Agreed Heavy Rain is a masterpiece. Really pulls you in and tugs at you the whole time and gets you emotionally invested with the characters like only movies can do, but even more so as you struggle with the characters conflicts in real time.

Definitely one to be looked at on how to push gaming forward as a medium in general.

At least the medium needs to be evolved according to Roger Ebert, with whom I partly agree, yet not quite to the extreme that he goes when comparing motion pictures to videogames as an art form:

Roger Ebert: Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.
Guess he hasn't played Heavy Rain and whether any gamer wants to admit it or not being recognized as an art form comparable to films and books is a pretty necessary evolution for the medium to survive on a whole, doesn't mean you can't still play your Mario Bros. or Call fo Duty though, they just won't be considered "Criterion" material.