Indigo Prophecy Review (PC)

Veteran readers of GameDAILY know how cynical we've become with the horrific state of the adventure game genre. It has slowly been decaying into a festering pit of "why bothers" and "who cares" for some time. Well, we are here to proclaim from every mountaintop that our decrepit video game bodies can climb (ok, maybe they're just hills and not really mountains)... adventure games are back baby!

It took Quantic Dream, the French developer who created Eidos' 1999 action-adventure game, Omikron: The Nomad Soul, six long years to come out with another game, but boy was it worth the wait! Known as Fahrenheit in Europe, Indigo Prophecy has been touted as "interactive cinema." According to Erik Gerson, senior VP of Marketing for Atari, "It's a scenario driven experience whose attributes more closely match that of a hit movie."

He ain't lyin' folks! Prophecy is as close to playing a motion picture as we've ever come across. In fact, you're not "playing a game" so much as you're interacting with a movie's storyline that changes based on your decisions. The game conveys on-screen drama, tension and anticipation to the player, resulting in an experience where you actually develop an emotional attachment to the characters and a stake in the outcome. While decision based gaming isn't new, Prophecy puts a whole new spin on it.

The story is set in New York City during the most brutal winter on record. Along with the harsh cold comes a series of brutal, random murders - all of which follow the same pattern: innocent citizens are killing complete strangers in public. IP starts with you playing the central character, Lucas Kane, who has just murdered one such random victim in the bathroom of a local diner. Covered in blood, and having no idea what just happened, he must uncover the mystical forces that drove him to kill, face the demons of his past, and evade the police long enough to prove his innocence. The ensuing experience is so engrossing that it literally swallows you up. It's better than most of Hollywood's alleged "blockbusters."

This is a free form game wherein you can assume the role of different characters and experience the game from multiple viewpoints. Aside from playing as Lucas (and often times several minor characters), you play the two police detectives assigned to the case, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles. You also get to see things through the eyes of Markus Kane, Lucas' brother - who just so happens to be a priest. Thus you not only get to play from both sides of the law, but from both ends of the moral compass.
The interface is wholly unique, and reinvents how future adventure games will be played. There is no inventory system, no items to manipulate, or menus to wade through. Best of all, there isn't one single point-n-click moment in Prophecy - ever. Instead, you are given multiple choices (shown in the letterbox section above the action), each with their own specific mouse movement. A timer appears during each decision-making moment, so you need to think quickly. If you don't choose fast enough, or choose the wrong course of action - the story branches off into another direction.

When a character is required to perform physical actions, it's time to tap some keys. One scheme has you alternately tapping the left and right movement keys in order to keep a bar centered on a meter. If the bar slides too far to either side of the meter, you fail that particular action. For example, Carla goes down to the basement of the police station to scavenge through old case files. She has claustrophobia, so you must keep her calm by controlling her breathing, done so by tapping the keys appropriately. Not hard if that's all you have to worry about, but the trick is to do this while you're navigating her through a maze of file racks, which also have to be moved around.

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