Forenote: This is my first review on Escapist forums, so PLEASE tell me what you think and give me whatever tips you can to help me get better at this. I just started about two months ago out of sheer boredom and a new system. If you want to read more of my other, older reviews (maybe just by a few days, others by a few weeks), hop over to www.gamersasylum.org/forums to find them. (Please excuse the plug!)
Indigo Prophecy
Platform: PC
Made by: Atari (?!)
Rated: M/AO (Blood, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, Violence (AO version))
So I finally got around to try this and I've gotta say I'm very pleased. Why such an odd game that some might not even have heard of? Well, it's pretty simple; I've heard things about this game (both good and bad), and I'll be honest; being one of the 25 games (as of August 2007, according to Wikipedia) that have ever received the dreaded "Adult's Only" rating. Of course Steam didn't carry that version, so I had to settle for the toned-down American M rated version. What does this encompass? According to the Wiki article, "Scenes depicting sex (one of which is interactive) and other "adult content"," were the only major change to the game, other than a name change from "Fahrenheit" to Indego Prophecy, "... to avoid confusion between it and Fahrenheit 9/11," (Wikipedia).
However, it's true that it doesn't really seem to affect the plot of the game, you still get the sex scenes, just off camera and heavily implied, and I guess the one that was supposed to be interactive is completely removed. There's something about being able to change the version to the AO with the computer version by changing a little code, but, I don't have the patience to do it, and... well, frankly a few more sex scenes don't exactly sound that appealing to me. Maybe if I were straight I'd care more, or sexually repressed. Who knows.
The name, "Fahrenheit" is supposed to be reference to how as the game proceeds, the world gets colder and colder, something to do with the main plot of the story (your usual "if you don't do something, the whole world's going to end" shtick), meanwhile "Indigo Prophecy" is possibly the more plot-revealing name, because through and through the game deals with finding "the indigo child", more on that later.
Right, I guess I should talk about the game a little bit instead of going on about all the miscellaneous fanwank. Indigo Prophecy tells you exactly what it is straight in the tutorial; an interactive movie. I'd give a good 85% of the game to be cutscenes, many of which are interactive to varying degrees. The rest? I'd say... puzzle fits the best if I had to put a title on it, largely involving setting things up to facilitate the next cutscene, many times while on a timer. I guess that a good amount of it is story-developing investigation into things, but you get such little time to react that it can be a little... frustrating, and chances are you'll only get part of the whole story. More on that in the gameplay section, however.
So, an interactive movie about a murder mystery with... more underneath the surface than seems to be, let's get into the meat of it.
STORY
This is the main selling point of the game, I assure you, because there isn't much else than the story. however, this is anything but bad, because the story has so many interwoven parts and details that the game doesn't really need to have excellent gameplay, although it would be a plus. The story is so inventively done, and there's twists every which way to keep you guessing just what's going to happen next, which, never seems like it would happen.
The story goes a bit like this:
All in all, the story is the main reason to play the game, and it's more than worth it with how intricate and detailed they were in creating it, making sure that each and every possible contingency would be available to the players. Thus, you don't feel insulted when you go for a game and hear the words "interactive movie" it's well worth the $10 on Steam, and (at least for me) is cheaper than a real movie. Go figure.
OH! And after my review of Mirror's Edge, I feel I simply MUST acknowledge this; you truly sympathize with the characters in Indigo Prophecy, because they are real people, with real problems and a real life. Also, they show plenty of emotion, even manifested in a little "mood meter" that reflects upon what your actions detail. I genuinely felt sorry, and teared up at one point in the game when you're given the choice to make or break a romance between two characters and I chose to break it. That, my fellow gamers, is what a story SHOULD be.
GAMEPLAY
There isn't much to say in the way of gameplay, as the greater majority of the game is cutscenes that tell the story and your job is more or less to set things up for the next cutscene, or cart your character to the next one. If this isn't your thing, feel free to stay away. The controls for the in-between gameplay is a little tough to get used to and heavily resembles Silent Hill with the pivot, move forward backward mechanic being favored over the usual relative-to-perspective controlling of nowadays.
