PSM3 Magazine’s review of new game, Heavy Rain, dishes out plenty of plaudits to Quantic Dream’s new opus - but, notably, it also includes the following judgement.

“The future of video games? No.”

I think they’re probably right.

Playing Heavy Rain, the one thing you’ll find lacking is the sense of real challenge and - to some extent - control, which the best video games tend to bring by the bucketload. In other words, the gameplay ain’t quite there.

But Heavy Rain offers something else: truly intense emotional engagement.

I found the experience akin to watching a movie - except, that is, in terms of my connection to the central characters, which was super-amplified by the interactivity just as visual spectacle was amplified by 3D in Cameron’s recent Avatar.

And here’s the rub - it was akin to watching an average movie. A so-so movie. The plot is okay. The characters are good-ish.

But imagine the higher standards of the best movie or thriller novel being applied to this kind of format and you can see where all this may lead: something bloody amazing. There’s no reason why the levels of plotting and characterization we see in other formats can’t be woven into video gaming; the talent is increasingly emigrating that way, already.

And my point is - it’s this pursuit of better semi-interactive storytelling which I hope Heavy Rain foretells. This is where the developers need to focus. I don’t want to see Heavy Rain with the gameplay elements beefed up; my gaming impulses, I can satisfy elsewhere. What I want to see is Heavy Rain but with the traditional ‘story’ bits done better.

So the future of video games? No, probably not. But the future of movies/graphic novels/weird interactive-noninteractive halfway house thing that is yet to be named? Quite possibly.

Or maybe the best way of putting it… the future of ‘stories’?:

“The best stories are changing shape. The assumption in the world of TV drama has been that a possible convergence between TV drama and games would simply entail an offering of choices along the lines of: should Life On Mars’ Sam Tyler turn out to have travelled back in time? Should the Losties get off the island? But games potentially offer something far more interesting, something much more in keeping with the storytelling traditions of the novel, of theatre, of cinema, of TV drama itself”. Stephen Garrett, visting professor of broadcast media at Oxford University.