Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit is an interactive adventure drama from Quantic Dream that tells the story of a mysterious murder in the New York subway simultaneously from the perspective of the killer and the investigating detectives. The game is driven by contextual QTE sequences and decisions that change the direction of the story, and thanks to its cinematic style of storytelling, split screen and switching between viewpoints on events, it offered in 2005 an experience that differed markedly from the action competition of the time - closer to an adventure and a film than a classic shooter or platformer. Even mundane scenes from the characters' everyday lives play a role in it, because they help build the player's connection to the characters before the consequences of the main plot hit them, and the player also switches perspective between several characters at once.

The PC version came out alongside the console releases, but the QTE sequences, designed primarily for a gamepad's analog sticks, controlled noticeably worse on a keyboard - players often complained that rapid sequences of directional arrows were less natural and less readable on a keyboard than on a stick, and the game therefore recommended connecting a gamepad, even though that wasn't a requirement for finishing it and the game could be controlled purely by keyboard in a pinch. In return, the PC version offered higher resolution, sharper textures and smoother framerates than either console release, which showed mainly in the detail of characters' faces during dialogue.

In terms of content, the PC release doesn't differ from the Xbox or PS2 versions in any way - no scenes or decisions were added or removed, the ending of the story remains the same regardless of platform, and the same is true of all the characters the player plays as throughout the game. The difference thus lies purely in how comfortably the game can be controlled - and here, paradoxically, the PC version didn't gain an advantage over the consoles, because even on a computer you achieve the best control experience with a gamepad in hand, not with keyboard and mouse, even though the developers didn't outright force this on the PC version and the game does allow you to finish it from start to end without one.

Why play it: The same experience content-wise as on the consoles, just with the paradox that even on PC the most comfortable controls come from a gamepad in hand rather than keyboard and mouse.