Fahrenheit Preview

The game has a beautiful look

In another twist to the traditional story based format, after you leave the scene of the crime as the murderer, you then assume the role of the cop assigned to catch you. Detective Carla Valenti is a J-Lo look-a-like cynical cop who's tired of the beat. Your ability to cover your tracks in the previous scene affects your success in this one. For now, you and your partner Detective Tyler Miles are on interrogation duty. We control Carla first, and move to speak to the cop who discovered the body in the toilet.

Remember those dialogue trees in old Lucas Art's adventure games? There was never any time pressure to get a decision out of the gamer quickly. Fahrenheit tears up the rulebook and starts writing its own, which is where we come to the intense gameshow 'answer with the buzzer' definition we gave earlier. Your response choices are displayed at the top of the screen, and a bar moves across the choices - you have to move the analogue when the bar is under the response you want. Wait for the bar to expire, and the game automatically chooses the worst case scenario response from the list. It's an intense experience, and reinforces the instinct angle the developers are trying to achieve.

We switch from Carla to Tyler, and make our way to the juke-box. We blast some completely inappropriate 70s disco as the cop and waitress are trying to rid the image of a bloody corpse from their minds. Carla, who we discover is Tyler's girlfriend, gives us a scowl to end all scowls. It's these kind of touches, wholly unnecessary to the advancement of the plot, that make Fahrenheit such an interesting world to make decisions in.

It looks like a scene from Fargo, and, quite simply, is breathtaking

We sample another scene (the interactive movie feel is further emphasised by the game being divided up into acts, rather than levels), which takes place in a New York park. As Kane, you seek out your priest brother for guidance, having committed a murder without knowing why, on the run from the cops and generally having your morals shot to pieces. This scene really shows off the unique beauty of Fahrenheit. Everything, I'm told by the PR, is motion captured. The whole park is covered in snow, and snow continues to fall. A man and woman are sitting on a bench, and children are playing in the snow, all fully motion captured in digitised glory. It looks like a scene from Fargo, and, quite simply, is breathtaking.

After a discussion with your priest brother, one that can end in his help or the complete break-off of relations for good, you see a child fall into a freezing lake. Cue the split-screen 24 style mentioned before. Only one problem, there are two cops nearby, who will undoubtedly bust you as soon as they cast their eyes in your direction. Time is running out - what will you do? We here at Pro-G are a kind lot, so we jump into the lake.

Now we come to the Track and Field elements we talked about. You need to button bash the shoulder buttons to drag the kid out of the water, haul him onto the snow, get out yourself, and give him CPR. It's a tiring experience, as it would be in real life, but we soldier through, and the kid comes through. These sequences are, in our opinion, slightly indifferent to the game as a whole, and don't add anything to the overall tension. Perhaps on later levels it becomes harder to button bash and be successful, but in this case, you feel a little like, well, 'whatever'.

Who's this guy and what does he want?

But then the game kicks in again, as you realise the cop who discovered the body in the bar is looking straight at you. We walk away, before anyone can congratulate you on your heroics. You know the cop knows it's you. You know the cop knows you know. But for some reason he says nothing. As Kane shrewdly observes, maybe he feels your life saving antics somehow make up for your murderous past. Either way, Fahrenheit has inspired again.

It's not all gaming genius though. Bullet-time obsession that has gripped the industry since The Matrix was released six years ago returns to no real purpose in Fahrenheit. As the story progresses, a scene where Kane is cornered by the cops finally manifests growing demonic powers in our fugitive. On screen directions for analogue movements must be entered correctly when prompted for our anti-hero to somehow escape, punching and kicking in a gravity-defying, time-altering, camera-whirling maelstrom of Neo inspired action. It doesn't sit well with the pace of the game, although we'll have to see how these sequences fit in the final release before making judgement.

So, are you interested? Is your gaming radar piqued? Like Ico and Rez before it, which all received amazing review scores for being original and unique, an interesting game, as Atari knows, doesn't guarantee success. Just put yourself in a sales assistant's shoes - what shelf do you put Fahrenheit on?