Game review: Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy)

The basic concept of Fahrenheit is that it is a truly interactive story: take the actions you want, decide the character's fate, and they will have consequences later. However, I didn't really find this to be the case. Yes, you can to a large extent do what you want, but if you want the game to continue you have to do at least what is required of you. There are some choices to make, e.g. what to say during conversations, but for the most part it won't affect anything after the current level is completed. There are all of (wait for it:) 3 alternative endings to the game, all of which depend on the outcome of (and are reachable from) the final scene.

Story

You awake from a trance to find that you have killed a man in the bathroom of a diner. Do you try to hide the evidence? Escape through the backdoor? Or pay your bill and leave as though nothing had happened? Any of these decisions will affect your mental health (which has already taken a turn for the worse upon your discovery). You need to preserve your mental health throughout the game by, e.g., taking a nap, having some food or playing guitar a little, lest your mental state should plummet too low, leading you to be institutionalised or to commit suicide. Nice. Of course you can end your game in other ways too, say, being caught by the police.

Unusually, you play both the suspect and two detectives assigned to the case. This can make for some conflicting decisions, particularly when you play both against each other within the same scene, but overall I think it adds a lot to the story and game play.

Gameplay

Every now and then there are long, exciting action sequences to thrill you to the core! Um, except that you don't get to control any of the action (I'm not sure why not, but the lack of required skill suited me fine). Hmm, thought the developers, wouldn't that make the game too dull? I know: Let's make the player hit the right keys as they light up on the screen overlay (the so-called "Simon Says" sequences), thus distracting them and making them completely unable to watch the action going on behind the overlay except in their peripheral vision. Great idea, guys.

They also occasionally make you alternately hammer the left and right keys, usually to represent stamina onscreen. This can be very annoying and tiring. (Note for anyone who's stuck on one of these sequences: have a look at this guide from the developers. lf that fails, take the easy solution and lower your resolution and graphics quality to the lowest setting. It works.)

The action sequences and awkward "mouse gestures" used for actions make Fahrenheit feel like a bad Xbox/PS2 port — so much so that it led to me buying a joypad/game controller so that I could feel properly in control. (And climb the damn fence in that flashback scene.) Unfortunately though, mapping the movement and actions to the analog sticks (clearly what it was designed for) also mapped the Simon Says sequences to the sticks, instead of the buttons. I couldn't see a way around this, and some of the faster sequences were impossible to complete with the sticks, so I ended up switching between keyboard for the action sequences and joypad for the rest. Not ideal, but workable.

The graphics and music were wonderful, particularly with my notable lack of gaming experience. All in all, I greatly enjoyed it. Too bad it's not really the kind of game you'd replay; but I got it for £4 (uh, plus £10 for the joypad), so I'm very happy.