FAHRENHEIT
DON’T MAKE ME PLAY! Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game
Playing as both murderer and crime scene investigator at an apparent occult slaying, the strength of Fahrenheit’s opening was widely lauded at the time of its release. But as a young, broke tween back then, I endeavoured to spend my pennies almost exclusively on JRPGs; this interactive film simply passed me by in 2005. And while the tension of working against yourself in that first scene remains compelling more than a decade on, what follows slowly, surely, and then very suddenly slides into the realm of utter nonsense.
I frown my way through an early sequence somewhere between an action film confrontation and a dance-off against gigantic space fleas, unaware I’m only scratching the surface of the game’s ridiculousness. I soon fight more than my fair share of Super-Saiyan-style sky battles over a mute McGuffin child, never mind the fact those transparent arthropods are left wholly unexplained. Oh, and how could I neglect to mention a particularly strenuous QTE sequence where one of my protagonists is attacked by every single piece of furniture in his apartment? I wish I was kidding. I don’t think I’ve ever played something so self-serious that it squanders what few good ideas it has while also sucking the life out of its sillier moments.
As the contrived conclusion dribbles out of a story that’s more plank than branching tree, I feel the last dregs of my own brain dribble out of my ears. And that’s how my story ends. After one too many overlong QTE sequences, I now scream uncontrollably whenever I see a copy of Hasbro’s Simon. I’ll never know what a good cinematic adventure looks like or what happened to me that cold night in January in the toilet of an East End restaurant…
I FIGHT MORE THAN MY FAIR SHARE OF SUPER-SAIYAN-STYLE BATTLES OVER A MUTE MCGUFFIN CHILD.