This post is from one of several previous incarnations of this site and probably doesn’t quite fit the current format. In a former life this was a group blog and a tumblelog before it became a static jekyll site. If anything looks broken or is worded oddly that could be why. Pardon the dust.
A rough diamond that I missed out on the first time around, given a second lease of life by the Xbox Originals download service on the 360.
It’s a right little charmer filled with fun little bits of innovation and some obvious loving care from the developers. The driving plot doesn’t take itself too seriously (although yes, it gets downright silly in places, throwing in every supernatural plot device it can think of), and the incredibly simple control scheme gets out of the way of the gameplay allowing it to be fairly freeform and unformulaic. It even makes a little bit of headway into the idealistic territory of “interactive cinema” that the developers were obviously striving towards.
There are definitely aspects that don’t work so well; the much-maligned QTE sequences, the always terrible semi-fixed cameras, and the afore-mentioned farcical plot twists. But for every silly mistake there’s a wonderful success. Not least of which is the ability to play multiple characters off against each other, and the mental state health bar which has you caring for your characters’ well-being.
There’s also a couple of firsts for gaming maturity by my reckoning: first non-camp gay character? first non-puerile (though slightly gratuitous) nudity?
I could go on about all of the above way more than would be seemly, but for now let’s just finish by saying that Fahrenheit is a super fun game that you should have no hesitation in trying. My curiosity is piqued for Quantic Dream’s upcoming Heavy Rain now, even if the teaser did sport the uncanniest valley I’ve ever seen.
p.s. I totally didn’t realise it at the time, but it looks like I may have subconsciously stolen my blog’s colour scheme from the old-style xbox boxes. Oops?