Welcome to the Interactive Cinematic Experience, Fahrenheit.
I've played many games since my stay here. Some have been amazing, while others downright awful. But one thing that almost never changes for me when it's time to review a game is the set of questions I ask myself before bashing or praising it. "Was it time well spent?", "What did I get out of it?" I'm here to say that although Fahrenheit isn't the best game ever, and it probably isn't going down in history as one, it sure as hell brought something new to the table.
Quantic Dream is the developer behind the game that many are calling "The Interactive Cinematic Experience of a Lifetime". This is probably due to its surprisingly good storyline. Just about any game can tell you one, but not many can immerse you so deep into its world like this one.
You play as Lucas Kain, a man who one day wakes up in a public bathroom after having stabbed a complete stranger to death. The reasons behind this are not only unbeknownst to you, but to the character as well. He has absolutely no idea what's going on. All he knows is that he's just killed a man. And that's where you begin. What do you have to do? Escape, most likely. Yet, something intriguing happens here. The game doesn't actually force you to do anything. It's up to your sense of judgment. This is even more incredible when you realize that you can interact with just about everything around you. You can wash your hands, hide the corpse, get rid of the evidence or just get the hell out of Dodge.
Time passes, events unravel and you progress through the game. If you were sly enough, you got out of the restaurant without turning a single head. Then, the second Act opens, but you're not Lucas Kain anymore. You're playing the role of a detective named Carla and her partner, that got a call about a murder in a restaurant nearby. Just incredible. Incredible how one moment you were committing a murder and the next moment, you're in the shoes of another person investigating that very same crime scene.
If this seems too perplexing at first, it's probably because it is. The fact that you steer the culprit and the cop in the same story is just beyond staggering, because it creates a strange conflict of interest in the player. "Do I want Lucas behind bars or do I want to do everything in my power to save him?"
The game plays like an interactive 7 hour long movie. You control the movements made by the character with the left analog stick, and you use the right analog stick to interact with the things around you. This works by moving the stick in the direction indicated to you by the emergent options on the screen. An example of this would be that if you're standing by a chair and next to a person, an option would appear to sit in the chair or talk to said person.
Aside from that crucial game play element, there is one downside. There are these constant quick time events spread along the entire story. These, depending on whether or not you get them right, can affect the action taken in the moment. If Lucas is playing the guitar, he'll only hit the right notes if you hit the right buttons. This does create tension sometimes, but when it doesn't, it's because it's being just plain annoying. Especially since in some occasions they can even affect the ending you get.
A few more things I wanted to mention before wrapping up this review is the soundtrack, for one. The original score is pretty good, but for some reason, the creators had a strange obsession with the band Theory of a Dead Man. There are actually four songs oddly placed in there.
Finally, one of the biggest flaws I felt this had, was within the very thing that made it so great: The storyline. About halfway through it, it makes a complete change of genre, if that makes any sense. It goes from this awesome, gritty murder mystery, to a corny sci-fi thriller. This is even stranger when they start introducing apparently important characters and confusing plot twists for the first time, way too late in the story. I won't spoil anything for you, but I found it to be very unfortunate considering it started off so well, like something straight out of the Bourne Identity. By the end, I was left staring at the screen going "WTF!", because it didn't feel like the same story I started 7 hours before.
Either way, don't let that stop you from playing it. It's truly a unique experience in a manner of speaking, and it should give you a good idea of what to expect in the future from Quantic Dream.