|
Fahrenheit
Atari, PS2 (2005)
More like Fahrenshite
Fahrenheit has only one good
distinction: that amazing
score from David Lynchregular
Angelo Badalamenti.
And that’s, honestly, about it. At
one point it was the great white
hope for the revival of hardcore
adventure games, it instead took
itself far too seriously, ruining any
small chance it had of being great
by morphing into some post-Matrix
piece of interactive filth. And not
the good kind that you find on the
interweb, that you can sometimes
interact with, too. Oh, and it had
those absolutely pathetic big
termite things in it.
Problems begin almost
immediately, as game designer
David Cage puts himself in the
game and addresses players.
Stepping onto the game’s ‘set’ and
gesticulating wildly, he instructs
you, in that big French accent
of his, on how to play the damn
game and what to expect. If you
haven’t played Fahrenheit this bit
is as pompous and po-faced as it
sounds. Can you imagine sitting
down at home or in the theatre,
getting ready to watch something
like The Matrix, only for either of
the Wachowskis, pre-sex change,
to spend ten minutes telling
audiences what to expect from the
forthcoming experience? Sure,
William Castle used to do that crap
when making pictures like House
On Haunted Hill… but today? It just
reeks of being some lame attempt
at faux post-modernism.
It didn’t help that the game
was polluted by generally lamearse
characters either. Lucas
Kane, the protagonist, was just
boring and doomed from the
beginning. I don’t really care if he
was manipulated into murdering
someone in a rest room as, the
fact is, I saw him do it. I therefore
don’t care about this jackass
and now Cage is expecting me to
follow his plight? Get funked. Carla
Valenti, the requisite hottie, lost
all credibility the moment I got to
walk her around her apartment
in her undies. And don’t get me
started on that pathetic trip to
retrieve a folder from the police
archives where Carla’s lifelong
fear of enclosed spaces turned a
ten-second trot into ten minutes of
complete frustration and pain.
As for Tyler, Carla’s partner…
well, the developers should have
changed his name to Leeroy
Jackson Tyler Gibson Richard
Shaft considering that he was, for
the most part, a walking black-cop
stereotype. And boy did he love the
ladies. His apartment, with its funk
deco and lava lamps negated any
respect I had for him. Fahrenheit
just seems to forget all about him
towards the end too, concentrating
more on Lucas and Carla as it
brings its distinctly French – ie batshit
crazy – story to conclusion.
Pumping him full of cliché, then
drop-kicking him from the whole
picture almost serves to describe
Fahrenheit as a whole. I mean,
does anyone even care about it any
more? No, because it’s wack.
Not unless you like sex in games,
that is, and embarrassing sex
at that. That’s mostly because
games like Fahrenheit just couldn’t
do emotion too well at the time.
So watching two uninteresting
characters bum uglies, replete with
orgasmic moans, made me moan
in a very different way. It was just
weak sauce. And having to woo
the girl by playing the guitar was
laughable. Not even action-packed
moments saved it. Oh, he’s being
attacked by giant green termites.
Really wish I could see what was
happening instead of these stupid
on-screen prompts. Wait, no I
don’t, because this is actually tripe. |
