A video game can encompass a multitude of experiences, transforming gamers into the heroes of intergalactic wars or the saviors of underwater civilizations. While the settings and scenarios may be different, most titles use similar gameplay vocabularies to immerse and entertain us. Concepts like shooting the bad guys, leveling up your character, and acquiring new items are so pervasive that they have been inextricably woven into most players’ definition of what it means to be a video game. “Heavy Rain” forces you to reconsider that definition. It is barely a game in the popular sense of the word, but Quantic Dream’s masterpiece makes groundbreaking strides in storytelling and character development, demonstrating that interactive entertainment still has a deep well of untapped potential.

“Heavy Rain” is a game about choice but not the kind of black-and-white moral decisions upon which games typically rely. It’s about choices that send ripples through the entire experience, changing what you see and coloring your perception of the characters. On a basic level, you watch the mystery of the Origami Killer unfold. Beyond that, how the plot and characters develop is up to you. Fight or flee? Surrender or suffer? Kill or be killed? Your decisions aren’t just brief forks in the road before the paths re-converge. Two players could follow unique arcs through the story, see different characters live and die, and come away with an entirely different idea of what happened and why.

Playing out like the chapters of a book, your control alternates between four protagonists, each gathering clues and driven by their own agenda. The order you play the characters and the direction of their stories vary depending on how you interact with the world during freeform exploration and context-sensitive button presses and motions, which comprise the entirety of what “Heavy Rain” offers in terms of traditional gameplay. Simply pressing a button may not sound compelling at first, but when your character’s finger is on the trigger, or when a child’s life rests in your hands, that single motion is just as intense as any boss fight. When you can read the conflict and pain right on the characters’ expressions (thanks to the game’s amazing facial models), the choices are even more powerful. During one particularly rough sequence, I was literally cringing as I pressed down, forced to decide between two equally reprehensible options.

While these harrowing decisions give the story its edge, the quiet and subtle moments are just as integral to shaping your vision of the characters. Allowing the dad to lose a toy sword fight with his son, deciding what the insomniac journalist does at two in the morning, or making the gruff private investigator close his desk drawer without taking a swig of whiskey — these are the incidental events that slowly uncover complex emotions like trust, grief, and love.

Your little choices and big ones fuse in a single, seamless narrative. No matter how you perform during the timed button presses, the story goes on, and the chapters flow from one to the other so brilliantly that you’ll have trouble imagining how things could have happened any other way. I strongly recommend you avoid the temptation to replay chapters if things don’t go as you hope.

Taking the right lessons away from its previous title, “Indigo Prophecy,” developer Quantic Dream has shorn away most traditional video game trappings from “Heavy Rain.” What remains is an innovative journey through an engrossing and well-paced mystery.

‘Heavy Rain’

9.5 (out of 10)

PlayStation 3

Sony Computer Entertainment, Quantic Dream

ESRB rating: M for Mature

Top 10

DOWNLOADS

The editors of Game Informer Magazine rank the top downloadable games for February:

1. “The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom” (X360)

2. “PixelJunk Shooter” (PS3)

3. “Darwinia+” (X360)

4. “Chime” (X360)

5. “Borderlands: Mad Moxi’s Underdome Riot” (X360)

6. “Blaster Master Overdrive” (Wii)

7. “Battlefield 1943” (PS3, X360)

8. “Assassin’s Creed II: Battle of Forli” (PS3, X360)

9. “Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond” (PS3, X360)

10. “0 Day Attack on Earth” (X360)McClatchy-Tribune News Service

New game releases

The following titles were scheduled for release the week of Feb. 21:

• “The Circle: Martial Arts Fighter” (Wii)

• “Age of Zombies” (PSP)

• “Lazy Raiders” (X360)

• “Sled Shred featuring the Jamaican Bobsled Team” (Wii)

• “Last Rebellion” (PS3)

• “Winter Blast: Snow and Ice Games” (Wii)

• “Pony Friends 2” (Wii, DS)

• “Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing” (DS, Wii, PS3)

• “Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing with Banjo-Kazooie” (X360)

• “Risen” (X360)

• “Heavy Rain” (PS3)

• “Metal Slug XX” (PSP)

• “Endless Ocean Blue World” (Wii)

• “Flight Control” (DS)

• “Super Speed Machines” (DS)

— Gamespot.com

Weekly download

”iBomber’

For: iPhone/iPod Touch

From: Cobra Mobile

iTunes Store Rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence)

Price: $3

The name may inspire visions of really bad Apple peripheral ideas, but everything else about the very pretty “iBomber” is an ode to World War II-era flying aces. “iBomber’s” 14 missions vary in terms of objectives, but they all typically revolve around dropping bombs from above on enemy submarines, anti-aircraft weapons and other points of strategic importance.

The action presents itself from a first-person cockpit view, and the controls are explicitly iPhone-friendly: Tilting the device handles all flying maneuvers, while a bright red “Bombs Away” button does just what it says. “iBomber’s” tilt controls command a wider range of motion than most tilt-based iPhone games — you’ll probably have to play this one sitting up rather than lounging to succeed — but the upside is an optimum level of control over the aircraft.

Cobra has released a two-mission premium content pack for $1 and promises more where that came from, but a great scoring system and wealth of optional medals to earn in the base missions should give thrifty perfectionists plenty of gameplay for their initial $3 investment.

— Billy O’Keefe, McClatchy-Tribune News Service