Indigo Prophecy Will Break Your Fingers
I just want you to know that I suffered to write this review. Honest to god suffered. That's because Indigo prophecy is truly painful to play, in a physical sense. Why? Because they took what was an incredible game and destroyed it with hellish button mashing guaranteed to give you RSI.
Some people say that if you don't finish a game you shouldn't review it, but I reckon people should know what they're in for before they go and read the yippy skippy reviews written by people more dexterous than your average orangutan.
Let me sort of post-preface this by saying that Indigo Prophecy is, in many ways, one of the best games I've played in a long time. In many other ways however, it's nigh broken, and fans can scream at me all they want when I say that, but I maintain the 'broken' aspects of the game were the only thing stopping this from becoming an instant classic.
The Good News
Indigo Prophecy is a thriller in every sense of the word (assuming there is more than one sense of the word.) There's ritual murder, cops with personal problems and your average I.T guy possessed by Mayan spirits. Game play, is, for the most part, truly engaging and you get a real sense of being an accidental murderer trying to understand why you just carved some guy's heart out in a diner bathroom.
Also adding to the glory of Indigo Prophecy is the fact that you play not one, but three characters. You play Mr. McOopsIKilledAGuy, and the cops trying to catch him, Miss OhgodIamsoedgyandoverwrought and Mr Hipyettokenguyofnegrodescent. The experience of trying to catch yourself is one of sheer joy, the kind of joy one can only properly experience when playing with oneself.
The Bad News
Indigo Prophecy probably would have been one of the biggest games of the year, if the developers hadn't decided that one's ability to mash buttons should be the deciding factor in whether or not you progress through the game. There are two challenges that get in the way of simply working your way through the story, what they call 'PAR' Physical Action Re-something, which involves pressing buttons in unison with flashing lights on the screen. That's challenging, but not so challenging that you can't work your way through it eventually.
The button mashing, however, comes into its own when you are expected to hit the left and right movement buttons as fast as possible in alternate fashion during often wildly unnecessary physical challenges. This becomes painful when you have to do it for more than a minute at a time and becomes outright enraging when you fail after 50 solid seconds of thumping your keyboard or game pad as hard as you can.
A Conclusion Of Sorts
Though plenty of people have lamented this system, many have gone on to finish the game. I haven't yet, and I'll probably mash my way through to the middle of the earth before they let me out of the hellish gym of doom. This isn't really indicative of your potential experience however, the only real conclusion to draw here may be that I suck at button mashing. Still, if you also suck at button mashing, you might also want to give Indigo Prophecy a miss. Why? Because the knowledge that more of that tantalizing story is still out there, beyond your reach as you desperately try to make a cop lift weights may very well be too much.
