Heavy Rain is one of the few games on the market that will make you care about every character and decision you make.
Playing Heavy Rain is like taking your favorite suspense movie and being able to control where the story goes. I'll say right off the bat, if you don't care for the story in a game, then do not even pick up Heavy Rain.
Speaking of the story, Heavy Rain's is incredible. The game manages to bring the characters to life, through both great writing and great acting. Things like whether or not to shoot a man, and if you're willing to cut off your finger to get a step closer to someone you love feel like decisions that will affect real people, not just animations.
As each character you'll be forced to make difficult decisions that will impact the way the game will end. For example, the father of the boy who was kidnapped, Ethan (his son's name is Shaun by the way), is given several tasks to complete by the Origami Killer. Each of these tasks will reward him with letters to an address when they are successfully completed, eventually leading him to the location of his son. Failing to complete one of these tasks means that Ethan does not get that part of the address, possibly changing who will (or fail to) rescue his son at the end. It's also worth mentioning that if one of the characters dies during the course of the game, they remain dead, there are no "Game Over" screens, the game just continues and adapts.
The game's storyline as a whole - catching the Origami Killer and rescue Ethan's son Shaun - is fantastic. Throughout the course of the game you will find leads on possible killers. Each lead can lead you to your death, or you can get one step closer to discovering the identity of the Origami Killer and the location of Shaun. There are constant plot twists thrown in, just like in any good movie, but the point where you actually discover the identity of the killer is like M. Night Shamylan (don't know if I spelled that right, but hey can you blame me?) wrote it back in the days that his movies were good.
When I was putting Heavy Rain in my PS3, I wasn't sure how well the quick-time events would work, as hey control most of your actions. I thought they might take away from the experience as a whole and draw you out of the game world. I was completely wrong. The quick-time events actually add to the experience, rather than detract from it. The way the cues pop up near the part of the body that the correlating button will move was a genius idea. And in some of the more intense scenes, these quick-time events make the experience much better than if you were controlling your character with a thumbstick; things like fight scenes are incredibly intense, or when your character is trapped in a car that is seconds from becoming a block of metal.
The graphics in Heavy Rain are top-notch, and the way the characters faces react to what's happening in the scene is amazing. If the character you're playing as just saw someone get shot, their face looks exactly like yours or mine would (unless you happen to be Rambo, John McClane, or Dirty Harry). And the game's music adds to the entire atmosphere and emotions that your characters are displaying.
Overall, if you have a PS3 and even remotely care about the storyline in a video game or even have a remote interest in movies, you owe it to yourself to experience Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain is one of the few games on the market that will have you on the edge of your seat the entire time.