However, during the "interactive" cutscenes you get one of two versions: a Q&A session with a support character or what I affectionately like to refer to as "DDR Quick Time-a-thons". Call it good, call it bad, the main problem I found with it was that the Q&A sessions had timers that gave you almost no time to react and choose an option based on what you wanted to hear, and gave you no time to digest what you've heard. Meanwhile, the DDRQT scenes either went very slow, very fast, or took forever to complete by doing the same, damned, patterns just with different button configurations. To play DDRQT you have to have two sets of four keys (ASDW and Arrow buttons for me) and essentially play Simon Says with both. These buttons do, more or less, translate to your character's movements to some extent (double down makes you duck, double up makes you jump), and the time on them tends to be fairly lenient. Ah, also you have a lives system as well, so if you mess up part of your DDRQT, you can continue playing from the last screwed up "checkpoint" if you will. I guess I finally found a use for all the years I wasted playing Flash Flash Revolution!
AUDIO
This is another area where the game shines bright. The soundtrack varies from Theory of a Dead Man (metal/rock/hard rock, whatever you kids are calling it today), to soul music. Each song I heard was unique to it's area and provided extra atmosphere to what was going on and what the character resembled, whether it was the rather stereotypical, but lovable African-American Tyler Miles, or the sexually repressed, and generally miserable Lucas Kane , and even the hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside female cop of the story Carla Valenti, each had their own little mood music that was their own and gave you further depth of character. Hell, I even giggled along with the cameo of Carla's gay neighbor and guy pal as he and Carla discussed the romantic life.
Oh, something else I really enjoyed was a small minigame in which you could have Lucas play his guitar and play a few different types of riffs: blues, "cool" and a nice salsa, each giving you a little taste of a different kind of music to make you smile. I actually am planning to hunt down a copy of the soundtrack somewhere on the nets, because I enjoyed each and every song that played throughout the game.
WRAP UP!
While Indigo Prophecy might be a little lacking in the gameplay, it makes up in it's epic cutscenes, sporting fairly realistic graphics even for it's somewhat aged being. The story is beautiful and intricate with so many subplots that you'll never think you fully understand all of the nuances of each and every character. And I mean, that in a good way, of course, because it's what kept me playing; to wonder what craziness would happen next, and as it turns out there's plenty of madness to go about. Yes, it might not be an epic action game of the year and with blood and guts, hack and slash action, but hey, it's honest. For an interactive movie, it was still pretty exciting to participate in, and I'd say it's one of the best ten-dollar excursions I've taken recently for my computer. If you don't mind a lot of cutscene watching and DDR Quick Time, then this is definitely worth the minimal fee. If your still skeptical; even in the M rated version there's enough implied nudity and boobage to keep you horny perverts happy. I'll never understand you straight people.
Curious about the fate of our world, come to think of it,
~Sui
Indigo Prophecy
Platform: PC
Made by: Atari (?!)
Rated: M/AO (Blood, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, Violence (AO version))
So I finally got around to try this and I've gotta say I'm very pleased. Why such an odd game that some might not even have heard of? Well, it's pretty simple; I've heard things about this game (both good and bad), and I'll be honest; being one of the 25 games (as of August 2007, according to Wikipedia) that have ever received the dreaded "Adult's Only" rating. Of course Steam didn't carry that version, so I had to settle for the toned-down American M rated version. What does this encompass? According to the Wiki article, "Scenes depicting sex (one of which is interactive) and other "adult content"," were the only major change to the game, other than a name change from "Fahrenheit" to Indego Prophecy, "... to avoid confusion between it and Fahrenheit 9/11," (Wikipedia).
However, it's true that it doesn't really seem to affect the plot of the game, you still get the sex scenes, just off camera and heavily implied, and I guess the one that was supposed to be interactive is completely removed. There's something about being able to change the version to the AO with the computer version by changing a little code, but, I don't have the patience to do it, and... well, frankly a few more sex scenes don't exactly sound that appealing to me. Maybe if I were straight I'd care more, or sexually repressed. Who knows.
