Fahrenheit

Publisher: Atari

Platform: XB

Category: Action / Adventure

Rating Info

Release Date: 16/09/2005

Member Rating:

Number of Players: 1

Fahrenheit Description

It's 2009, and New York is rocked by a bizarre series of murders. People are killing other people that they don't know for no apparent reason, and each murder bears the same strange ritual hallmarks. At the same time, the temperature is dropping as it gets colder and colder every day. The latest person to commit one of these strange killings is Lucas Kane. Suddenly entering a sort of trance he carves a symbol in his arm and murders a person he's never seen before, all the time hallucinating about a small, helpless girl. As he regains his senses, he flees the scene and realises he is now a criminal on the run. This is the plotline in Quantic Dreams' pitch at the growing genre of cinematic thriller games, Fahrenheit, published by Atari. The game's makers boast that the eerie style echoes that of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and while we're not so sure about that, it does have some interesting ideas in it. You can switch between four characters in the game: the damned Lucas himself, his brother Marcus, and two police detectives, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, as the drama unfolds and you try to make sense of the mystery. This being a psychological thriller, you have to look after your character's psychological well-being by helping them to make the right decisions. The game certainly has a distinctive look, too, with split screens keeping you abreast of what's going on elsewhere, cinematic camera work and movements and motion captured from real live stuntmen. There are 44 acts to work your way through as you try to uncover the mystery. In the background is the slightly implausible legend of the Indigo Child: an ancient prophesy states that one day a powerful and pure child will be born somewhere in the world. A desire to possess the child's birthplace is - they say - what drives man's compulsion to wage war and accumulate land, power and wealth. Whatever's behind the strange events, here is an ambitious game that seeks to give the player a unique experience.

Screenshots

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Write a review of Fahrenheit

Reviewed by: bluesxx	Date: 11/02/2005	Rating:
Thought this game was amazing with a very good storyline and good graphics. the game had amazing interatctivity as you can use different characters and take different paths and think that this game is a must rent for everyone.

Reviewed by: forwardsbigmark	Date: 19/01/2006	Rating:
I thought that this game would be ok but when i got it i loved it good story and a new idea behind RPG. Every desicion that you make effects the game how you tackle a problem is diiferent i loved it from the moment i had it. Had to send it back for two reasons one i was stuck and the second my wife got sick of me playing it and talking about it at the pub

Reviewed by: Ronin Storm	Date: 18/01/2007	Rating:
Outstanding. If I needed to pick five things to highlight to make this game worth five stars, I'd look at the following: 1. The game is very tactile. A sense of rhythm, timing, quick wits, and coordination are needed to play but the game does not punish you for not having grown up without a console controller in hand. The motions on the analog stick encourage you to /feel/ what the character is doing, be it climbing or dancing, fighting or running. 2. The story is engagingly personal. While you may sometimes have the sense you know where things are going, there is also a sense of "rightness" about the story's development. The story isn't black and white but, by the end, the goals are worth fighting for. 3. The visuals are cinematic and the controls blend well with the action. As an Xbox game played on a X360, the graphics are a little dated, but the way the game is presented is not. Stop-motion cinematography, character body motions mapped from humans, interesting and diverse settings, mixed with their dance-mat style game play work beautifully. 4. The soundtrack supports the game well, mixing music from different genres as mottos for the different characters. They chose their music well, especially the track that plays over the end titles. 5. The game supports different perspectives and you get to choose which order you play them in and, sometimes, which path you'll choose. Choose the turn of the dialog with a flick of the right stick, select which character to play next after the end of a scene... I'm not clear how heavily these choices affect the story but my sense was that my choices mattered and that /sense/ is rare enough in a game. Around the same time, I'd also played Gears of War. Completed both that and Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit was, by quite some way, the superior story and game. It ranks up against my favourite of all time, Max Payne. I'd suggest that if you enjoyed Max Payne then you'd find a lot to enjoy in Fahenheit's story too.

Reviewed by: enzyme	Date: 11/02/2005	Rating:
Quite an enjoyable game. Not too many dull dialogue scenes but the control system was less than perfect and it crashed on a couple of occasions.

Reviewed by: thekingofguff	Date: 18/04/2006	Rating:
While the story of the game was for the most part good, the Parappa the Rapper style controls during the action sequences became tiring after a short while. I would have preferred some decent fighting action rather than the repeated button copying you have to do. You simply copy the direction shown on the screen during action sequences, which makes this less of a video game, and more like one of those Bop-It things that 8 year-olds use. I'd recommend playing it through once because it's quite entertaining and not too taxing, and apparently there's many different consequences depending on your actions, but I couldn't be bothered to go through it again to find out what these may be.

Reviewed by: scania	Date: 18/07/2006	Rating:
this game has very good parts in which only you the player have control over..like the start of the game is my best do you..A) sit back at your table and pay your bill..or B) panic and run out the fire escape door..the many choices/paths you pick is unltd..only you the player can change this nobody else can..but the random button pushing does get repetative after a while..so my rating for this good game is 3* out of 5*

Features

Choose to play as one of four characters including lead character Lucas Kane, Detective Carla Valenti, Detective Tyler Miles (Carla's partner) and Lucas' brother Marcus Kane

Play through a total of 44 bone-chilling acts and manage the mental health of each main character by choosing the correct course of action and maintaining their psychological balance

Special multi-view split-screen allows players to see what is happening in a different area of the game while playing through a particular scenario

Motion Physical Action Reaction (MPAR) interface allows the player to make the same movement as his character on screen, which creates a physical identification between the player and his character

Physical Action Reaction (PAR) interface is used during mini-game action sequences where the player has to move the analogue control sticks in the proper direction in order to succeed

More than 50 stuntmen and actors were used to motion capture in-game characters in order to create the most realistic character models, dynamic cinematics and high-calibre, Hollywood-style action sequences.

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