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Fahrenheit
Voodoo, snow and toilets... it had it all
Films and games are a lethal
combination. We all know
that 99% of licensed titles
stink, but what about the inverted
process of combining films and
games? Do games pretending to
be films ever really work? Metal
Gear is reviled by so many for this
very reason, yet David Cage’s
Fahrenheit, a real-time graphic
adventure on crack, is rightfully
known as an engaging attempt at
this questionable format.
It was a fine premise: Lucas
Kane, the lead character, wakes
up in a New York bathroom having
committed a murder, but he
doesn’t understand why he did it
or how he got there. The majority
of Fahrenheit is controlled by the
two analogue sticks, in which
every action is assigned to a
certain direction. Naturally, a
third-party controller with dodgy
sticks will mess you up, but on the
whole it’s a very refined control
system, with actions such as
movement, speech and even
pouring coffee assigned to a
simple flick in the right direction.
It’s easy to find all of this
perplexing, but that’s simply
because you’ve never played
anything like this on the PS2.
You’ve never been given such
power over the events of the
story, with both instinctive and
considered actions altering
events in a different, everspiralling
and imaginative way.
Being cocky with hiding evidence,
for example, makes for a more
high-risk action game, while
constant planning lessens the
action, transforming it into a
slow-burning stream of puzzles.
It melds styles, it draws you in;
Fahrenheit isn’t a game that
fell through a lazy development
phase or suffered from a lack
of imagination, it’s a game that
needed to tell a story from
beginning to end. There are
several intimate tales circling
the main narrative, and whether
you’re playing as any of the
protagonists, the plot remains a
personal venture.
In his greatest move, Cage
chose Angelo Badalamenti, the
famed composer behind the
works of David Lynch to score
it, which really topped off the
sense of dread and mystery. The
soundtrack is always essential in
setting the tone, and Fahrenheit
attains this with the marked
skills of the greatest Hollywood
creators. And that’s it, really;
Fahrenheit is in a special stasis
between movie and game,
but despite this it never stops
entertaining. Lucas’s story gets
darker as the plot thickens, but
ruining it here would be wrong.
Buy the game, immerse yourself
and make sure you’ve got a pad
with sufficient analogue sticks.
You’re going to need them.
Fahrenheit can still be
purchased for £10 brand new.
Luckily, it isn’t rare. Secondhand,
you can get the game
for about £5, which is a pocket
money-priced bargain. |