The name, "Fahrenheit" is supposed to be reference to how as the game proceeds, the world gets colder and colder, something to do with the main plot of the story (your usual "if you don't do something, the whole world's going to end" shtick), meanwhile "Indigo Prophecy" is possibly the more plot-revealing name, because through and through the game deals with finding "the indigo child", more on that later.
Right, I guess I should talk about the game a little bit instead of going on about all the miscellaneous fanwank. Indigo Prophecy tells you exactly what it is straight in the tutorial; an interactive movie. I'd give a good 85% of the game to be cutscenes, many of which are interactive to varying degrees. The rest? I'd say... puzzle fits the best if I had to put a title on it, largely involving setting things up to facilitate the next cutscene, many times while on a timer. I guess that a good amount of it is story-developing investigation into things, but you get such little time to react that it can be a little... frustrating, and chances are you'll only get part of the whole story. More on that in the gameplay section, however.
So, an interactive movie about a murder mystery with... more underneath the surface than seems to be, let's get into the meat of it.
STORY
This is the main selling point of the game, I assure you, because there isn't much else than the story. however, this is anything but bad, because the story has so many interwoven parts and details that the game doesn't really need to have excellent gameplay, although it would be a plus. The story is so inventively done, and there's twists every which way to keep you guessing just what's going to happen next, which, never seems like it would happen.
The story goes a bit like this:
A man named Lucas Kane is eating peacefully at a diner and goes into the bathroom. Suddenly he is overcome with madness, and murders another man whom he has never met before in his life, for absolutely no reason. He flees the scene and thus the horror starts. Lucas begins trying to figure out exctly what, how, and why happened to him, claiming time and time again "I'm not a murderer!", which, in a sense, he's right. Turns out he was used as a puppet for a ritual sacrifice.
Inspectors Carla Velenti and Tyler Miles, while dealing with their own problems in life like coworkers and romance, investigate the mysterious murder of the man who has, "a distinct three stabs that each severed a seperate artery leading to the heart," according to the coroner, which is "near impossible even for a surgeon,".
To make a long, very detailed and interesting story short, Lucas was used as a puppet by the last living Mayan oracle to complete a ritual to see the comming of "the indigo child", a pure soul who has never been before incarnated. The oracle had to kill people in the ritualistic manner in order to see visions and more clearly locate the child. Why they want the child is because she controls the fate of the world for the next ten-thousand years, yadda yadda. But of course Lucas has to have a bigger part than just random murderer, and he does. His mother, while he was still in the womb, was subjected to a kind of psychic radiation, and now he has latent psychic power. I suppose that's nothing too shocking, considering the weirdness of the game already, but it adds to the mysterious fight scenes.
Ah, right, there's two "factions", if you will, fighting for control of the girl and her words that will give ultimate power or some sort of stuff like that. The Orange Clan is the usual corrupt government, Illuminati, wants-to-rule-the-world sort of people, their five "pillars of power" are administration, military, media, finance and police. You know, the usual people who control things, and apparently they're spearheaded behind the scenes from corrupt individuals. Sounds familiar, don't it? Much more interesting is the appearance of the Purple Clan, which, ironically, is only manifested as an orange ethereal character who reminds me a great deal of The Consortium from World of Warcraft. Both clans take their respective times to use you as their puppet and get to their means by different uses of your psychic powers; the Orange being the beginning murder, and the Purple (much later in the game) posing as a friendly, blind, paraplegic old lady and your personal psychic and telling you that the fate of the world relies on you and saving the indigo child... but they didn't tell you that they were going to screw you over in the end.
I won't go into all the side stories, mostly because they themselves are intricate and detailed enough to be games themselves, but some of the sub-plots include Mr. Mile's love life with his stressed lover and girlfriend who just wants to spend more time with the busy Tyler, and Lucas and his ex-girlfriend's plight about their recent breakup while emotions still linger between them.
