At times, Noir takes over your soul and leaves you with a deep urge to leave the ordinary and settle down in the new world. The Playstation Camp and ACQUIRE Studio proudly stand firm with the word ‘NOIR’, and present this new tale of two souls lost in the rain. This game tells the tale of a boy who has just awakened from his slumber, and finds his familiar town reshaped by the heavy downpour. In this title, you guide the boy through the rain washed streets and city landmarks, dodging and avoiding fantasy creatures you can’t kill. All for a girl that he spotted escaping in the rain.
Rain is a surreal tale of two people caught up in a dreamland full of creatures from their worst nightmare. Chased around by a Dementor looking figure called The Unknown, the duo make way through vents and shafts, estranged town centers, abandoned circus grounds, broken mills and more, in search of a speck of light. Rain takes your mind through a trip down the deepest melancholy, complemented well with the very subtle soundtrack used in the game.
While majorly all of Rain’s gameplay centers around elementary run and jump scenarios, it is well complemented with beautiful cutscenes and point of view shifts. The introduction to Rain displays a mesmerizing blend of fine arts and storytelling. While rain can boast of one of the craziest and innovative beginnings of an indie game, it does lack proper subplots and climaxes, leading to which it all falls apart like an open ended marathon chasing down a girl. I can only say that given the extent of indie games’ credibility these days, including a recent favourite of mine – Brothers: Tale of Two Sons, Rain severely lacks in story developing and will tire you out when you keep repeating the same mechanics.
Stealth Mechanics is perhaps the best bit out of this title. The boy and the girl are mere apparitions in the game, and can only be seen as a silhouette under the rain. Running into sheds creates them to disappear from the enemy eyesight, you will have to look for the splash or dust at their footsteps to know where they’re located. Run over a pool of water to create a splash sound, loud enough to distract an enemy blocking your path. Stepping on a mudpool exposes the lower end of your legs, covered in mud. Even though it makes you tick your head for answers lying all around the level/s, it surely doesn’t match the amount of intelligent moves The Unfinished Swan has often had me thinking of.
The jump and sprint button are so close to each other on the controller that you will awkwardly run off a ledge while trying to jump onto the other ledge. At times, the enemy AI will chase you so hard that you wish that at least the parkour was smoother. The eight chapters in the game flow smoother than most of the indie games today. The characters are well worthy of an Indie game and the levels seem gradually moving up the ladder, with incremental difficult as the level progresses. If you ever sat at home and felt bad about the world, running from the rain, you will perhaps like the melancholy that Rain represents. The theme is exceptional; the execution is done to death.
The level designing is intricately artistic but hugely limited, which is why I felt bad at times. Each gameplay progression or note is shown along the walls or roads, and not in subtitles, one of the key bits about Rain. The heavy showers are shown exceptionally well, along with the silhouette kids. The town parts are neatly presented, with grills, balconies, rooftops, each different to each other. The cinematic is in my opinion the best bit about Rain, as the top view angle always caught me drooling on the two kids running down the alleys while rain fell over the streets. The cinematics change smoothly so you would totally see things coming.
The use of water splashes, mud pools and reflections is fantastic, and artistic. The drizzling rain is beautifully differentiated from the heavy downpour in the title. The silhouette is presented the way it should be. You will find wet places, dry places, newly wet places and gradually drying places all around the level map. The SFX of rain will change depending on whether you stand underneath it or take refuge under a shed. The body movements of the kids are close to being what it’s like in real. The developers did their level best to make sure that the physics stay good.
Recalling memories from the game, one of the best moments from Rain was when the boy and girl were fighting off the Unknown inside a Circus. A grand moment for all Indie games perhaps. The boy gets separated from the girl, who runs inside the tent. As the boy, you will need to distract the guard, get inside the ring, wherein the girl is stranded, rescue her and trap the creature to make your escape route.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2FdGxjYUp0]
Coming from Brothers, I always thought given the level of melancholia in Rain it would turn out to be sad tale. Miraculously, the tale ended on a fabulously bright note, as portrayed very creatively by a hand drawn painting cut scene. I lost my appetite for Rain in between probably because of the gameplay, and not due to the storyline or prevailing theme. If the theme was meant to be sad, the team surely needed to give the gamers at least one gameplay cornerstone, by the end of Brothers I was almost crying. Most of Rain’s sequences are pretty decent to be enjoyed, but might be forgotten in the longer run.
Rain will make you think, will expose your darkest fears and will surely show you the smudged part of town, but does it do its job? I guess in the year when we look at Playstation 3 Exclusives such as The Last Of Us and Beyond: Two Souls, Rain falls a little lower than the order. Not because it was a short spanned indie game, but my faith on Rain was so high, especially when I first saw its trailers. It’s a beautiful story of how death can split you and life can bring you back, but due to the lack of strong climaxes and anti climaxes, Rain falls a bit below level.
