Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered (iOS) Review

'Ambitious' is a word that undersells Quantic Dream's Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered. This is a game that was written by a mad man with a vision, David Cage. Its narrative runs a gamut of crime drama, supernatural thriller, horror and science fiction, and it meshes together in the most bizarre way imaginable, and yet it works because there is never a dull moment. Sure, many of the plot points are strange and nobody would accept them in the context of a movie; however, in this video game where the story starts off very atmospheric and believable, it slowly builds on itself, compounding the plot elements in ways only David Cage can.

The game kicks off with a brilliant set-up: Lucas Kane awakens in a bathroom with the body of a man he has murdered, and this scenario is used to teach how the bulk of the game will be played. One aspect of Fahrenheit that will immediately make it stand out from modern adventure games is just how many ways players can lose. In these early sequences, there is a police officer that must be avoided and conversed with to refrain from getting caught, and there are many ways to get caught and to prevent it. It must also be mentioned just how many different "Game Overs" there are that result in their own unique scenes. Fahrenheit is still more game than most modern narrative-heavy games, mostly due in part to just how flexible the story is to the actions the user takes, even though there are only three endings if the many Game Overs don't count.

When the original Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy was on PS2 and Xbox, the game used the twin analogue sticks for many of the various actions characters could do. This was fairly novel at the time, and there is even a unique "behind the scenes" style tutorial level that features the game's director, David Cage himself, having players assume the role of some kind of crash test dummy for practice with the controls. For Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered on iPad, many of these control design choices did not make the transition well, and possibly other alternatives should have been considered to accommodate the limitations of the touch screen.

For instance, the simple act of walking uses a virtual thumb stick, which never feels reliable or accurate. Users will constantly reset their position to regain control of the character to position them in the desired location. Another annoying quality is the fact that the option to move the game's camera and walk simultaneously is not available due to it being too complex of an action for a touch screen. Why Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered doesn't have a basic touch-and-go movement option is bewildering considering how pretty much every point-and-click adventure game on the iPad controls this way. Allowing an area to simply be tapped and characters path-finding automatically would have made this remaster more manageable for the touch screen format. As it is now, it becomes a war of attrition with the controls.

The original game was never designed for touch screen controls and the simplest act of basic movement suffers and even breaks the game during time pressure sequences (which this game has a lot of), where a puzzle has to be frantically solved, or evidence needs to be hidden, etc. Precious time is lost because moving and camera controlling can't be done at the same time, making Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered almost unplayable at times. This is a constant strain throughout the game and is especially egregious during the two stealth segments.

When Fahrenheit first came out, the visuals were pretty sophisticated and featured some of the finest motion-captured animation seen during that gen. Animation-wise, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered has aged nicely, and the newly added HD textures look pretty great. It is especially noticeable should users switch to standard definition mode, which can be done anytime, although does have a lengthy load time. While the motion performances hold up, the facial animations are left as they were in 2007, making characters have a very stiff animatronic quality about them. This uncanny valley effect is very noticeable with the HD textures due to just how much more realistic the visuals look, thus the lack of more nuanced animation is felt. The polygon models look the same, and character hand models, which were pretty standard looking even in 2007, tend to be very distracting in how low fidelity they look.

Some interesting visual flourishes are how some of the art direction seemed to have predicted the future. David Cage predicted portable devices that look exactly like tablets, and even very flat screen looking PCs that resemble a single pane of glass. Even some plot points seem to be relevant to some events one might hear on the news - some in regards to global climate change.

Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered does a fine job preserving the atmosphere of the original title, but there are some graphical mistakes that become apparent now that the game is in HD, such as how some of the texture mapping seems to be off in some areas and don't align up perfectly, so seams become very obvious. There are also quite a few performance hiccups where the game skips and frame rate chugs. The remaster also tends to crash often and gets stuck replaying the same audio loop, requiring a hard reset. It is not an ideal port, but hopefully Aspyr Media, who made this conversion, will update this with patches to make this game run smoother.

Most obnoxious of all is the unskippable cut-scenes. There is a good chance players will fail a lot because of the touch screen controls, and not being able to skip any scenes that must be rewatched is the most horrifying quality in this game, not the doomsday scenario.

The core gameplay is exactly as it was in 2007, and anyone who has played a game developed by TellTale Games will feel right at home, bar they can get used to the obnoxious controls. The game is pretty long as far as adventure games go, lasting around 15 hours, and with the various endings and unlockable content all for $9.99. Fahrenheit is a good game with an outrageous and bewildering third act, which may either make it or break it for some due to how absurd it is. It is one of the more interesting and dynamic adventure games made, due in part to just how game-like it is because of how many ways there are to lose. However, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered is also a bad port of a good game, all because the transition to touch screen format was handled sloppily and without much thought or effort. There are excellent platforms to engage this weird adventure, but the iPad is not the recommended way to play it.