That's why I, Miss Peacock, am here on this filthy place called the internet. I'm here to inject some real majesty in your otherwise 8-bit lifestyle. Yes, I too play video games. I have children, you know, so it's almost a requirement. Usually I don't enjoy it, but I trudge through it anyways. The ones I do enjoy, though, are far more story driven than the usual drivel you succumb to, like Modern Warefare 2 or some nonsense like that. So, for you today, I bring you something to amaze: Indigo Prophecy.
A cult? good Lord, what have I signed up for?!
Also known as Fahrenheit to those of you not of the red-white-and-blue society, Indigo Prophecy isn't really a video game in the classic sense as it is an interactive movie. It involves a man, a murder, and a plot that becomes so twisted it begins to resemble regurgitated caviar more than an actual plotline by the end. So, now you ask "But mam, if the story becomes so stupid, why do you enjoy it?" At which point I'll slap you and tell you to be silent as I explain.
We open the scene with rendering, circa 2005. Stiff polygons, fixed limb movements, and the expression variety of a Family Guy cartoon. In a bathroom stall of a New York diner, one Lucas Kane Kills a spectacled man in a fit of possession and rage. Lucas makes a silly face, and comes out of the trance. Thus, the real game begins.
If only cleaning up blood in real-life was as easy as sliding the mouse button.
Your first task: clean up the murder scene. To make it all the more cinematic, a police officer sits right outside in the diner. and he's gotta pee. Dun-dun-dun. Already there are so many things you can do, and so many ways the situation can go. This formula follows throughout the entire game, choices upon choices all dependent on your interactions between characters and objects. But choose carefully, as more than one wrong sequence can end your game in a proverbial cluster fuck. Excuse my language.
The controls are all but difficult: interacting with both objects and talking to other characters are controlled by sliding the analog stick / mouse in the direction the certain object / conversation requires. Now, this part is simple. But when you get to the quicktime-esque action scenes, it can get a little annoying.
Begin!
In these events, you have a meter at the top indicating your life; a.k.a. the number of times you can screw up. If that runs out, the game is over, and the character at hand gives a little narration of your failure. To beat this little game, two Simon machines pop upon the screen, and your job is to mash the controls in the direction of the Simon buttons as they are highlighted. You get all that? It's like D.D.R., except you could die. Yes, I play that game too. I can't keep up this billion-dollar figure on my own, you know.
It can get really irritating in that the sequences can be a little too long. After a little while, it's only by the complete lack of interest that you screw up the movements and die. Very, how you say, gay. Very gay indeed.
The only other problem I have with this game is that the plot starts out fine and dandy, until you take a 90-degree turn into BatShitCrazyville, pardon me. We begin with a murder, multiple playable characters stemming from detectives to the murder himself, some solid character development, a sex scene or two, and then a mass-murdering cult and demonic possession, giant bug creatures, and household object flying themselves across the room at our player. I mean, honestly. I haven't seen a story take that much of a nose dive since Peter Parker got a bad haircut and danced around a Jazz club.
Thank god the gameplay doesn't get that interactive. Save that for Hot Coffee.
Minus the big upsets I've stated here, the game is worth playing. You know, for sophisticated people who view these types of things as an art form rather than an excuse to yell at the screen very loudly. Though it would be quite interesting to see one of these brands of games in multiplayer, Cooperative, maybe.
The company's next project Heavy Rain falls along the same exact vein of "interactive cinema in a console". It was released strictly for the PS3, and is something else worth looking at. But I'll save that for a later date. Frankly, all this "game playing" is making me feel less. . . well, rich.
Till next time, this has been your induction into culture. Good day to you, and stay away from my house.
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