First off, Indigo Prophecy (also known as Fahrenheit out of the US) is really a good adventure game, that leaves a mark on you no less than classic point-and-click adventure games. It focuses on the game’s storyline and how the plot plays out based on your interactions, as opposed to anything else. If that doesn’t qualify it as an adventure game, I don’t know what will.

Indigo Prophecy takes place in chilly January in New York, where a handsome ordinary guy named Lucas Kane, in a trance, murders an unknown man in a diner restroom. Confused, shocked and scared, Lucas’ life starts going downhill from here on as he begins to see visions, monsters and stuff, all the while hoping the cops don’t get him. The big question is of course, what happened on that cold January night that caused Lucas to kill a man.

The first two levels do an excellent job of showcasing the game’s focus on interactivity. What Lucas does in the restroom to cover his tracks directly affects the next level, where two detectives, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles investigate the diner. You get control of these characters too, so it’s sort of interesting and novel to see a video game play from both sides.

The plot plays out like a novel from there, as the detectives try and gather clues to find out who did it, while Lucas tries to come to terms with his screwed up life and find out what had possessed him. And this novel is definitely a page-turner, because I couldn’t stop playing at any instance.

The biggest drawback in the game has to be its awkward control scheme. Generally, to interact with objects, you must press and move the mouse in a certain direction (that supposedly lets you feel the character’s hand performing the action). But when in action sequences, you see Simon Says lights pop up on the screen and you have hit the buttons as they light up. This system sucks because it means you need to have good reflexes. Also, since you spend so much concentration on the lights, you don’t see the cinematic and rather well done action sequences in the background.

There is also a very annoying section that involves pressing the left and right keys as fast as possible in a rhythm. If your system freezes for a second, you lose this and the game’s over. The fact that the game uses a stupid lives-based system doesn’t help. It would have been nice if these reflex-based challenges had been replaced with something that required a larger use of the brain.

The game’s story, while being brilliant also falters towards the end, and feels especially hurried in the last few levels, which doesn’t go down with the spectacular first half. Voice acting is brilliant, as are the motion-captured animations. The characters (of which there are rather few anyways) are thus, pretty deep when it comes to personality. They make for a very believable world, which is further accentuated by the level of interactivity in the game, and how your actions have notable consequences.

Speech is also handled well in that you must respond within a given amount of time. Also, instead of complete sentences, you only have a word or two, representing thoughts in your head. Induces realism and feels cool overall.

Indigo Prophecy is still a decent game, though that should have utilized a more ceberal challenge instead of one involving fast fingers. Because with that, the game would have been unstoppable. The game’s engine however, is pretty good and can be used for countless other good games.