This Heavy Rain player failing every quick-time prompt is a balm for my cynical soul

We all have videos that we keep saved as an emergency escape hatch for dark times. You know what I’m talking about — the videos that never fail to make us laugh, no matter what. My absolute favorite of these is “Heavy Rain – Covered Market [Super Klutz Edition],” a classic from a channel called NahmanJayden in which a player intentionally fails every single button prompt while playing through a chase scene in Heavy Rain.

This video is hilarious even if you know absolutely nothing about the game Heavy Rain, but I would argue it’s significantly funnier if you do know anything about Heavy Rain, so allow me to explain. (Or you can just watch the video if you don’t want to deal with me laboriously explaining the joke. That’s also fine.)

Heavy Rain was a 2010 game made by Quantic Dream, written by David Cage and directed by both Cage and Steve Kniebihly. Back in 2010, the idea of a game that focused so much on narrative was unusual (outside of the visual novel genre, which was considered even more niche then than it is now). And yet here was Heavy Rain, an expensive AAA action-adventure with a dark, violent mystery story at its center; it has four protagonists living in fear of the Origami Killer, a serial killer who traps and drowns his victims during rainstorms (hence the game’s title). Although it has the look of a third-person combat game like, say, the Uncharted series (which also makes extensive use of high-budget cutscenes and quick-time events), Heavy Rain isn’t like one of those games. There isn’t combat in the traditional sense. The player’s input is pretty minimal all around, especially compared to other games of the era; it’s more like a playable TV show, except of course you have to actually press the button inputs at the correct times to see the “show” play out as intended.

If you don’t press the buttons at the correct times, the game will still continue along rather than locking you out with a fail state; this allowed more people who weren’t as used to playing games to get into Heavy Rain and still see its story play out, even if they didn’t have amazing reflexes or timing. Heavy Rain’s designers obviously didn’t think you were going to fail that many button prompts, though, because it’s usually easy to not fail at them. You would have to actively try to fail most of the time. But if you do fail, there are certain animations that will happen to indicate that the situation didn’t work out the way it was supposed to.

Unless you’re the person making this amazing YouTube video, who is failing every single prompt on purpose during a tense chase scene, you might never realize how hilarious this game can be. The results are gleefully absurd and unforgettable, to the point where I honestly wish Heavy Rain was a comedy game instead of a mega-serious story. Since 2010, we’ve had games with more physical comedy elements to them, like Untitled Goose Game and Thank Goodness You’re Here, but Heavy Rain wasn’t designed with that in mind. I’d like to think it may have inspired some of those other games’ designers, though, because this scene is pure comedy gold.