FARENHEIT pc demo

Indeed, the game definitely shows promise.

Wow, thanks for the heads up Jacob, I hadn't heard anything about this. Omikron was... kind of a mess, but a noble and ambitious mess. And it had Bowie!

I wish they kept the other name. I've been intrigued about the game ever since the trailer hit. Should be cool, and nice to see an adventure game without the Myst-like puzzles.

The demo is *very* short, but interesting. The jury is definitely still out whether the concept will hold together over an entire game or even work at all. The split-screen action (there's only one in the demo) is really cool in an I-Am-Playing-24 kind of way but the game also promises dozens upon dozens of Game Over screens. It could very well be Choose Your Own Adventure: The Video Game. Interested to see how it turns out, but I wouldn't buy it sight unseen.

They´ve renamed the game Indigo Prophecy in America.
Weird, shouldn´t they rename it in Europe aswell?
Celcius would be a good name.

Probably so people wouldn't think 'Michael Moore' when they saw the title.

This demo's awesome. I hope the rest of the game lives up to the promise.

I want the soundtrack.

What little I was able to play was very well done (graphics aside...but it looks like all the programming power went into the story/ai). I love the start of the demo, when it's the writer/direct, IN the game, introducing it. That was inspired.

Yeah, i hate that guy.

How on earth did they get Angelo Badalamenti to do the music for the game?!
He´s fucking great!

That was a pretty awesome demo. I liked that little introduction in the beginning and the making of video was also a nice addition. Seems like a good game and the soundtrack was great.

*bump*

Is this on release in the States yet? And if so, would anyone who has bought it recommend it?

Ta Jake, just wondering - its the same over here, out next week I think. Looking forward to it!

It was slated for the 9th across Europe, though I think it's slipped to the 16th.

It's getting decent buzz from gaming magazines over here...whichever one that has Valve on the cover did an article on the the upcoming batch of horror titles, and (IIRC), it got rather high marks. The article didn't review the full games, mind you...they were quarter-page blurbs on what their expectations were from demos and the like.

I'll be picking it up at some point in the next month or so, but right now, my change goes to Burnout and FEAR.

Everyone I know who has played it has been raving about it - though I suspect it may be one of those "gamer's games", like Ico, that a hardcore fall in love with but most people never play.

decided to pre-order it the moment the waitress asked me wtf I was doing when I didn't pay the bill at the table...

Will be downloading the demo tonight.

Not sure if the PC and XBox version are being released at the same time (edited to add: IGN shows will the game will ship for XBox, PS2 and PC on the 20th), but IGN is reporting that Indigo Prophecy (aka Farenheit) has gone gold and will ship September 20th.

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/648/648547p1.html

Demo is really short, but was really fun once I figured out what the fuck the controls were.

Did we play the same demo? I cleaned up a bathroom, washed my hands, left the diner, and went down some stairs. The end? That fucking sucked.

The game looks awesome, but that demo is complete shit. It's like having a shooter demo without guns or monsters.

Actually, I think the demo is pretty cool if the level of evironmental detail holds true for the rest of the game.

This game is fantastic. It's everything Shenmue should've been - it's got all the attention to detail, all the little touches that make it feel realistic, but the story is much more streamline, much more dynamic.

Camera can be a little wayward, and the controls take some getting used to, but the knowledge that everything you do (or don't do) can have consequences really makes you think about what you're doing.

There's a very early sequence, where Lucas wakes up in his apartment after the killing that puts you in the shoes of a man who just commited murder in a spookily convincing way. What would you do? And would you be able to compose yourself in time when a cop knocks on your door?

Hell, how many games put you in the character of both a murderer and the cops investigating the murder and manage to make both strands compelling and tense?

It's a little rough around the edges, sure, but in terms of sheer ambition this is great. The tutorial, where the writer and director of the game talks you through the basics of control on a film set is indicitive of where this is coming from.

It's pretty much essential for anyone with more than a passing interest in how narrative and - yes - emotion can work in games.

You've missed the point. You didn't have to clean up the bathroom. You didn't have to move the body, or wash the blood off, or hide the knife. You could wait there for the cop to find you. You could just walk out, pay the bill and leave before he even gets up.

But then what happens?

That's the point.

It's a taster of how the game puts you in a specific situation and then lets you make constant choices that impact that situation, not a self-contained action scene.

Dan's mini review has pretty much sold me. Is there an XBox demo of this floating around?

And, OMG, the girl from the game shows teh n00dz in the new Playboy!!111!

it should be on the October X-box demo disc...along with far cry, burnout, and the suffering. Too bad the mag's shit.

Don't get me wrong, it's definitely an acquired taste - and it's far from perfect technically (though I've got the PS2 version, so mileage may vary).

But...

If you like games that play with ideas rather than texture mapping, then none of that will matter. The words "interactive movie" usually bring me out in cold sweats, but this comes tantalisingly close to making the concept work.

For instance...following the "morning after" scene I mentioned above, you can choose whether to follow Lucas to the park or switch to Carla, the female detective, as she reports to work the next day. I chose to switch to Carla and, as she called her partner Tyler to see where he was, you could switch to him and play through a character-building scene of him getting ready for work, or you could stay with Carla and (I assume) go over the forensic reports.

I've played through maybe the first 45 minutes of the game and already there are about five major different paths I could've taken through the story. That I could see. There may be more.

It does a very good job of keeping you moving in the right direction, plot-wise, while letting you see the action through the eyes of multiple characters, and all without distancing you from the story or the adrenalin rush of hiding blood-stained clothes while a cop hammers on your door.