The ending is very much akin to Silent Hill: you get faced with a choice as the fate of the girl. Three endings are as follows:
Lucas (one I did): Lucas hears the indigo child's words and the world returns to a happy, summertime place and he is wracked with whether or not he should tell anyone the secret that holds ultimate power, or if he should utilize himself or exactly what he wants to do with his power. You're left with a rather open-ended scene as he kisses his new girlfriend, none other than the lovely Carla Valenti.
Orange Clan: Lucas gives the girl to the Orange clan and the world returns from it's winter-bound state to look... exactly as it did. Nothing changes, really, and Lucas never really sees any elaborate plots of world domination take place. I guess the Orange Clan has been controlling us all along... [insert Twilight Zone theme here]
Purple Clan: If Lucas gives up and gives the girl to the Purple clan, a much more drastic and bleak future awaits humanity; a race known as AI, who I assume are some sort of computerized race from the wonders of space, take over the planet and the world continues to descend into a near endless winter, more-or-less wiping out humanity as we know it.
Inspectors Carla Velenti and Tyler Miles, while dealing with their own problems in life like coworkers and romance, investigate the mysterious murder of the man who has, "a distinct three stabs that each severed a seperate artery leading to the heart," according to the coroner, which is "near impossible even for a surgeon,".
To make a long, very detailed and interesting story short, Lucas was used as a puppet by the last living Mayan oracle to complete a ritual to see the comming of "the indigo child", a pure soul who has never been before incarnated. The oracle had to kill people in the ritualistic manner in order to see visions and more clearly locate the child. Why they want the child is because she controls the fate of the world for the next ten-thousand years, yadda yadda. But of course Lucas has to have a bigger part than just random murderer, and he does. His mother, while he was still in the womb, was subjected to a kind of psychic radiation, and now he has latent psychic power. I suppose that's nothing too shocking, considering the weirdness of the game already, but it adds to the mysterious fight scenes.
Ah, right, there's two "factions", if you will, fighting for control of the girl and her words that will give ultimate power or some sort of stuff like that. The Orange Clan is the usual corrupt government, Illuminati, wants-to-rule-the-world sort of people, their five "pillars of power" are administration, military, media, finance and police. You know, the usual people who control things, and apparently they're spearheaded behind the scenes from corrupt individuals. Sounds familiar, don't it? Much more interesting is the appearance of the Purple Clan, which, ironically, is only manifested as an orange ethereal character who reminds me a great deal of The Consortium from World of Warcraft. Both clans take their respective times to use you as their puppet and get to their means by different uses of your psychic powers; the Orange being the beginning murder, and the Purple (much later in the game) posing as a friendly, blind, paraplegic old lady and your personal psychic and telling you that the fate of the world relies on you and saving the indigo child... but they didn't tell you that they were going to screw you over in the end.
I won't go into all the side stories, mostly because they themselves are intricate and detailed enough to be games themselves, but some of the sub-plots include Mr. Mile's love life with his stressed lover and girlfriend who just wants to spend more time with the busy Tyler, and Lucas and his ex-girlfriend's plight about their recent breakup while emotions still linger between them.
The ending is very much akin to Silent Hill: you get faced with a choice as the fate of the girl. Three endings are as follows:
Lucas (one I did): Lucas hears the indigo child's words and the world returns to a happy, summertime place and he is wracked with whether or not he should tell anyone the secret that holds ultimate power, or if he should utilize himself or exactly what he wants to do with his power. You're left with a rather open-ended scene as he kisses his new girlfriend, none other than the lovely Carla Valenti.
Orange Clan: Lucas gives the girl to the Orange clan and the world returns from it's winter-bound state to look... exactly as it did. Nothing changes, really, and Lucas never really sees any elaborate plots of world domination take place. I guess the Orange Clan has been controlling us all along... [insert Twilight Zone theme here]
Purple Clan: If Lucas gives up and gives the girl to the Purple clan, a much more drastic and bleak future awaits humanity; a race known as AI, who I assume are some sort of computerized race from the wonders of space, take over the planet and the world continues to descend into a near endless winter, more-or-less wiping out humanity as we know it.
