by NiniendoLeibowitz » Sun 20 Nov 2005 23:29
I have often been a harsh critic over adventure games throughout the years. Developers nowadays settle for rehashed early 90 designs for current adventure games and these games usually leave me unimpressed and often very angry. To use such archaic designs are no longer forgiveable as the current generation of gamers are more sophisticated than before. They demand more from games and usually find the satisfaction elsewhere. With Fahrenheit, I can gladly say it is the complete opposite. Quantum Dreams have managed to reinvent the genre by having the common sense of applying modern designs and technologies to provide a fresh new experience that will appeal to old adventure gamers and new alike. If you are skeptic over the game, I can assure you that you can stop reading this review, skip the demo, and get the game.
For the stubborn ones, the demo is sure to leave you craving for more. Fahrenheit starts out with Lucas Kane, who seemingly possessed, kills a mysterious person in a diner. This immediately brings up a lot of unanswered questions for Lucas and for you. Fahrenheit's writing in the demo has been very nicely prepared, although the demo ends too soon to give you any idea of what has happened. You can pick up more clues by doing other actions and you can do other actions that can give you an easier time but perhaps leave some details. The graphical work on Fahrenheit is superb although the facial acting still needs some work. The city is nicely rendered but seems a bit too small an area to wander around to. The weather effects are really good. The visual elements successfully come together to bring a very believable environment. The audio is very nicely done although musical cues could have made the whole in-game experience a whole lot better in the demo. The controls take some time to get used to. It's very clear this game was designed from a console perspective. The default controls are a bit clunky. You have the directional keys to move the character. Going near hotspots will present different actions you can do. Each action presented to you has a corresponding mouse gesture to do while holding the left mouse button, which takes some time to get use to but aren't terribly difficult to adapt to. The right mouse button allows you to switch the camera views to give you a good idea of the area. The stress action sequence happens when your character needs to exert effort to perform the action. It involves hitting the left and right keys alternately quickly to do the action faster. The controls setup is a welcome change but can be made better in another iteration. The game also does a neat split-screen action sequence that creates a good tense situation. There's plenty of things to do as well as different solutions (although not drastically different solutions) that makes the game interesting and very replayable.
Fahrenheit raises the bar over all adventure games. Not only does it present very nice visuals and audio, but also a very fresh game design that reinvigorates the genre. Get the demo if you like, but it's a waste of time. Find a copy of the game. The demo would've convinced you to do it anyway.