2.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered.

Ah, the sweet, slightly artificial smell of a David Cage game. From the moment you encounter your first blatantly racist stereotype to the second it hits you that every occupant of this world is a robot trying - and failing - to compute how humans talk, that familiar waft of David Cage cheese hits like nothing else. The story is utterly insane and makes literally NO sense, the characters have an obsession with stating the obvious at ALL times, and my boy once again HAS to insert the world's most awkward sex scene into proceedings. As per usual, big Dave is about as subtle as a clown in a monastery, but his biggest fans will be happy to know that this came out BEFORE he "refined" his writing over the years. The result is an absolute shit show, but one that's admittedly kind of fun to sit through. It's almost like a tire fire: you know its probably not good to admire it up close and inhail the fumes, but damn, the chaotic energy it exudes isn't half intoxicating. In standard Cage style, this shit is straight bananas in terms of scale, jumping between 'standard, white, Jude Law looking protagonist must put his clothes in the washing machine,' to 'fight Sabertooth to save the world while he hovers in the air doing Matrix backflips.' They don't even build to it very well either. The game goes at a snail's pace for about 75% of the campaign and then in the last quarter is like, oh yeah, we haven't resolved literally anything. Okay, the game will end now. That's without even mentioning Fahrenheit's two secondary cop protagonists, who constantly make you question why they're in the game at all? One is just there so Cage can include his standard, 'girl has a shower and then walks around her apartment in her underwear" scene, and the second is just so he can depict the most overtly racist interpretation of a black cop imaginable. I kid you not, whenever he walks around an area, funk music starts playing INCREDIBLY loudly (and that's without even mentioning the Chinese book store owner...). Then there's Fahrenheit's weird QTE gameplay, which is the most counter-intuitive and outright messy mechanic. It essentially says, "Wow, look at these cool action sequences we choreographed," while making you play the video game equivalent of Bop It at the same time so you can't actually focus on what's going on. Some of those sequences are bugged to hell as well. One of the final bosses of the game forces you to restart a seven-minute sequence whenever you fail, and, on occasion, my little Bop It inputs wouldn't even show up. I couldn't tell you what on earth was going on in that fight either. I think the main character was hovering in midair while dodging bricks? I dunno, this game is a trip guys, I'm not sure what to tell you... Anyway, I digress. David Cage. My boy. My man. My sweet, sweet prince. I have no idea how on earth you got to the point where your name is plastered on the front of AAA video game releases. It was probably some intricate witchcraft; a deal with the devil. But, till the day I die, I'm always going to wonder if you're stuff is hilariously awful or the ingeniously self-aware musings of a misunderstood mastermind... after watching two low-poly robot people awkwardly hump at the end of the game while citing their alien love for each other, I'm starting to get an inclining that it might be the former...