was envisioned by Steven Spielberg as a game because the movie budget would be too great. They got homophobe asshole Orson Scott Card (his books aren’t that good, people) to write much of the dialogue, and veteran Loom designer Brian Moriarty to head production. Well, things aren’t that simple, and after many tonal changes, along with complete rewritings and the eventual departure of Moriarty, the game was released in a bastardized form. Perhaps this is the problem with the game. As a LucasArts graphical adventure, it just isn’t that good. The main issue is the tone. The game takes itself too seriously (which happens to be my major trepidation regarding the new Tron movie and The Expendables). If the game wants to be serious, that’s fine, but it damn well better have a good story, good dialogue, and a good scenario. None of these things exist in the finished product. A major character dies (and gets resurected), and I don’t care about either situations because the writing is flat, emotionally bankrupt, and dead (deader than the character). I guess there is a reason I never played this LA game, and why I probably never will again. To think, this came out after the great, but short, Full Throttle.

Then, there’s Sam and Max Season 3. I guess I should write that I haven’t finished the 5th part because it hasn’t been released yet, but my faults with the season lay outside of this minor technicality. To begin, the tone is all over the map. Graphic Adventure games don’t need to be only funny or only serious. However, when you mix the two poorly, it’s a travesty. This is the problem with the last 2 chapters of the Tales of Monkey Island game. You cannot simply go “LOOK AT ME, I AM SERIOUS! THIS IS SERIOUS AND IMPORTANT!” and shoehorn in a serious plot development. Killing Morgan LeFlay was dumb, not just for a story plot device, but because it tried unsuccessfully to manipulate the player into feeling sad and caring for an already beloved character. Well, the idiots behind that decision decided to do the same in Season 3 of Sam and Max. This time, they kill Max (briefly) in Episode 3. Filled with anger, Sam goes on a rampage smacking and beating characters. While it is sort of sweet that you see the extent of how Sam loved his partner Max, that relationship was already established, and underlining it and highlighting with with the brightest magic marker available by killing off Max doesn’t make it any better, and in fact makes it worse. It’s clumsy, and amateur. Whoever keeps doing these things should stop, watch a movie where no one dies, and realize that it’s okay to establish emotional connections with characters through good writing and not death or troubled situations. Even the joke of having Sam recite “Noir” dialogue (an actual choice in the game) is ruined because he’s suddenly punching and slapping people, which is out of his character. It’s a mess.

It’s a sticky situation. LA created a world where Adventure Games were full of whimsy and comedy. Then, they tried to undue this with The Dig and, to a lesser extent, Full Throttle. We, as a creative society, think that “serious” material is better and more deserving of praise than anything which we deem “light”. Heavy Rain isn’t a good story just because it is serious. The Dig isn’t better than Monkey Island because it is serious, created by a brilliant filmmaker, and written by an author. Tales of Monkey Island, and Season 3 of Sam and Max, get drugged down because they are striving to be taken seriously. Well, stop striving for that.

Plus, the forced “episodic” nature of Season 3 and Tales of Monkey Island are annoying, but I’ll write about that more in detail later.

The odessa steps, Modern Warfare 2, and Heavy Rain

Playing through Heavy Rain immediately brought up thoughts about the immensely disappointing Modern Warfare 2. For me, the unification between the two can be traced back to the Odessa Steps sequence in the 1926 Sergei Eisenstein masterpiece The Battleship Potemkin. For those that haven’t seen the film or at least the memorable scene of the film, the brief plot is that of faceless Cossacks gunning down helpless victims  in the midst of a celebration. The scene has been parodied to death and imitated in many other movies, notably the ending shootout of Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Nevertheless, the seen remains timeless and still emotionally evocative due to Eisenstein and his remarkable theory of montage. Montage, in a nutshell, is the practice of editing together different images in order to convey a certain emotional response; it is not only bound to training sequences in sports movies.

The sequence itself is not that long, lasting only 7 or so minutes. However, In that brief period, a wide variety of characters are quickly introduced. We see a women with a parasail, a women with her child, a man with no legs, and old women with glasses, a baby carriage. This comprises the first minute of the seven. The next six are devoted to the fleeing and the carnage of these people by the guns of the faceless Cossacks. Through the use of montage, the editing and direction of Eisenstein, an incredibly deep connection is established in such brief moments that make this onslaught all the more horrific. The Cossacks are unknown, seen only from the back, and are not the focus of the scene. The attention is paid directly to the common people who are butchered.

In seven minutes, this sequence does more than both Heavy Rain, which drunkenly indulges in attempting to establish emotional responses and Modern Warfare 2, which doesn’t even bother to identify the people murdered in the airport scene. Rather, in the scene from Modern Warfare 2, the player is asked to identify with the killers and not the killed. As a result, the desperate attempt at controversy and attention fall flat because no emotional attachment is made with the player on the repercussions of their actions. What would have made this sequence actually work would have been that one minute part of the Odessa Steps. Have the player walk through the airport, noticing a family waiting for their flight, or the women traveling with her crying child, or anything that would have identified the nameless crowd.

Heavy Rain, on the other hand, goes to far in trying to establish its emotional connections that it beats the player over the head with trite sentimentality. The game opens with a father, Ethan, playing with his two children. He carries them, runs them around on his shoulders, engages in a  sword fight, and help prepare their birthday party. Then, they go to a mall where he buys one of them a red balloon, loses his child in a crowd, and watches in horror as his son gets hit by a car and dies. This all sounds like it should work on paper, because it makes logical sense. Establish an emotional connection with the player to the characters by having them live mundane lives until tragedy strikes. The problem lies in the skill of the game creator, David Cage, and his storytelling abilities.

This section of the game goes on for about 30 minutes in an 8 hour game. There are other sections of the game that are similar in muted tone. A few months after the death of his child, Ethan is divorced and has care of his other remaining child for the night. He can, if the player decides to, cook dinner, play with his child, force his child to do homework, let his child watch television or stay up late. This probably lasts 15 minutes. And there are other many more scenes;  spend five minutes making a sandwich for a prostitute, give a crying baby a bottle, and whatnot. The problem isn’t directly with the scenes, but their excess and poorly written nature. Each of these moments is begging the player on hands and knees to notice their sentimentality and their unique existence in video games.

When you give a player choice in a story driven game, it can undermine the intentions of its creator and reveal the game to be shallow. If the player in his control of Ethan chooses to not play with his children, help with setting up the birthday party, ignores his hungry child and doesn’t feed him dinner, or complete any of the five trails a serial killer has set up in order to find his son who is later kidnapped, there are no penalties. These scenes of sentimentality become even more false when the actions of its main protagonist are ignored. What is left is a game that has its manipulations of emotions so shallow that an inch beneath their surface reveals an empty abyss.

There exist moments when Heavy Rain succeeds and succeeds admirably. However, these issues involving its story and manipulation of the player reveal what may be a bigger problem in gaming where choice confronts artistic integrity. Other problems exist, such as the treatment of minorities in the game and its use of gratuitous female nudity, but those comments will be saved for another post at another time. Heavy Rain remains an intriguing, if deeply flawed, interactive experience.