When the weather just gets colder and colder, something must not be quite right...
So, what can I say about this game? The game starts with a startling vision: a man who seems to be possessed carves strange symbols on his wrists, then cold-heartedly assassinates someone. When he recovers his own conscience, he realizes what he just did and flees. This is where the story begins and this is what will keep you compelled to play... until near the end of the story, when everything stops making sense.
Through the game, you will be able to control three characters: the murdered Lucas Kane, who is desperate to know what has really happened and what made him commit the murder, and detectives Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, who are trying to figure who the murderer is and his real reasons.
In this game, you will be in control of every single action of each of the characters. Each of them reacts differently to certain elements of the scenario (and some of the interactions are not really necessary - in the sense that they will not change the course of the story). Lucas follows his own pace, but Carla and Tyler are, in most of times, working as a team, so you may have to change between the characters after certain points of the story to analyze the entire crime scenes, since they (obviously) see things through different perspectives.
One interesting aspect of Indigo Prophecy is that each decision you make can make the difference between making the witnesses give you the necessary information or feel upset and not tell you anything. Also, although there are several options for you to choose while conducting the investigations, depending on what options you choose, things may run more smoothly... or not.
What makes Lucas' gameplay experience different from the detectives is that he will be running away from the police rather than doing only investigation. Meanwhile, he will also be haunted by thoughts of weird creatures and elements, so expect to go through a lot of Active Time Events. You know, press the buttons that show in the display in order to succeed. And, of course, there will be several times in the game when you have to act quickly. Unfortunately, the camera and the controls sometimes are not very helpful, so it will take a while for you to get used to it and, believe me, you WILL find yourself running in the wrong direction because the controls shift as the cameras changes. That is annoying, but eventually you will get used to it.
After you get used to the controls, you'll notice that instead of having a health bar, you will have a sanity meter in the bottom of your display, indicating how your character is currently feeling. Your actions may influence on how your character feels. If you make your character eat, drink or have some fun by taking a nap or even playing the guitar, the meter increases and your character will be OK. If the sanity meter reaches zero, your character freaks out and may even commit suicide, leading you to a nasty "game over". You have to be careful with what you do, sometimes the game itself has events that cause the sanity bar to go down. Try to explore the scenario and pay attention to the actions you may execute in order to keep the bar full.
Another thing that deserves special attention in the game: the excellent soundtrack. Don't be surprised to listen to songs from bands you already know (as for me, I'm a big fan of Theory of a Deadman).
I really wish I had no complaints about this game, but one decisive factor made it a complete let down: the story. It is involving, it makes you curious, it makes you want to play more and more and find out what really happened and all, which is excellent. It has three different endings, depending on the choices you make, which is pretty good. It adds some tension to certain points of the game, which is awesome. But more or less in the middle of the game to the end, everything stops making sense and the excellent plot crumbles to pieces, going through a path that doesn't make any sense. Near the end of the story, you'll just think "this is not making any sense". The story that seemed to have a good structure suddenly stops being so attractive and even starts being a little bit ridiculous, making it seem that a completely different story has been added to the main one, making it run completely out of its trails. And regardless of the fact that the game has three endings, none of them will seem to be at least satisfactory. Which is too bad, because this game had an excellent opportunity to have one of those mind-blowing endings.
In spite of it all, Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy is a pretty good game. Probably not the kind of game that will make you play over and over again, but still a pretty good game.