[A-Z Games] H: Heavy Rain

Games have always, seemingly, been striving for acceptance - consistently being seen in my time as solitary, antisocial, bad for your eyes etc. In order to gain that acceptance, instead of trying to align with books (for which all those drawback also apply...), there is a long thread of games trying to be cinematic or like a film. This, almost, gives some form of validity and I've heard this many times by people trying to justify a game as good: “It is just like a film”.
To be fair, this is mainly to non-gamers but it still feels like quite a poor comparison when I think of how simplistic and unchallenging most (universally popular) films are. Even more so with the types of blockbuster Hollywood has been churning out of late.

Heavy Rain is one of those games that wants to be a film, or at least has pretensions towards something "loftier" than game mechanics. Narrative, narrative, narrative. Heavy Rain has quite spectacular facial animation that gives the people some character and the game starts off with some basic exposition about living a normal, happy family life in some picket fence suburbia. It then descends into a slightly less blissful situation as a film-noir thriller with context sensitive interaction. The on screen display changes to show what actions are available as you move around but, generally, a film like aesthetic is retained.

Before it was released, I bought an old PS2 game called Fahrenheit that was by Quantic Dream, the makers of the game which followed a similar gameplay pattern using QTE on top of the exploration. I am not a fan of QTE and found the Fahrennheit a little frustrating but Heavy Rain is much better realised.

3 other H titles that might be interesting: 
Hard Drivin' - One of the first polygon based games with a wheel and a gearstick!
Hippa Linda - Stretch the world with a demonic scarf - also called, appropriately, Stretch Panic & Freak Out.
Harvest Moon - Farming for fun.