Game Review: Indigo Prophesy

Well, this was a bit of a strange one. You start out as Lucas Kane, taking control of him immediately after watching him kill a man in a zombie-like trance after apparently slitting his wrists while a crow watches and we flash frequently to a man in a hooded coat mimicking Kane's movements. There is a lot there to try and figure out. Anyway, immediately after escaping the scene we then take control of our other main characters: the cops investigating the murder. Well, this is a conflict of interest. The game then continues to flop back and forth between the three as the story unfolds. Kane tries and generally fails to keep a low profile, as he's wanted for murder, while he tries to figure out what happened to him in the opening scene and why he killed the man. The cops meanwhile are trying to hunt him down. I don't really want to go any farther than that as any more might be considered spoilers.

As far as gameplay goes, it's pretty much just one giant quick time event with a few mini games thrown in here or there. You either need to alternate hitting two buttons (the triggers on the Xbox) or tilt the thumbsticks the right way at the right time (not sure how it works on computer). Interacting with the environment is done by moving the right thumbstick in the right direction for the desired action. For the most part this works well enough, it gives you a tenuous feeling of doing something while you go through the game. I say tenuous because it's sometimes a little unclear as to what, if anything, you are actually doing for the characters. Sometimes, like in the sparring match and the basketball game the results are immediately recognizable. Other times you'll fail and it seems like nothing happened. Of course, there's also a climbing event that gave me no end of trouble trying to figure out how to do it. It's not that it's complicated, either, the game just didn't want to accept my input on it for some reason. This pulled me out of the game pretty quickly as they are required to progress and take some time to reset (only a couple of seconds, but seeing your character fall and get back up over a dozen times gets old fast and any time is too much time).

Overall, I enjoyed the game. Aside from the horrible frustration gained from the climbing sequences and a few balancing mini games the game played fine. It's short enough that by the time I was starting to get tired of quick time events it was over and the story was interesting enough for me to play through it in almost a single sitting. The game was rather trippy and I'm not sure it's for everyone however. I know quick time events have gotten some flak, so if you don't like them it might be best to stay away.

Final scoring: 7/10
(5/10 base score)
+5 I enjoyed the game
-1 quick time events get tiresome and don't provide a lot of control
-1 those darn fences
-1 the story is trippy and a bit of a stretch to follow
(yeah, I know my scoring system needs refined, I'll work on it)

Wolfgang Out

"Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one."

-Oliver Wendell Holmes