Indigo Prophecy

"Ends up feeling a little cold."

Plot Synopsis: "In Fahrenheit, a paranormal thriller, New York City is stunned by a series of mysterious murders, all following the same pattern: ordinary people are killing absolute strangers in public areas. Lucas Kane becomes another one of these murderers when he suddenly kills a stranger in a men's bathroom. Covered in blood, Lucas regains consciousness with no recollection as to why he committed murder. Lucas must solve the mystery before being incarcerated for life."

Story:

Because this is the primarily story-driven adventure, I will begin here. In Fahrenheit, you assume the role of Lucas Kane who, after he commits a murder, goes off to cover up his tracks and to figure out what caused him to commit the murder in the first place. Not only do you play as Lucas Kane but you also play as Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, two cops who are in charge of investigating the murder and hunting down Lucas.

One of the biggest hypes behind this game is that very subtle actions will affect the storyline. For instance, forget to pay your tab as Lucas at a restaurant and the waitress will remember you more for when you interview her as Carla and Tyler.

The story is quite good for the first couple hours in which you play the game as there are many interesting interactions between characters and the mystery of what caused Lucas to commit the murder is still upon you. However, as the story unravels it becomes more and more questionable as it starts to throw different elements at you. At around 2/3 the way through the game the story starts to bring in factors of ancient Mayan prophecies and sacrifices. The game is very quirky consists of many moments that have you thinking "that would never happen" or "that is just plain stupid." The story also ends rather quickly. I remember a point at which I stopped playing, thinking that there was a lot left that I had to do before the game ended, then coming back the next day and finishing the game in three minutes. Such an epic and dramatic storyline that drives the whole game should not have such a flimsy, quickened ending.

Story 7/10

Gameplay:

There is a great deal of variety, but it all ends up getting kind of boring from repetition and superfluous missions. There are a few main gameplay concepts that you'll find yourself doing a lot of. One consists of alternately pushing left and right very fast to keep a bar filled. Another, consists of pressing the WASD and arrow buttons when prompted on the screen. The frustrating part about the latter is that the game forces you to do it during many of the cutscenes, which cuts your focus to pushing the right buttons rather what is actually happening in the story. I can see doing this in cutscenes where you are fighting an enemy, but sometimes you are forced to do it when all the main character doing on screen is walking or talking. Overall it feels a lot like a minigame.

Another gameplay concept is morale. Each character has a morale bar that when it gets too low, the character could possibly commit suicide. Certain things affect morale in a positive or negative way. For instance, when Lucas wakes up from his trance to find that he has killed a man, his morale goes down. But, if he cleans the blood off his arms, he will get some of that morale back. Although the bar goes up or down from doing many things, I never found it hard to keep it up and I never went down to worse than 20 out of 100.

One of the most frustrating parts of this game are the boring and difficult flashback sequences, in which you are sneaking around a military base as a young Lucas. These sequences are key to the story but don't translate into good gameplay because of sloppy design for a stealth mission. Although the levels of these sequences are wide open, there is only one clear cut way which you can go. The AI for the guards is terrible as some cannot see you if you are right next to them, while others seem to have eyes on the backs of their heads. The difficulty of these sequences have merited much frustration.

The best part about the game in my opinion is the fact that you can choose what you would like to talk about, similar to Knights of the Old Republic. What makes it different and better than KOTOR is the fact that it is that the reactions that you will get from what you say is not entirely obvious. For instance, when you get to interview witnesses what you ask may get a good, detailed answer or it may get a bad, simple answer, and because you only get a couple of questions to ask, what you decide to ask changes how much evidence you do or don't have.

As for the superfluous missions, because the game story driven, there are many points where the story forces boring missions to be played. For instance, in one mission Lucas is visited by his ex-girlfriend who has come to pick up the last of her things. The entire mission consists Lucas looking around his apartment for her boxes of stuff and then talking to her about how life is going (possibly having some woohoo) and that is about it. It is this type of mission that I felt could of been done in a cutscene rather than having me walking around looking for boxes with clear labels on them.

Although the gameplay has a sense of variety many of the things you do kind of feel like minigames and are boring in execution.

Gameplay 5/10

Graphics:

The graphics to me are split. On one hand the environments are rich, varied, and beautiful. On the other hand the character models are pretty bad. They're not terrible, but they are a couple years behind the times. This is a disappointment because the game is centered around deep characters but you don't feel a part of them when your watching them in a scene because their mouths don't move realistically. I would have liked to see a level of facial animation similar to that found in Half-Life 2 so that you could really get a sense of emotion from the characters. The characters animate very fluidly in action sequences though. I thought the environments in the game were very well done mainly because of the variety and weather effects. All of the environments, from cemeteries to churches, were very detailed, added to the dramatic sense of the game, and impressed me quite thoroughly.

Graphics 8/10

Sound:

The sound was very impressive. The orchestral stuff, albeit repetitious, is very well done and the licensed music fits the characters very well. The voice acting is top notch stuff and definitely adds to the dramatic storyline.

Sound 10/10

Controls:

For the most part the controls are easy enough to get used to. But the camera is difficult to adjust to get a good view of ahead. When performing actions you move the mouse as indicated by the directions on the screen to perform a certain action. Easy enough. But sometimes sensitivity makes it a little bit difficult. When climbing a fence many times I did the same motion I had used before, but the game didn't detect it, which made me fall and have to start climbing all over again. Little things, but annoying nonetheless. Other than that how well the game controls is not really a big deal because precise control is not needed for the most part.

Controls 7/10

Overall:

+ Subtle actions change the story

+ Ability to play as the fugitive and the detective

+ Fantastic sound

+ Beautiful environments

+ Dramatic, yet quirky and bizarre storyline

- Story eventually gets beyond belief and complicated

- Repetitive gameplay sequences

- Frustrating stealth flashbacks

- Superfluous missions

Overall 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/11/05, Updated 10/17/05