Indigo Prophecy Anyone give this game a try? Following is a rather involved review I wrote of it, which can also be found on the Amazon.com site: Leaden and forlorn, portentous and foreboding, haunting orchestral string music forms in the air: music filled with incomprehensible meanings, the strands of mystery, of misfortune and irreconcilable endings. The opening cinematic of the game plays: a prolonged, sweeping camera shot gradually, magnificently converging on a jeweled, dreamlike, snow-swirled Manhattan skyline. Lucas Kane, the murderer, provides narration. The camera follows the trail of a crow’s sinister tail feathers, eventually descending to the frame of a mid-town diner’s icy windowpane. After a sequence of disjointed, horrific cut scenes, you start out the gameplay there in the diner. Waking up from a sort of trance, alone in the diner’s bathroom, you find yourself huddled over the body of a dead man. Blood pools on the tile floor, slips away towards a drain in the floor. In your hand is the murder weapon, a blood-streaked knife. Your arms are wounded. On your face and hands are spatters and flecks of crimson. You have no recollection of what happened, but the end result is apparent. From here you begin to explore around, find you are able to wash the blood from your clothes and skin in the bathroom sink, drag the dead body into a stall, even use a mop to clean up a part of the mess on the floor. Instinctive actions, yet the whole time you’re asking yourself…How? Who? When? Why? Indigo Prophecy is a game drenched with style; the atmosphere in both audio and visual presentation is cinematic and spellbinding, recalling characteristics of such titles as Deus Ex, Max Payne 2 and Parasite Eve (although it plays nothing like those games). The visuals are purposely gritty in appearance, although there are many high-end PC graphical options available to tweak, creating an intriguing dichotomy between grainy sheens and razor sharp textures. In addition, many scenes feature split-screen (or triple screen) views of various parts of the environments or other characters. The end result is darkly pleasing to the eye, as Indigo Prophecy presents a fairly unique look, with ubiquitous, convincing details in every corner. The storyline involves a paranormal, noir, murder mystery set in outdoor and indoor locations around a snowy New York City (where else?), wherein you play as both the murderer and the two detectives trying to solve the murder case. The story itself is dramatic, multifaceted, deep, engaging and quite movie-like; it kept me pushing resolutely forward to see what happened next. Unfortunately, I was somewhat let down with the heavy supernatural direction the plot diverged into late in the game; to me, playing it mostly real as a psychological thriller with horrific, mystical undertones was much more involving and effective. Working as both counterparts of the tale, you end up feeling empathy for the plight of both sides. The gameplay appears to be an update on the traditional adventure game concept, but without the stagnant point-and-click interface. In fact, I found the game to play better on the PC using the Logitech Cordless RumblePad 2 than with keyboard and mouse. Indeed, much of the game’s laborious “Simon Says” analog stick movement sequences would seem to be nearly impossible without an actual dual analog game pad to perform them on. Indigo Prophecy seems to employ elements from traditional adventure games, survival horror, rhythm games, the quick-time elements from titles such as the Sega Dreamcast’s Shenmue, and even a touch of Metal Gear Solid stealth in two Lucas Kane childhood flashback scenes. It blends them with its own unique style and presentation, thusly creating something that’s never been done quite the same before. Characters are animated in a fluid, lifelike manner and their facial vibrancy conveys an actual human spectrum of emotions. Interactions between characters are smooth and natural, and the voiceover work is professional and believable. Timed choices made with conversation trees provide varying outcomes and situations, each action you employ possibly resulting in an alteration of the way the game unfolds. Therefore, each particular scenario you enter can play out in a variety of ways dependent upon your choices. Instead of health, each of the three playable characters has a 0 to 100% meter that measures their current stability of mind, their sanity level. Actions you choose to take (or not to take) throughout the game effect this meter negatively or positively, and many times you won’t be sure if something’s good for you or not until you try it. Indigo Prophecy is at its best when you’re ambling round, casually exploring the environment of, for example, a character’s apartment or the police station or elsewhere, completely engaged in the game world: searching for clues to progress the plot line, balancing your personal life with professional life, reading email and web news, checking phone messages, interacting with coworkers or neighbors or girlfriends and boyfriends. Yet overlaying such seemingly mundane endeavors, a heavy impression of impending dread is ever-present. Indeed, a few well-placed horror jolts never quite let you forget that something sinister, intriguing and extraordinary is afoot. It all comes off as quite charming. Good stuff. Regrettably, I did experience some nagging gameplay flaws here as well. Too much of the game is based upon the “Simon Says” repetitive analog stick pushing patterns. To me, it often-times seemed pointless and frustrating, a cheap, grade-school mechanic in an otherwise profound, insightful story. In addition, during these color-coordinating sequences, the player becomes so intent and focused upon the color patters to be repeated that watching the actual scenes happening behind them becomes impossible. So you miss half the action. In fact, it could be observed that the most important skill a player must hone to work through this title is not problem solving abilities and clever deductions based on collected clues, but rather quick reflexes and second-nature familiarity with the game controller. I view this as a somewhat dubious decision by Quantic Dream, the game’s developer. Furthermore, controlling character movements could also sometimes be niggling and bothersome. The auto-camera view shifts continually, thusly continually changing what direction you need to push to keep going where you want to go. You can manually control the camera as well in a few different ways, but doing so is not a particularly elegant task, and you mostly find yourself working against the automatic camera angle changes being made as you move. So while Indigo Prophecy is not perfect, I nonetheless found it to be one of the most novel, appealing and captivating computer games I’ve played in a long while. And as a cross-platform title, it’s also available for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 consoles. I played the demo version on Xbox, and while the visuals were, as expected, not a sharp as the PC edition, the control was perhaps a bit easier to get a handle on. Fahrenheit is the original designation of this game, and it was in fact released as Fahrenheit in markets outside the United States. Due to some kind of legal issues, it had to be changed in the US. So here, the game bears the moniker Indigo Prophecy. Whatever the name, however, the end product is an inventive, memorable experience.
