7 Bit Arcade

There is some significant excitement being generated in anticipation of Heavy Rain, a game that many here at 7Bit will be playing. Perhaps now then would be a good time for anyone else out there thinking of playing it to sample its spiritual prequel.

Going by a variety of monikers for reasons I don’t totally understand, the game known as Fahrenheit and Indigo Prophecy is something you may want to give a whirl, before or after playing Heavy Rain, if only to see how Quantic Dream are developing their own formula of adventure games.

Now it is a few years old now, so forgive me for not reviewing something more cutting edge, but I have a suspicion that many of you virile young game-studs out there might have overlooked this one, and the release of Heavy Rain means now is a perfect time to go back and have a look-see at its precursor and to appreciate how it was influenced.

Fahrenheit comes closest of all games I have played to that old chestnut of being an interactive film. Everything the game does tries to reinforce that perception, just play the tutorial and they basically tell you “you are a virtual actor in an interactive film”.

Controls are somewhat clunky and not very well explained, especially on the PC version. In any kind of situation that requires responsiveness there is a series of quick-time events, but rather than just asking you to press a certain button or sequence of buttons, they often require you to use combinations of keys and the timing is at first a little ambiguous. Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad though.

If you are a derider of quick-time don’t even bother opening the box on this one. You will do many many many quick-time events, many of them quite complicated and occaisionally tedious as long scripted events demand intricate quick-time input sequences. Be prepared to repeat challenging sequences many many times.

Beyond the quick-time events, it becomes more like an old-school point and click (although without the pointing and clicking) adventure game. Investigating items, speaking to people, all that adventure game staple that you would expect. Dialogue choices drive the gameplay forward in many instances and often feel like they have some real weight to them beyond the immediate responses. Seemingly inconsequential dialogue choices early on in the game can have a more serious impact later.

That is one of the things that contribute to the strength of the game; it creates a very convincing sense of cause and effect, an illusion of having the freedom to affect outcome by every choice. The illusion they craft is much more comprehensive than the reality, but that is part and parcel of being a game. All entertainment is illusion, so take pleasure in the well crafted and convincing illusions.

This is a game totally driven by narrative, and for the first half it is totally compelling. You spend much of the game switching viewpoints between a man who brutally murders someone in a bathroom stall and the two detectives trying to catch him. You would think that this would eliminate the tension as you can see both ends of the story, but if anything it creates more. You can see directly how well your attempts to cover up the crime work, and then work from the other angle to unravel these secrets. It is an interesting narrative technique for a game, and for the most part it works very well.

I do have to lay a very hefty complaint with regards to the narrative once things start to progress though. If you are planning to play the game and don’t want any kind of hint as to the plot development then cease reading here good sir/madam.

Still here? Good. Don’t worry I wouldn’t give you any real spoilers anyway, it goes against the sacred code and I would have to commit ritual suicide if I did. Without giving away too many details, lets just say that it all goes a bit silly towards the second half. All the things that make the first part of the game so compelling seem to vanish. It feels like getting up from your seat in the cinema to go to the bathroom and coming back to a different screen by mistake; when you leave it is dark, mysterious, dramatic, tense. When you get back it is cheesy, cliched, and almost non-sensical. You start off with a paranormal thriller and end up with a sci-fi B movie, and that more than anything is what marrs an otherwise compelling and original game.

From the start, the gameplay is always playing second fiddle to the story and the atmosphere. As the story and atmosphere degrade and become less compelling, the clunky controls and gameplay become much less tolerable.

Nevertheless, I would recommend this game to anyone looking for something a little different. I am a big fan of Fahrenheit despite its failings, and I am sincerely hoping that in Heavy Rain they have expanded on the positive and cut back on the negative from Fahrenheit.

Overall, it is a middling 3 out of 5 thermometers, if only it had kept on as it started it could have been much more.

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