Heavy Rain is somewhat reminiscent of old school, follow-the-blinking-icon-prompt adventures like Dragon's Lair, where snippets of what is otherwise a movie are chained by events that require a quick input from you, the viewer/player.

These days, such quirky "see prompt, react to a prompt, see what comes of it" gameplay elements are known as "quick time events" (QTE) that are normally doled out sparingly for dramatic effect or climactic events. However, Heavy Rain for PlayStation3 makes an entire game of it, blending in new generation technologies to deliver a free flowing interactive murder mystery as a lengthy, serialized QTE.

Not for the faint of heart, Heavy Rain a serial killer thriller about a kid-drowning psychopath called the Origami Killer, with shades of "Se7en" or a really good "Criminal Minds" episode. It's intense, but it should not be confused with an action game, or even a traditionally slower, mood-drenched, shriek-pocked survival/horror game. Instead, it's interactive noir with the dial set on "plodding," pockmarked with the odd bout of frenetic intensity.

In it, you assume the role of four key characters, eventually an FBI profiler, a frumpy Private Dick, an insomnia-addled photographer, but first as a circumstantially-extraordinary ordinary Joe named Ethan, devoted husband and doting father of an awesome son named Shaun... or ordinary son with an awesome name, anyway.

Right then and there at Jump Street, you're bored as all heck as you're tutored in Heavy Rain's all-QTE all-the-time control scheme. Ethan wakes up in need of a shave, shower and teeth-brushing. Thus, a gentle thumbstick upward with the electric razor (there's no such thing as aggressive shaving, after all), nudge to undress (my, that's a mighty taut buttocks you have there), shake the whole controller up and down to brush your teeth, Wii-waggle style (and yes, it's that fun), and so on. Optionally, you might want a cup of coffee, a try at the home-office drafting board, or a thought that needs to be spoken aloud, in which case little floaty icon prompts hover and beckon you to engage or dismiss them, immediately or at leisure.

The whole gesture based control scheme gets a little more flavorful later on, fortunately, thickening into a slew of joint-vexing thumb-nudges, button-presses and swoopy waggly motions, sometimes in rapid succession and/or simultaneously. Depending on the complexity of the task at hand, there's a contextually relevant gesture or series of gestures for just about every action: unbuckle a seat belt, toss a chicken (you have to be there for that to make sense), block a punch, aggressively kick down a door or merely meekly open it, that sort of thing.

Failing to match action prompts or ignoring objects in need of button-activate attention does not end the game, level or segment; it merely becomes a course or action or inaction in its own right, and the game continues as if that was your intent. Pretty sophisticated stuff, that. Any given character might even die, but the remaining players will plod through the plot to the end as if it was meant to be, making Heavy Rain the consummate replayable game, offering new ways to engage the same story each go 'round.

With so many divergent paths and reactive possibilities, you forgive the b-grade actors voicing their best impression of a 2 x 4, because the dialogue throughout is essentially a grab bag of wooden one-liners cobbled together on the fly.

The story they help tell, however, is good and twisty, a film noir cliché in mostly a good way. While it's not Oscar caliber or anything, you could almost consider the plot "engrossing" if it wasn't so busy waiting for you to poke, prod and waggle it along.

But by videogame standards (and being a videogame and all), it's a great yarn made all the more remarkable because of its highly nuanced interactive shtick.

Note: If you're a father, aka a gamer with a life, then know that Heavy Rain just might move you to tears... or get you a little choked up and torn at least, depending on your propensity for such things, or your affinity for the name Shaun. But basically, if you got a little teary during the Time Travelers Wife, then Heavy Rain just might get to ya, too. Don't worry though, there're also bar brawls and gunfights that let you get your Real Man back on.