All in all, the story is the main reason to play the game, and it's more than worth it with how intricate and detailed they were in creating it, making sure that each and every possible contingency would be available to the players. Thus, you don't feel insulted when you go for a game and hear the words "interactive movie" it's well worth the $10 on Steam, and (at least for me) is cheaper than a real movie. Go figure.
OH! And after my review of Mirror's Edge, I feel I simply MUST acknowledge this; you truly sympathize with the characters in Indigo Prophecy, because they are real people, with real problems and a real life. Also, they show plenty of emotion, even manifested in a little "mood meter" that reflects upon what your actions detail. I genuinely felt sorry, and teared up at one point in the game when you're given the choice to make or break a romance between two characters and I chose to break it. That, my fellow gamers, is what a story SHOULD be.
GAMEPLAY
There isn't much to say in the way of gameplay, as the greater majority of the game is cutscenes that tell the story and your job is more or less to set things up for the next cutscene, or cart your character to the next one. If this isn't your thing, feel free to stay away. The controls for the in-between gameplay is a little tough to get used to and heavily resembles Silent Hill with the pivot, move forward backward mechanic being favored over the usual relative-to-perspective controlling of nowadays.
However, during the "interactive" cutscenes you get one of two versions: a Q&A session with a support character or what I affectionately like to refer to as "DDR Quick Time-a-thons". Call it good, call it bad, the main problem I found with it was that the Q&A sessions had timers that gave you almost no time to react and choose an option based on what you wanted to hear, and gave you no time to digest what you've heard. Meanwhile, the DDRQT scenes either went very slow, very fast, or took forever to complete by doing the same, damned, patterns just with different button configurations. To play DDRQT you have to have two sets of four keys (ASDW and Arrow buttons for me) and essentially play Simon Says with both. These buttons do, more or less, translate to your character's movements to some extent (double down makes you duck, double up makes you jump), and the time on them tends to be fairly lenient. Ah, also you have a lives system as well, so if you mess up part of your DDRQT, you can continue playing from the last screwed up "checkpoint" if you will. I guess I finally found a use for all the years I wasted playing Flash Flash Revolution!
AUDIO
This is another area where the game shines bright. The soundtrack varies from Theory of a Dead Man (metal/rock/hard rock, whatever you kids are calling it today), to soul music. Each song I heard was unique to it's area and provided extra atmosphere to what was going on and what the character resembled, whether it was the rather stereotypical, but lovable African-American Tyler Miles, or the sexually repressed, and generally miserable Lucas Kane , and even the hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside female cop of the story Carla Valenti, each had their own little mood music that was their own and gave you further depth of character. Hell, I even giggled along with the cameo of Carla's gay neighbor and guy pal as he and Carla discussed the romantic life.
Oh, something else I really enjoyed was a small minigame in which you could have Lucas play his guitar and play a few different types of riffs: blues, "cool" and a nice salsa, each giving you a little taste of a different kind of music to make you smile. I actually am planning to hunt down a copy of the soundtrack somewhere on the nets, because I enjoyed each and every song that played throughout the game.
WRAP UP!
While Indigo Prophecy might be a little lacking in the gameplay, it makes up in it's epic cutscenes, sporting fairly realistic graphics even for it's somewhat aged being. The story is beautiful and intricate with so many subplots that you'll never think you fully understand all of the nuances of each and every character. And I mean, that in a good way, of course, because it's what kept me playing; to wonder what craziness would happen next, and as it turns out there's plenty of madness to go about. Yes, it might not be an epic action game of the year and with blood and guts, hack and slash action, but hey, it's honest. For an interactive movie, it was still pretty exciting to participate in, and I'd say it's one of the best ten-dollar excursions I've taken recently for my computer. If you don't mind a lot of cutscene watching and DDR Quick Time, then this is definitely worth the minimal fee. If your still skeptical; even in the M rated version there's enough implied nudity and boobage to keep you horny perverts happy. I'll never understand you straight people.
Curious about the fate of our world, come to think of it,
~Sui
