Game Review: Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy)

I finished this game last Monday and boy, do I have a lot to say about this game. Did I like this game? Or did I not? If not, were there elements I did like? Let’s find out together, shall we? Be aware: massive spoilers!

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The plot follows Lucas Kane, a man who commits murder while supernaturally possessed, and two police detectives investigating the case. Gameplay involves the player in making decisions to alter the narrative.

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You play the game playing as three characters mostly: Lucas Kane, the protagonist, Carla Valenti, and Tyler Miles, while also sometimes given the option to play as Marcus Kane, Lucas’ brother. That’s pretty seldom, however, and the game mostly focuses on the three main characters. That is, until Tyler eventually leaves the force, or of course stays. Either way, at a certain point, you stop playing as Tyler and continue on with Carla and Lucas only. As mentioned above, as Lucas, you’re trying to figure out what has happened to you while also being a fugitive, whereas playing as Carla and Tyler, you try to bust him and find evidence against him. Playing from two sides simultanously is quite fun, in that case, even though it truly doesn’t quite matter in the end. But I’ll get to that later.

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The three main characters have a mental health bar attached to them. Each time you make them eat or drink something, or do other relaxing activities that make them stop thinking about their work or predicament, it goes up with 5, or 10 or 20 depending on bigger things they discover or hide away from. The most annoying thing about this mechanism, though, is that once you’ve reached neutral, basically meaning you can’t go further. The amount of points you get on top of that do get added (or so the screen indicates), but the second something happens that makes it drop, and it drops right from the top, not taking those ”extra points” you had added. Thus indicating they never existed and weren’t actually added on the way it said it was. And honestly, I’ve never really understood what it would do for the character considering nothing really happens to Carla and Tyler at the end, nor to Lucas, really. The only thing that happened when I tried to do so (also for trophies), is that they showed a tiny bit of a different cutscene, but then you had to restart from the previous saving point regardless. You have to keep their mental health above wrecked, or else you can start the chapter all over. I wish it would’ve been a true ending for the character, but sadly that’s not possible. Quite the missed chance if you ask me.

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I know this game is a remastered version of the PS2, but boy are the QTEs terrible. Okay, not as terrible, perhaps, but still pretty terrible. When playing on easy, you think it’d be doable but nope, not always. Certain sequences can’t miss a single button, or else you fail entirely (which is honestly pretty annoying when you’re a trophy hunter like me). I haven’t even tried hard yet (which has a trophy attached to it), but boy am I scared of playing that when easy isn’t even always easy. In any case, you’ve got 3 types of QTEs. On the photo, you see the two joysticks. The colour which lights up, on one side or both, you need to hit by moving the joystick in the same direction. Then there’s hitting L1 and R1 one by one rapidly to fill a light blue to dark blue bar, or to keep Carla’s breathing consistent, or to keep Lucas’ balance. The last two, attached to characters specifically, was the most horrible thing I had to do. Oh, and the last type is that certain QTEs have a little clock, and you have to move the joystick left, right, up to climb fences, and of course make it to certain sections within the time limit, or hide evidence within the time limit, or give a specific kind of dialogue choice within the time limit. You probably get the gist of it. It was not just annoying, though. It was also satisfying, despite my complaints. I don’t know how to explain it, really, but you do get the hang of it eventually. It’s just tricky to hit all the QTEs and not miss a single one, but when you do make it past, I have to say, it wasn’t all that bad. I did hate that I didn’t pay attention to anything happening on the screen as I was too focused on trying to hit the QTEs. There was a lot of action happening, and lightning switches, which did make it hard to follow the colour change sometimes as a lot was happening on screen, so that to me is definitely a point down on the ease of gameplay, but still not too big of a bother.

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The graphics were pretty bad, even for an originally created 2005 game. The characters at times looked pretty cubed. As you can see in the image above, certain characters that weren’t really a huge part of the story didn’t really seem like a human, more like I was playing with some sort of advanced cube character. The other characters didn’t look that much greater. Facial expressions were kind of bland, and certain body features looked rather weird. (Let’s not even talk about the many nude scenes that came to the screen without warning, or without coverage). And might I add that this version I played, was a remastered version. It didn’t upgrade all that much. The image above is from the remastered version, so you can imagine how much more cubed the characters looked in 2005. But not all graphics were bad. Some sceneries were definitely quite well done, such as the snowy areas and most interiors, but things like cars, lightning, the characters, just weren’t that great. One detail I do admire, though, was the fact that they did leave prints in the snow (even though they disappeared just as quickly as they were made, at least they did show up).

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One thing I absolutely loved. The music. They used actual songs in this game you could choose from, and I’ve discovered a song that I’ve been playing on repeat. Sure, there’s one soundtrack used underneath most scenes (mostly action sequences) that did get annoying at times, but it did add to the atmosphere of the game because you recognised it. Then again, I wouldn’t have minded some more variation. But that one song. I’m so thankful for them introducing me to that song, and the band in particular. Now, as for the game and the story itself. In the beginning, it does prove to be quite interesting. I was hooked from the very first scene. Discovering the ancient prophecy linked to Lucas, and their world, really, was definitely an aspect I really loved as someone who’s a huge fan of anything supernatural. However, the ending… Despite the fact that there were 3 different endings, they sucked. It was basically the same ending (for Lucas and Carla at least, which by the way feels so odd. If you ever play it yourself, you’ll know what I mean, but I find it weird that a murder suspect and a cop investigating his case eventually end up hooking up and then end up together no matter what kind of ending you get). As for the reason why those endings are so particularly bad, is that either you save the world and all is sunny and shiny, the world gets coated in snow for eternity, or you wonder if the bad guys will ever come after you, or stay away from you. There’s no real ending for the characters as that stays the same. The only change in ending is what happens, or doesn’t happen, to the world. For a story that started off so great, and ends like that, is just quite a downer. As a player making certain choices, you hoped to get different endings for the characters. I mean, why else be given the option to play as multiple characters if they don’t all have real different endings? It felt like a bit of lack in writing, directing, and designing the game. Like I said, the story was so intriguing and so interesting, and then it ends super wacky and kind of lame. And the ending is, sadly, the thing most people remember the most. I feel like they really missed out on that, which is quite a shame for a game that’s definitely not bad at all.

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I did enjoy the fact that chapters are easily replayable, and that the game does save the changes you make and doesn’t necessarily delete your completed game. The automatic saving is also definitely helpful because you can basically quit whenever you like and if you die, you don’t get send too far back. You also get to choose certain chapters before others, which I also enjoyed as it gives you the true feeling of directing the flow of the story yourself. But see, that’s also the game’s downfall. As mentioned before, you truly get this sense of being the story’s director, and then you feel as if you did it all for nothing because nothing really mattered in the end. Okay, I guess one big choice does matter, but that’s about it. So, is the game good? It’s definitely not bad. It has perhaps a bit more downs than ups, but I still enjoyed it quite a lot. It’s definitely not in my top 5 of bad games, so it’s not a bad game. It’s still challenging enough (sometimes frustratingly), and does have bad storytelling near the end and bad graphics, but it also has a great story before nearing the end, it’s amazing to be able to play as three people of which two try to capture your guy, and as your guy you try to stay out of the police’s hands who are also your guys, and that definitely made the game much more intriguing to me. So, yes, it’s a good game, but it’s not great. My recommendation? See for yourself down below!

End conclusion: I don’t recommend the game specifically, but it’s still enjoyable to play. I shall give Fahrenheit, 3,5 out of 5 stars!

Love, Skye Lewis ❤

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