Treading the line between providing an exciting game with an involving, deep story and providing a disappointingly segmented experience divided by numerous cut scenes is proving notoriously difficult nowadays, with the power of modern consoles allowing developers to illustrate and expand stories to degrees never before seen. One could argue that a prime example of a game that got the balance wrong was Metal Gear Solid 2, which split its sections of – admittedly excellent – stealth gaming between sections of cut scenes lasting anything up to 10 minutes.

Quantic Dream’s Fahrenheit makes no apology for its reliance on such detailed storytelling. If anything, it positively encourages itself to keep the player constantly on the cusp of progressing the storyline, meaning a game divided into plenty of digestible chunks across the numerous locations in which the story plays out.

The plot itself begins in an otherwise plain diner on a freezing cold winter evening. Customer and all-round normal bloke Lucas Kane gets up and goes to the bathroom. Usual toiletry procedure is most certainly not on his mind though, and suddenly and with no good reason he pulls a concealed knife from his person, slashes strange patterns into his wrists and then plunges it into another customer. Upon regaining his senses the player is given control of Lucas and immediately presented with a selection of options on how best to deal with his rather unfortunate situation.

Not that the game contents itself with placing you in the shoes of the wanted. Nope, you soon find yourself also controlling the actions and observations of detectives Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles. In doing so the game blurs the main objective further, leaving the player intrigued as to how his actions with one set of characters will alter the situation for the other. One moment, for example, you could be trying desperately to keep Lucas hidden from the law, whilst the next you will find your previous stealth hampering your attempts to identify and locate him. The story continues to progress and balances itself rather like a set of scales, with actions on one side changing the situation for the other.

Deepening the feeling that Fahrenheit is not your dyed-in-the-wool adventure, controls are kept to the bare minimum throughout. Centring around both analogue sticks, the left controls the direction in which your character moves whilst the right is used as a method of deciding from a number of actions that can be performed in various scenarios. Dotted throughout are arcade portions much in the vain of Shenmue’s action sequences, requiring the player to tilt the sticks in the correct directions upon an icon being displayed. The one slight problem with all this is that it vaults the pace of the game considerably and quite suddenly, often resulting in the player having to repeat certain sections a few times in order to warm themselves up.

Other scenarios see the player having to rapidly press both the right and left triggers in order to complete some tasks. Although relatively simple, these sections don’t feel particularly in keeping with the rest of the game and end up being slightly annoying diversions rather than enjoyable variations.

As you progress through the game, the sanity metre which resides in the bottom right of the screen plays an important part in proceedings. Plenty of happenings cause this to fluctuate in all characters’ cases, with the player being tasked with keeping it from hitting empty. Events throughout the story will cause the sanity metre to plummet, upon which the player can perform certain tasks, menial or plot progressing, to give the character some respite. Failure to do so will see Lucas either give up or commit suicide, or Carla and Tyler hand in their badges. This will end the game and the player will be required to play through the appropriate section of the game once more. Using a similar system, various conversations each character can have occasionally bring up a ‘suspicion metre’, which will rise and fall depending on the nature of the answers given.

Production values are obviously high on Fahrenheit given its nature, and although graphically it is nothing utterly outstanding it does a good job of presenting the game world as a living, breathing city (New York, for those interested). Each of the characters, be they main protagonists or bit-part players, are portrayed richly and you’ll soon become very attached to each as they wind their way through to their destinies.

This is certainly helped by the fantastic aural side of the game. Voices provided for each character are believably authentic and performed well. The music score has been overseen by Angelo Badalamenti, a man who has scored countless David Lynch productions and knows a thing or two about using sound to create menacing, tightening atmospheres.

If viewed as a traditional video game, one could be tempted to view Fahrenheit slightly harshly. During its approximate 15 hours of play, the game doesn’t particularly offer any portions of hugely enjoyable, memorable gaming. When viewed as a whole package, though, Quantic Dream’s product certainly offers a heck of a lot more to the player than the sum of its parts suggest. Whilst perhaps not offering any markedly novel concepts in terms of play, the fact that the title is basically a proper, intentional interactive movie means that from the moment the actions kicks off until the final moments at the end you are gripped and always find yourself desperately wanting to find out what happens next.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that the choices offered during the game to allow the player to do this all funnel eventually into a series of pre-determined scenarios. Although initial experimentation does leave the player with the illusion that possibilities are endless, the game is relatively set and various happenings cannot be avoided, rather merely postponed or reached in different manners.

Even taking that into account though, Fahrenheit still leaves a smile on your face. You can say what you want about the game’s network of choice, but all that matters in the final reckoning is that it is hugely entertaining. With any luck the game will raise enough interest for Atari to feel willing to stump up the cash to allow Quantic Dreams the chance to expand upon their ideas with a sequel, because the concept behind Fahrenheit is a seed from which mightily entertaining video games could grow.