Fahrenheit Preview

Did you kill this man?

Ico, Rez, God of War. All lauded by critics - all failed to set tills alight. An hour immersed in Quantic Dream's compelling genre-defying horror is all we need to make a confident prediction: Fahrenheit will suffer the same fate as those aforementioned standard bearers.

Fahrenheit is unclassifiable. But, since society demands structure, Pro-G will humbly attempt to comply. Fahrenheit is like playing an interactive point 'n' click (with no pointing and clicking) version of 24 fused with an episode of the X-Files, a dab of Resident Evil, a twist of The Matrix, a hint of Track and Field (yes... Track and Field), a sprinkle of intense gameshow 'answer with the buzzer' madness, all topped off with the faintest whisper of a murder mystery story-based anti-hero psychological thriller. And breathe.

But first let's discuss the premise. Set in 2009 New York, normally wrapped-up-warm citizens are starting to worry about a particularly cold wave that's swept the city. Things are grim, and the forecast is even grimmer. Cue Lucas Kane, who's drinking alone in a diner, away from the bitter cold. We watch him suddenly stand up, as if in a trance, and walk to the bathroom. With a knife he carves a demonic looking symbol in his forearm. A fellow diner enters, and Kane stabs him to death, all the while visions of a little girl reaching for help flash before our eyes. Kane comes to, looks at the scene before him, the blood on the cold floor, his hands and his clothes, and he realises what he's done. He realises he is a murderer, but he cannot understand why. Cue you, the gamer. What are you going to do?

...a totally unique and intuitive control system

Which brings us nicely onto the interactive point 'n' click bit. There's no cursor on screen at all, which is why it isn't really point 'n' click at all, but it's the best description for a totally unique and intuitive control system that, while it may take five minutes to wrap your thumbs around, it fuses with your brain like some electronic version of the Vulcan mind meld. Everything in Fahrenheit is controlled with the analogue buttons. When interactive bits of the environment are within range the option to move an analogue in a particular direction will determine your character's actions.

So, we start moving Kane around. We approach the main mirror. An option presents itself at the top of the screen and we move the analogue. Kane starts to wash his hands of the blood his innocent victim so inconveniently splurged when being gouged by the knife. We are now trying to get away with it. We move towards a urinal. Seems like Kane needs to take a leak. A simple push of the analogue indulges our troubled friend. What about the body? We move it into a cubicle. The blood on the floor? We start to mop it up. All of a sudden we feel quite callous. Fahrenheit, quite brilliantly, is simply playing on gamer instincts.

24 style split screen action

Then we come to 24. As you try to work events out in your head, a cut-out of the diner bar fills half the screen, showing a cop about to walk into the toilet. This is happening in real time. What are you gonna do? Will you head for the window? Will you walk out of the toilet and leave as normally as possible? We decide to leave as we see the cop moving towards the restroom in the box-out on the right of the screen. We cross his path, the cop enters the toilet. We head for the door, the waitress screams for us to pay the bill - we run for it, desperate for the cold, harsh New York night to envelope us.

This opening scene demonstrates the thrust of Fahrenheit's dynamic. Forget all those control methods you knew as a veteran of a thousand survival horrors and a million story adventures. In Fahrenheit time is always running out, and the game reacts to the instinctive decisions you make. At no point do you feel as if the game is making those decisions for you, which is, on top of all those other beautifully unique things it presents, why Fahrenheit looks like a must have for the thinking gamer.