Heavy Rain vs Road Avenger

So recently I played through Heavy Rain and a great game it is. One thing that did strike me was how much it reminded me of an old school classic, Road Avenger on the Mega CD.

For those not familiar with it, the game saw the player play an interactive anime movie by pressing the correct sequence of buttons in time to the on screen activities, you played the roll of a sort of Mad Max crossed with Kurt Russel in Death Proof in a speeding red sports car. The title does a great job of getting the protagonists activities across.

Now clearly Heavy Rain is light years ahead of Road Avenger in terms of tech and art etc, but design, hmmmmn not so much.


Some might say well Heavy Rain is on foot and so has more in common with the likes of Space Ace and Dragon's Liar, which is a fair comment but Road Avenger was better, it felt like the timing was right and that the actions you had to perform were more in context with the on screen action. Most importantly if you messed up it felt like it was your fault, which I'd say is one of, if not the most important things in any video game.

Heavy Rain also does this pretty well, granted there are times when it slips up a little, but for the most part the quick time events seem well authored and sensitive towards the onscreen action. Consequently they can have you on the edge of your seat.

Now I don't know if it's purely rose tinted glasses which has me making this comparison and please don't get me wrong I'm not holding Road Avenger up as a beacon of gaming achievement, and I'm sure that the timing I mentioned previously probably doesn't hold up as well as I remember. But I guess the point I'm attempting to make is that it's refreshing to see developers taking influence from other and often ill thought of areas of gaming's history and importantly improving the formula.

Road Avenger may or may not have given Quantic Dreams some inspiration, the highway section on Heavy Rain certainly suggests to me that it did, but I think it's also fair to say that other similar games of old, like Dragon's Lair etc would have popped up in the Quantic Dreams studio at some point.

Heavy Rain was a brilliant breath of fresh air, but elements of it are ingrained deeply in gaming's past.

Something I intend to bring into play as I continue to expand my repertoire.