Heavy Rain Chronicles: Episode One - The Taxidermist Review
Cheap, short, and sweet.
March 19, 2010 - I won't lie: I was prepared to hate Heavy Rain Chronicles: Episode One - The Taxidermist. As a fan of the original game, descriptions of this piece of downloadable content left me less than thrilled. Folks said it was short, that it would take me about 15 minutes to beat, and that the main character's voice didn't sound right -- like it was recorded before the actress settled on her character for the final game. After playing The Taxidermist, I can tell you that all of that is true, but my sources left out some important parts -- this chronicle is tense, has five different endings, and is a lot fun to explore.
Set before the events of Heavy Rain, The Taxidermist -- which Sony announced today will be available to the general public for $4.99 on April 1, 2010 -- puts you into the shoes of journalist Madison Paige. A motorcycle-riding hottie, Paige is working on the Origami Killer story and thinks she might have tracked the murderer down at a house that uses newspapers to block out the upstairs windows. You help Paige get into the place, and things get crazy fast.
If you're reading this, I'd bet you understand how Heavy Rain works, but I'll give you a quick summary. You move the character around the environment, and when you come to interact-able objects or possible actions, controller inputs appear on the screen. It might be jerking the controller up to open a window or making a semicircle with the right analog stick, but there are going to be inputs on the screen that let you choose what Madison does. When things start happening, you'll need to hit buttons before time runs out and hold sequences of buttons that'll challenge your dexterity for periods of time as actions play out.
It sounds simple, but when it's a matter of life and death, letting go of a combination of buttons you're holding or missing a one of the timed button presses will drastically affect what's going on.
What The Taxidermist nails is pacing. When you first get there, you're investigating a creepy house and doing some reporting at your leisure. You never know what's around the next corner. Soon, all of that changes when the suspect returns home, and it's time for your adrenaline to flow. Do you hide, fight, or flee? The choice is yours, and there are plenty of ways to do each.
That suspense and those unknowns are what sold me on this DLC. That first time through, my heart was racing as I tried to figure out what the best move for Madison was -- what was going to keep her safe. On top of the effed up stuff I was finding in the house, this sense of "ohmygodohmygodohmygod" was heightened by the cinematic choices made. There are a lot of times in the house where you're running and have three options pop up on the screen that each take you to a different place. Making that choice is a split-second gut reaction, and Quantic Dream tosses it at you a few times to keep you on your toes. On top of that, there is a lot of use of split-screen -- the game's showing you what's happening elsewhere while you're doing your thing.
All of that is awesome and I loved it, but those issues folks brought to my attention before I ever played The Taxidermist are part of this game as well. As a fan -- a fan who loved Madison Paige a bit too much -- it is definitely awkward to hear her voice in this. It's totally not the character you know from Heavy Rain in terms of sound. Also, the suspect in this game uses the same voice actor as Scott Shelby so there are those moments where you're taken out of the experience while listening. Even the animations seem a bit rudimentary in the action- heavy moments. These issues add up to this feeling more like a proof of concept than a full-fledged addition to one of Sony's biggest titles of 2010 thus far.
Sticking with the early warnings I received, the game is short -- kind of. It took me about 15 minutes to play through my first shot at The Taxidermist, but the game hooked me into coming back. See, at the end of the game, you get one of five endings and it checks it off on the screen. You can then reload the game from three specific parts and play for the other endings. If you want to -- and I did -- you can drag the experience out for a while as you experiment and explore. Still, I, of course, would have loved for more content.
Closing Comments
This should've been the demo released before the game. Heavy Rain Chronicles: Episode One - The Taxidermist shows how good Heavy Rain can be. That feeling of suspense and all of those different endings are worth the price of admission for fans, but I wish it had been more polished. Madison Paige was such an important part of the retail game that it's really weird to have her voice be as off as it is, and as smooth as the fights looked in Heavy Rain, they can look a bit rough around the edges here.
Still, The Taxidermist overcomes its faults to be an impressive download for those looking to get back to the world of Heavy Rain.