There's a definite feel of Shenmue, but the languid pace of Ryo's forklift-truck driving adventure is gone. It also reminded me of SOS Escape, the Japanese earthquake game, and also an old PSOne game whose name eludes me, where you were trapped on a spaceship hurtling towards the sun with a murderer on board. It was a first person adventure, and you had to convince the crew to co-operate.

I'm sure some people will complain that all you do is carry out mundane tasks and walk around, but as I said before - that's missing the point.

That opening scene from the demo isn't about cleaning a bathroom. It's about cleaning a murder scene. It's about finding yourself standing over a body, holding a bloody knife. It's about stabbing a man with a cop right outside the door, and trying to get away with it.

If you're not willing to make that investment, to put yourself in that mindset, then everything else in the game will just slide right past you.

The actual tasks you perform to do that may seem small and trivial, but the reason behind everything is drama. All the character beats and decisions and actions that would usually be handled in a cut-scene before you took over for the physical "running away" part are now in your hands.

I don't know if gamers are ready for something like this, and I stand by my earlier prediction that it'll join Ico and Vib Ribbon as an example of a game that tried to do something genuinely creative and artful with the videogame format, but failed to crack the mainstream.

Dan, you and me think a lot alike when it comes to videogames.

I'll be picking this one up, fo' sure.

the Playstation game this sounds sort of like was called "Sentient".

That's the fucker.

In the literal sense of the word, yeah. I mean, "mature players" has the same connotations as "mature readers" in comics - it generally means "tits and gore this way!"

But this is a game for people with a mature sensibility, sure. If you're the sort of person who appreciates Jackie Brown as Tarantino's best work, you'll get this.

Jeez, it's like you're daring me to break the bank this month.

Yes, it´s aimed at an older audience.
Although the American version has been censored, to keep the game from corrupting the youth of America all the naughty bits with sex have been edited out.

Seriously?

ARGH.

That's worse than the whole name change to Indigo Prophecy.

Yes i´m serious.
The european version, which still goes by the name Fahrenheit, is uncensored.

If the censorship really bugs anyone, you can just order the game from Amazon.co.uk. I used to do that all the time back in the day to get Judge Dredd trades. Its not a biggie for me, but I'll be basically doing that because I'm having a friend from NL visit soon.

Wouldn't that mean the game is in PAL? Should probably mention that for anyone without a PAL solution.

I actually got a copy of the game on Friday and managed to finish it by Sunday. Not a very long game, but wouldn't mind seeing more of this type of mature 'choose-your-adventure' type game. The game itself is okay, the story has a few plot holes and sometimes the story kinda jumps without explanation (probably because of certain choices I made that were probably "wrong"). Its definetely a rental but I don't think this is a game that I would go through twice, I doubt there are strongly divergent endings to this game.

Thats right, people without chipped Xboxes or PS2s shouldn't bother getting foriegn discs. PC gamers have nothing to worry about.

It doesn't look like Amazon.com.uk will ship video games to the US.

"Software, PC & Video Games, Toys & Games and Gift items

* Amazon.co.uk and Marketplace: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). "

Maybe Ebay? Any suggestions?

Truly bizarre. Books, CDs and DVDs ok, but no games? Yeah, Ebay has a number of copies already up for quite decent prices and shipping. I don't know why they bother to list the PC versions as PAL, though, I mean, I'm playing the German version on my PC right now.

By the way, if the sex minigame is all they cut from the US edition (along with the OG title of course), it really isn't worth it. I wouldn't even call it a minigame, its more of a cut scene where you can move the analog stick once every few seconds to give your ex a single, solitary hump. No polygon titties, either.

Fuck, I'm disappointed. The way Whitehead talked this up I was expecting DEPTH, like the choice of one or two fingers, shocker, reverse shocker, westside symbol, etc.

Release Date - Where is this game?

It should be out today in the US, right? Gamespot listed 9/26. I've checked Hastings and Blockbuster, and both stores don't have it in.

Yeah, I did all that stuff hoping something would change. I was disappointed when I hid in the bathroom with the knife and I couldn't stab the cop. Nothing you do in the demo really matters, though, you either get caught by the cops or you don't. Doesn't matter if you pay the bill, doesn't matter if you're covered blood, who you talk to, you can still just run out the back door. I'm guessing the full game has more interaction and that the mood meter comes into play, but that demo is so short and so lacking in features that I don't know why they bothered releasing it.

How is the combat?

I estimate that I'm about 1/2 way through the game, no combat so far.

I thought that the video with the demo had a lot of kicking going on?

Ordered from EB on the 26th.
Received the morning of the 27th.
Completed the evening of the 27th.

I couldn't stop playing the game until I had beaten it. It drew me in from the demo and loved every second of the game.

This game was a breath of fresh air. I'm getting tired of killing aliens and Germans.

Is there a possibility for mods of this game for new stories?

Now THAT would be cool!

I bought this yesterday. I think it's pretty cool. I just played through the morning after scene that Dan described and I was surprised how tense and panicky I got trying to scramble round and hide the evidence.

I'm a little worried that there be scenes where I know what I want to do, but I am not sure how to do it. For instance Lucas bleeding arms at the start, and I want to bandage them or wash them or something. But I don't know where to find the bandages in time, even though it is my house. Becuase you need to walk next to something before your options are clear, it can sometimes be hard to know what you can do in a given scene.