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Name: Heavy Rain Chronicles: The Taxidermist

The Taxidermist is the first in a series, or Chronicle, of downloadable content for Heavy Rain, the hit PlayStation 3 game released last month; it's a scene set two years before the events in Heavy Rain where Madison Paige receives a tip on the identity of the Origami Killer and she sets off to investigate.

The story starts with Madison receiving the tip off from her boss, a Taxidermist known as Leland White, he has been identified as someone who might know more than he should and Madison is sent to investigate. After arriving she must first work out how to get into the premise's, the full outside of the house is available for you to find your way in; the controls are exactly the same as the main game so you should be more than familiar with how it all works already. Once inside Madison must search the house looking for clues, first the downstairs and then the upstairs. It doesn't take long before Madison has made her mind up about what she finds but before she can leave and get back in touch with her boss, Leland arrives home. It's from this point on that things becoming much more interesting as Madison must ensure that she isn't discovered while trying to leave. All the usual Heavy Rain facets are in play so you'll likely be aware of what you can and can't do as you try to remain undetected, it's quite a tense situation that Madison finds herself in and you'll need your wits about you to get out.

Like the main game there are lots of things you can do to try and make your escape and there are various outcomes to each with a total of five different endings based upon your decisions which for such a short story is quite an impressive feet, Jacqui Ainsley once again provides the voice, body, and animations for Madison Paige, while Sam Douglas provides the voice for Leland White, which is a little unusual as there are times you think you are listening to Scott Shelby as there doesn't seem to be a great deal of effort gone into making his voice different.

Those who followed the Heavy Rain promotional campaign will no doubt recognise the location to some degree; it's the house that was originally shown in the 2008 tech demo with some changes, Leland originally looked a little more like Scott Shelby than he does now for example; probably a good idea as if they had kept the original model for Leland then it would have been even more confusing with that voice. However there is a problem with this DLC, it's nothing new, it actually plays more like a demo than another chapter to the Heavy Rain saga, it would have been totally understandable had Quantic Dream released this as the actual demo before release, which given it's origins wouldn't be too much of a stretch in imagination. It's not related as such to the main story and would have given those who weren't sure about the game a much better taste than the demo did; sure it's not priced badly, £3.19 and $4.99 for the UK and US respectively and if you purchased the Heavy Rain Collectors edition then it was actually given away free, but if you paid to download this then you can't help feel slightly cheated by the hour or so you get from the experience with no new insights to be gained in the main story.

Once the story has concluded you're encouraged to try and get all the endings, but you can pretty much work out how they are going to go so there isn't a great deal of pleasure to be gained. It's even possible to kill Madison in this chapter, but her death doesn't effect the main story which makes it all seem kind of pointless; had the option to play it all as part of the main story then it might have made an interesting change to the game and a reason to get it, but as it stands there is little reason to recommend this other than to satisfy your curiosity, there aren't even any Trophies to be gained from playing through it so those hoping for a couple of extra points from this will be disappointed.

Hopefully the subsequent DLC for Heavy Rain will have a bit more meat on it's bones than this update; if you're really desperate for more Heavy Rain or have some cash on your PlayStation Network wallet and an hour to kill then check this out, otherwise leave it alone and prey the next DLC is better.