Now Playing: Fahrenheit

Damn, and I thought Far Cry 4 made me angry. That was nothing compared to playing Fahrenheit (also known as Indigo Prophecy) during which there were times I very nearly took the disc out of my console and smashed it to pieces. I’m ashamed to admit that Fahrenheit had me yelling obscenities at my screen for the first time in a long time.

Fortunately, these violent outbursts were relatively few in number during the 6 hours or so I spent with the game. But they occurred, and when they did I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to punch a game so hard. For the most part though, I was rather bored and irritated by Fahrenheit. And yet … I just had to keep going. I had to see it through. Because despite its many, many issues, there’s a pretty good concept and some interesting stuff mixed in that managed to hook me right to the bitter end.

According to Wikipedia, Fahrenheit is a ‘cinematic interactive drama action-adventure’ which basically means it’s a narrative driven adventure game full of QTEs. You play primarily as Lucas Kane, who at the opening of the game has apparently just murdered a man in a bathroom. You can move Kane throughout the environment, using the thumb sticks to interact with various items. A lot of these interactions are unnecessary and mundane, but others are vital to continue your progression.

And I have to say, I rather liked the opening sections of Fahrenheit. Playing as Lucas, your initial concern is to cover your tracks and flee the murder scene. Once this is done, the game jumps you into the shoes of two detectives sent to investigate the crime. You’ll be examining the scene and interviewing witnesses in an attempt to track down … yourself. And the game does alter slightly depending on your actions, on what avenues of investigation you choose, or what evidence you, as Kane, may have left behind.

And I liked this concept a lot – of playing both the criminal and the cop. Of course, it’s not long before the story begins to take on something of a supernatural twist. I didn’t mind too much at first, and I was genuinely intrigued by where the story was going. But it does reach a point where it loses its way – probably the moment when Lucas goes full Neo out of The Matrix – and everything stops making sense and is rushed along to a rather unsatisfying conclusion.

There’s so much in this game that, like Neo, made me ask WHY? Why did I even get to play as Lucas’ brother? What was the point of those short scenes? What was the point of the male detective or his playable segments? These include an utterly pointless QTE driven basketball game and another, equally pointless QTE driven ‘dances with his girlfriend’ scene.

It’s not so bad early on in the game, but the QTEs soon begin to take over, popping up during nearly every scene. And I just can’t figure out why. Why do I have to perform a QTE during certain conversations? What’s the point of it? There are two, quite lengthy cut scenes where a group of characters speak but the whole thing is played out by a lengthy series of QTE prompts. Why? I can understand the QTEs being used as part of the ‘cinematic’ action scenes, but in Fahrenheit, your characters can’t seem to do anything without them.

But the mundane and completely unnecessary QTE segments aren’t what made me angry. They were tedious and boring, but not anger inducing. No, that was an issue with many of the action sequences. Many of these involved lengthy QTE inputs, but slipping on a single one, even when it was set to ‘Easy’ (and I started playing on Normal, but knocked it down) can result in a failure.

The game gives you a pretty punishing window in which to hit these prompts. The button inputs aren’t too bad, and you’re more likely to miss them out of tedium than anything, but the trigger mashing QTEs are by far the worst and randomly seem to fail, often forcing you to restart the entire, tedious f**king sequence from scratch. And this is where I began to RAGE!

Too many of the QTE action scenes drag on to the point where it’s easy to fail because they’ve lost your attention, or because an input didn’t register properly or because it leaves such a small margin for error that it’s far too easy to slip up. And all it takes is a single slip to reset your entire progress, forcing you to play through these tedious sequences multiple times. To make it even more silly, there’s so many inputs in a sequence that you have to focus entirely on them, so you’re not even really watching the ‘cinematic’ scene anyway.

But what does the game offer outside of these ‘cinematic’ QTE sequences? Are there puzzles? Investigation? Exploration? Not exactly. The notion is that by taking certain actions, the way certain scenes of the story plays out will change. It’s a neat idea, especially within the early context of the cop versus criminal idea – where do you hide the evidence? What leads should you follow?

The problem is that you very quickly realise that many ‘choices’ simply lead to a failure state, forcing you to reload and trial and error your way to the ‘correct’ solution which will allow you to progress. There is some slight variation based upon your actions, but it’s pretty minimal, mostly confined to the odd piece of dialogue. And, as I’ve already mentioned, there are many lengthy scenes in the game which serve no purpose in advancing the story.

Fahrenheit is such a bizarre game to play. In some ways, I liked the mundane scenes, even when they didn’t progress the story. They were, at least, a nice insight into the characters and their lives. But it’s sadly all wasted, as none it means anything by the end. The game hits a point where the story begins taking several leaps forward and stops making any sense. It pretty much goes entirely off the rails in the last third, but at the very least, it’s amusing to see just how stupid it can get.

What was initially a slow, well paced progression is completely discarded and the story rapidly falls apart. The game becomes little more than an endless series of tedious and needlessly punishing QTE sequences that will either send you to sleep or make you want to punch it.

It’s so frustrating, because I actually liked elements of Fahrenheit. I liked the concept of switching back and forth between characters. I liked the early interaction and the conversations. And, despite my issues with it, I did quite enjoy the story, at least during the first half or so. But everything else? Even traversing the environments is a pain in the ass thanks to some incredibly wonky controls which see you continually get stuck on scenery or walls.

Even as I type this, I’m still so mad at this game. It began so promising, but rapidly devolved into a complete mess with some of the most awful, painful, tedious and rage inducing ‘gameplay’ I’ve ever experienced. But despite that, I still finished the bloody thing. I had to. I wasn’t going to let it beat me and I genuinely wanted to see how it would end. Because despite everything, Fahrenheit did just enough right to keep me going. But I was glad when it was over. So glad. And I never want to play it again.

4/10