If the release last week of The Order: 1886 taught us one thing, it’s that Quick Time Events (QTEs) suck. Except that we didn’t need the lesson, because we already knew that. I knew it. You knew it. Every developer out there knew it. And yet the trend of including them in every kind of game continues unabated. Read more …
If we’re talking about games that defined what we must now call the ‘previous’ generation of gaming, it would be remiss not to devote an article to Quantic Dream’s ground-breaking interactive drama Heavy Rain. Read more …
It’s an infamous story for us gamers that we’ve got that never-ending back log of games that we still need to complete, need to start or even in some instances take out of the wrapping! There’s always that onslaught of new games that we frantically buy and yet never put aside the time to play until they’ve grown several layers of dust. I am no exception to this story but with the summer bringing around a shortage of new releases, I decided I best delve into the games that I had long forgotten about playing. The one I picked for reviewing was a game that’s came out of Quantic Dream’s back catalogue and after playing a demo of it many years ago, it’s one that has stuck out in my mind as a definite “need to play” game.
As with much of the things in life, we say ‘I will remember that’ and kid ourselves into believing it then within a couple of weeks, they’ve been thrown in that part of your brain where notes for your high school exams have been residing ever since you’ve gotten out of those dreaded things. After playing the demo for Fahrenheit, there were many things that stuck out to me in the small snippet that the demo offered. It concentrated on the story telling side of the game as opposed to the action side and with an interesting beginning to this game; it left its mark on me.
Move forward seven years and since playing that demo, I had played and completed of Quantic Dream’s more recent title Heavy Rain – something that upon setting my eyes upon it, was a game that I definitely wanted to play. Quantic Dream sure does have a talent for catching your eyes and keeping them fixed until you’ve finished your play through. Heavy Rain left a really good feeling on me after completing it and I was really looking forward to playing Fahrenheit if it offered the same type of experience that I had encountered over five years ago.
Beginning with a short tutorial, presented by Quantic Dream’s founder David Cage, I soon became familiar to the controls again. I dove right into the campaign after completing the fun tutorial and was presented with the very same level that the demo had offered to me, bringing back memories and a wave of excitement for playing the game in full at last. With the game being some age now(seven years in fact), I wasn’t expecting to get blown away by the graphics of the game nor the controls thus leaving all of my faith in the game delivering a good experience to me in the story telling and the atmosphere it provided to me. It was the small things that were pulling me in to the game – the quick glimpses of someone mysterious appearing on-screen, the ‘thud-dud’ of the vibrations coming through the controller to mimic my characters heartbeat shortly before beginning the game by killing a man in a diner restroom, the soundtrack that was accompanying the images being projected onto my television screen. All of these elements playing a part in lassoing me into the story of Fahrenheit at a rapid pace with no hope of showing any mercy.
As the story progressed and became a little darker and a whole lot freakier, there was no turning back for me. I couldn’t pull myself to turn off the Playstation and take a break from it even to go grab another cup of coffee to refresh myself and to get back to that place that people call ‘The Outside World’ (does any gamer know that place? Answers on a postcard please!). It was interesting for me that Fahrenheit allowed you to choose who you played as next as you went through the story. Not that it had a dramatic effect on the way the story was foretold but allowed you find out those important facts to allow you to put your mind at rest. Having control of several characters within the game keeps the game with life and keeps you from seeing that the game doesn’t allow you to have as many choices as you would think. Choose the wrong option and its game over for you with the blame either going down to the main character going insane, committing suicide or getting arrested.
The intensity of the game really gets cranked up during the quick time events that appear on screen which differ from using the analogue sticks to replicate the directions that are given to you on screen or a finger numbing hammering session on the L1 and R1 buttons. While these are fun and made me feel like I really was in control of the character as they evaded dangers or threw punches and kicks, they were a distraction to what was going on behind them. Because of that, I normally saw myself screwing up the sequence of prompts and failing on them which became frustrating after a while however I endured through them and moved on with my play through. One criticism I will make against the QTE in Fahrenheit is that they are placed over almost every cut-scene, most of which make the QTE seem rather pointless.
Fahrenheit makes an attempt to portray a movie-like vibe to the game instead of a third-person action game which it does very well to a certain degree. With various shots being shown on screen for you to view, it does make for a unique experience that adds to the thriller vibe that’s being run through the game although, there is a point that you begin to think was it worth all of the bother? When moving the character around an environment such as their apartment or through the streets, the camera angle doesn’t help you any in reaching your destination as you have to constantly move the camera angle to allow you to manipulate your character around that pile of boxes that you’ve been walking into for about the past two minutes. Sure, it’s easily done with a quick hit of R1 or L1 but it seems a task to go and constantly readjust the camera angle just to suit you better.
Coming to a thrilling ending, I cannot fault much from Fahrenheit and was definitely worth the wait of seven years. With an average campaign time of just under ten hours, I would suggest this game to any person that has enjoyed Heavy Rain and/ or has missed out on this gem of a game. Even if you’ve not played Heavy Rain but like physiological stories, pick this up and try to get past the clunky controls and less than perfect graphics that the game shows compared to games that are out today. One thing I wouldn’t condone to have whilst playing this game – any alcoholic beverage. Don’t make the same mistake I done!
Even with the minor negatives, Fahrenheit does Quantic Dream justice in their ability to write incredible storylines and give an emotional experience to the player whilst they are going through it. With that in mind, I give Fahrenheit 8.5 out of 10. This will be the perfect bridging game to play just before Beyond: Two Souls comes out!
With the announcement today that Resident Evil 6 will feature over four hours of cut scenes (compared to the slightly more reasonable 1-2 hours in the previous 2 games), it got me thinking… Are games becoming less interactive as the narrative starts to steal the focus?
Role-playing games (such as the Final Fantasy series) have always been reliant on a heavy narrative to drive the gameplay, and have always been fairly beautiful to look at. Bioware and Bethesda on the other hand, have always attempted to make lengthy conversation a little more interactive, but aside from the option to change the narrative slightly (often with very little change to the overall plot) they remain thinly-veiled interruptions to the action of the game. Un-skippable cut scenes are the worst culprit though, and although they often disguise loading screens and serve as a necessary distraction, they are often longer and more involved than they need to be.
Another interruption to the standard gameplay includes mandatory “tutorial” missions. I recently played Yakuza: Dead Souls (a zombie themed rendition of the Japanese mobster game), and spent the first two hours watching cut scenes, and taking part in tutorial missions that had me repeating the same action for a finite number of attempts, only to have the results of that not count towards anything, and to have to repeat the same actions again to clear the room. Is this an attempt to make the game last longer, so that the hours invested in it seem impressive?
I do understand that games are trying to compete with other media in an attempt to become more mainstream and respected by a wider audience, and it is clear that more money is being spent on script writers and reputable actors in an effort to kick-start a “Golden Age of Gaming” as the industry struggles in the current financial climate. Any additional interest in the gaming industry (especially positive) can only be seen as a good thing.
Heavy Rain seemed to find it’s place in this rocky territory, and was critically acclaimed (and rightly so), but it really lay without a genre of it’s own, becoming an interactive story that immersed you and involved very little user interaction, but the interaction required was intuitive and well realised. Previously, we had to settle for the abysmal Night Trap on the Sega Mega CD if we wanted an interactive story to play.
So is “More Story – Less Gameplay” the way forward? Certain developers seem to think so, and with more sequels and remakes being produced over the past couple of years, anything that breathes fresh blood into the industry can only be seen as a good thing. There needs to be balance though; we can’t be expected to play a 40-hour game when we have spent more than half of it simply “watching” the game, rather than playing.