This isn’t a concrete notion. Oh no. There’s nothing like release date lists or general industry hype to help decide whether I’m ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here. Even the reasoned and balanced outlooks of the N4G massive probably can’t help me decide this one. This is based on a feeling, a buzz, a sense of pervading and, to some extent, impending, atmosphere. At the same time, it’s also based on one definite catalyst.

You’ve probably already guessed what that might be by now, and naturally I speak of Heavy Rain. Deadlines and professional responsibilities haven’t even allowed me to sit down and play the game yet, but I see this almost as a unique privilege than any kind of disadvantage. I’m reading and experiencing a game purely by the mood it’s generating in the people around me. And that mood is palpable.

It’s making people talk – to one another or, actually, anyone who’ll listen. It’s making them emote. It’s generating a sense of connection between a player and a game’s characters that I haven’t detected in gamers since Aerith got impaled when I was 13. There’s a feeling of wonder, immersion and deep, deep emotion with this title, and from that, an almost preternatural rejuvenation among even the most cynical hack. Games are great again. Games can surprise us – there’s still to see, and do. More to learn. More to experience.

And this can’t help but reflect on Sony’s console. The thinking man’s lifestyle media hub the PS3 was always meant to be has desperately needed a poster game and, let’s be honest, LittleBigPlanet just didn’t turn out to be it. Heavy Rain is slick, self-aware, and /just/ artsy and pretentious enough to sum up its chosen home perfectly. It’s completed an image offered to us for four years, and often rejected as the PS3 was reduced in most minds to nothing more than a games machine. Heavy Rain feels so much more than merely a game and, by association, the PS3 now feels very much more than a plastic box full of guns and blood.

I sit here having witnessed, in the last hour, a brief segment of gaming that will stay with me for some time to come, and makes me look at the next few months of 360 releases with a suddenly more weary eye. The world has changed, and the grass over the other side isn’t so much greener, as truly luminescent.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. David Cage’s innovations cannot pass unnoticed, and I have absolutely no doubt of the riches the future – no matter how long one must wait for it – might bring in response.
Peter Gothard