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Fahrenheit Review - Xbox

Fahrenheit is an intelligent atmospheric interactive adventure, with the occasional interactive action sequence and sex scene. The game feels a lot like a movie, but the interaction is extensive enough that the player is a crucial part of the unfolding storyline. There are few things that hold this game back, most notably is the completion time of just over 10 hours. View this in terms of movies, however, and you've got a fantastic epic at the very lest.

Gameplay

The tutorial features the Dutch Director of the game – David Cage – instructing you on how the game's control system works. Most of the game occurs in a 3rd person view and you control your character's movement and the camera angle with mouse and keyboard. This is actually one of the game's weaker points, the control system is about average but the camera's can be damn frustrating at times.

A notable example is a part of the game where stealth is required and the cameras' refuse to cooperate to such an extent that I ended up getting repeatedly 'caught' because I couldn't see where I was going.

Object interaction is controlled using mouse-motions with the left-mouse-button held down. The purpose of this, as David explains, is to make the player associate with the characters in the game. For example, opening and closing cupboards requires motions from left to right and right to left, whereas climbing a fence requires a motion from left-right, followed by an arc for the right-hand, and vice-versa for the left hand in turn. The storyline gripped me from the moment I started playing – it's quite simply brilliant. You being the game as network techie Lucas Kane, he regains control of himself in the grimy toilet of a New York diner, there's blood everywhere and a knife in his hand. He remembers the events as if they were a dream, the stabbing, and the marks on his wrists, it was as if someone were controlling him... He's a murderer now, and there's a cop eating in the diner, won't be too long till he needs the toilet. Got to get it together Lucas, what now? Hide the body, mop the blood, find an escape, and so on.

As you can imagine, it's very compelling.

Towards the end of the game, however, the storyline does seem to lose a little consistency. It's subtle, but unfortunate. I think possibly the team were rushed a little at this point – as usually is the case with this kind of thing. It almost feels as if the characters have been doing things behind your back, and it's a shame that a storyline so incredibly immersive throughout the entire game should suffer from this towards the very end.

Throughout Fahrenheit the player has control of several characters. During some scenes you can control multiple characters at once, using the space-bar to switch between them. Any worries of this hindering the (continued next page)