I’m a big fan of story in video games. If there are two redeeming qualities of a title that can help me forgive setbacks present elsewhere in the design, it’s story and art direction.

“Heavy Rain” has both, but I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it.

As an eagerly anticipated exclusive for the PS3, this title has some selling power. It’s unique, it’s complex and, even on a superficial level, it looks great. What sets this title apart is that whereas other games use narrative to push the player forward as a tool, “Heavy Rain” is nothing if not the story itself.

The tale is interesting, holds high stakes and engrosses from the get-go — all definite positives. I’ve seen and heard a lot of people complain about the opening hour or so — how slow it is, how very tutorial-like and uneventful. But while I would agree that it is quite slow, I would assert that the way things play out in the prologue are important for understanding and connecting with later moments. Hence, it didn’t really bother me, especially because of how fast things take off from there.

The action sequences come in spades, and will have you fending off attackers, fleeing for your life and other adrenaline-inducing scenarios. It’s really hard to go into any sort of detail without spoiling the game, but rest assured, there will very likely be times when you grip the controller in a heated panic, completely aware of the consequences of failure. I know there were multiple times I screamed at my TV, “I’m not gonna do that! No! I can’t!” or “Run! Run you son of a bitch! Get out of there!” or even “No … no, it can’t be!”

Speaking of plot, this one really does deserve to be seen in its entirety. Don’t look up strategy guides — at all. Doing so will just leave you empty inside, as it robs the scene of any unpredictability. There was one point at which I couldn’t figure out how to properly direct my character through one of the game’s trials, and I eventually got so frustrated I had to look up how to do something as simple as moving. By the time I found out what I was doing wrong, all of my fear and tension had been replaced with exasperation and frustration, ruining the remainder of the scene.

In other words, don’t be like me. Explore and try your very best to figure things out on your own, and live with the consequences. Your characters will thank you for it. Or they’ll die. Lighthearted stuff in this game, huh?

While the characters all look great, the environments are sometimes textured surprisingly low-resolution and flat, or models can seem strange and unnatural. It can remind you a little too much that “Heavy Rain” is a game, not an interactive drama with real people you should care about. It should be noted that, while this pops up every now again, the majority of the game is very successful in engaging the audience, and it’s a great, strange feeling when the game makes you feel for a certain character. For example, Madison Paige perfectly channels the real-world feminine perspective and problems.

Similarly, while all of the characters are presumably American, their voice actors are not. The main characters are fine — Scott Shelby is particularly well-voiced — but some of the side characters and less-prevalent people throughout the game have a slight French twist to their voices that can pull you out of the moment.

Nothing against the French, mind you. I just don’t know any American who sounds like that.

Controls are accurate and responsive, a definite plus considering how quickly you’ll need to react in certain situations. The only real gripe I had was with walking. You don’t do it by holding the left thumbstick as is common in nearly every other title in existence, you instead press and hold R2 to travel whichever way you face. The left thumbstick still controls where you look, and turning it will change your character’s direction, so I’m not sure why it was necessary to implement the R2 control scheme when you’re practically traveling by analog stick anyway. It just feels clunky and slow compared to everything else.

The entire game should take around 15 hours — not bad for an extremely linear structure. That sort of length helped to keep me engrossed and amazed, begging for the next bit of information. In fact, it was very hard to put the controller down at some points — like 3 in the morning — because I was so eager and desperate to see what happened next.

Now, all that being said, while I had an absolute blast playing “Heavy Rain” and will likely give it another play-through to see what changes I can create, looking back I’m not entirely sure it’s a must-buy. Here’s the thing, the story is an intriguing murder-mystery as good and engrossing as any Hollywood blockbuster and has multiple twists to keep you guessing at the identity of the killer. But once you’ve figured out whodunnit, you look back and wonder about whether a few of the earlier scenes were extraneous, unnecessary dead-ends.

In other words, was it clever writing and a well-constructed plot, or was it a bunch of b.s. and curve balls explicitly designed to throw you from the trail? There are some questions that don’t get answered, leaving some fairly big plot holes that can take away from the feeling of satisfaction upon completion.

Really, I feel like a dog. My owner has a tennis ball and has thrown it, sending me running; or so I thought. Upon returning to my owner, I can see they never actually threw the ball; it was here the whole time.

There was no conspiracy of tennis balls, there was no identical-but-shady-and-evil tennis ball, there wasn’t even a point in me running off like I did. It was just this tennis ball, right here, in my owner’s hand. I’m surprised and delighted to see it, to finally chew it in my mouth and savor its sweet, succulent flavor, but I can’t help but feel a little cheated all the same.

This column appears courtesy of Sophie Prell’s blog, “G3 — A Girl’s Guide to Gaming.”

Sophie Prell is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Alta.