June 28, 2004

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I’ll spare you my review of Michael Moore’s crockumentary. Suffice it to say I mostly agree with Chris Hitchens. (I know, I know. I just washed my mouth out with soap.)

I am currently crossing my fingers for the dim, but newly existent, chance that someone has answered my prayers for a good adventure game for the Playstation 2.

Fahrenheit debuted at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, and according to scattered accounts, it completely knocks sliced bread off the map. It’s got a decent basic storyline — complete strangers in New York are killing each other at random, each enacting the same bizarre ritual before committing the murder — which you can actually affect depending on your actions in the game. (It starts, by the way, after you’ve just committed one of these random murders.)

And by affect, it apparently doesn’t just mean that you get the Murasame sword with seven jewels of power instead of five if you beat the silver-tongued Gorgon using only copper weapons. It seems there are serious game-shattering consequences for your actions. For instance, you could do one thing and play the game for four hours only to discover that the thing you did four hours ago completely screwed you, and now you’ve lost. Which has the possibility to be very frustrating, but if the game is dynamic enough to keep you playing, then it could also be very, very cool. From the review I linked above:

There is no inventory in the game, which is intended to add an element of realism. You