Indigo Prophecy is an adventure title like none other. A murder mystery at heart, you will not only play the cops looking for the killer -- but also the killer trying to get the cops off your back while you try to find out what really happened.

Ever since I first played the Indigo Prophecy demo, I was amazed by the game's highly detailed characters and environments. Each location, person and situation has both the look and feel of something you would see on the big screen. One of the graphical elements that helps to pull this cinematic feel off is the real-time split screen action that happens. The screen will split into several panels (much like a comic strip) so you can watch several different events at the same time. You first get a glimpse of this great effect when Lucas, your main character and the killer, is trying to hide evidence of the murder in a diner bathroom, and a cop at the counter decides he's had too much coffee. Time and time again you will have to keep an eye on multiple scenes in order to keep from taking too much time or getting caught. These effects are also used to highlight certain aspects of the main panel, like a coffee cup or something under the table.

The game's musical and vocal works also goes a long way in selling the movie-like feel. Even when interviewing witnesses or talking to other characters, Indigo Prophecy's conversations are smooth; this is quite a feat, considering most adventure games have choppy and blocky conversation segments. The theatrical music picks up and dies down at just the right points, making you either tense up or relax as you find clues or solve parts of the overall mystery. Both in sight and sound, Indigo Prophecy's attempt to make a game feel like an interactive movie comes off loud and clear.

Indigo Prophecy is all about the choices. Pretty much everything you do will affect how characters will act (and consequently how scenes will play out) later in the game. Simple choices like washing the blood off your hands will leave evidence in the sink, but allow you to make a cleaner getaway (no pun intended).

But I guess I should explain the situation some before I get too ahead of myself. Indigo Prophecy follows two sides of the same story. One side follows Lucas Kane - a person who, for some reason unbeknownst even to him, has just murdered a total stranger in a diner bathroom. The other side of the coin follows Carla Valenti and her partner, Tyler Mils, who are looking for the murderer (Lucas).

From the first instant you gain control in this game, you are presented with choices. You start off as Lucas, standing over the stranger's body with blood on your hands. You know you need to leave the diner, especially since there is a cop sipping coffee at the counter and he is bound to need to relieve himself eventually. So what kind of choices do you have? Do you hide the body? Clean the blood off the floor? Clean the blood off your hands? Hide the murder weapon? These are just a few of the choices that can affect what the investigators (Carla and Tyler) may or may not find later. And those are just the choices in the one room -- you haven't even left the diner yet.

As I said, at its heart Indigo Prophecy is a murder mystery, but you are both the murderer and the cop. Because of this, you might hide evidence (or try to) or later find evidence that you didn't even think you were leaving behind in the first place. This makes the game an unusual cat-and-mouse situation where you are both the hunter and the hunted. Of course, both sets of characters are trying to find out what is really going on. Lucas is just the only one of the three that knows something unusual is going on.

One of the many interesting aspects of Indigo Prophecy is that many of the events take place at the same time. For instance, while Lucas goes to meet with his brother early in the game, Carla and Tyler will be at the police station. When these simultaneous events happen, you will be given the choice of which character to play as first. When these choices appear, which character you play as first doesn't affect how the other character reacts at that time -- but it may and will change how things will play out later. Basically, if in the above example you choose to play as Lucas first and you succeed in convincing your brother to side with you, it won't affect what Carla does in the same scene, but it might have a bearing on what Marcus (the brother) does later.

On top of everything else -- you also have to be mindful of your characters' mental health. As your characters find clues (or hide them if you're Lucas), their mental health will increase because they will get less anxious. But if Lucas hears about the murders or remembers something tragic about his past, he will start to get depressed. Likewise, if Carla or Tyler get tired or have a fight with another character. Even actions like drinking alcohol will affect the characters' mental health. Typically, the first swig (if it isn't taken with meds) will increase his/her health -- while each subsequent mouthful will drop them closer to depression.

Indigo Prophecy has you making progress at a steady pace. You shouldn't have a lot of trouble finding/hiding clues and because you are working both sides of the fence, (hiding from the cops and looking for the killer), the worse you do in one area can make the other area easier. For example -- if you forgot to hide the knife when Lucas murders the stranger, it is very easy to find it when you control Carla or Tyler. Similarly, if you (again as Lucas) decide to sit down and talk to the waitress when you should be leaving the restaurant, it will be easier for her to compile a sketch of you when she is downtown.

The real tough parts are when you have to navigate conversations quickly or take part in action sequences that can leave you feeling like you just went ten rounds in a Wario Ware game. There are several times when I had to use a couple of lives in order to get past quick-paced action sequences like fighting (yes there are a couple of fights) -- but all-in-all the game has a fairly steady pace to it and as long as you keep your eyes and mind open, it shouldn't pose too much of a problem.

Indigo Prophecy's controls make it a great candidate for any console (as well as the PC). Instead of using the standard mouse-like interface that most adventure titles sport, when you approach an item of interest, you move your Right Analog stick in a pattern described on the top of the screen. In other adventure titles that have made it away from the PC, one stick would move your character while the other one controlled a cursor. Here you simply approach the faucet, move your right stick in the direction shown in the letterbox are of the screen and there ya go, you're washing your hands.

Even though this gets rid of the dreaded pixel-hunting, it does require that you stand in exactly the right place, facing the right direction. This wasn't a problem most of the time, though. There were only a few instances when I had to keep backing up and nudging my character forward for the list of choices to appear.

Other control scheme points-of-interest include the Action Sequences. When it comes time to really work for your plot-progression, you have to either rapidly alternate tapping two buttons (L1 and R1) or match the pattern shown in a Simon-like fashion. These go a long way to breaking up your standard clue-hunting adventure and also gets your blood pumping just when you get to a point when you think you can relax.

If you are an adventure gamer, then you have to get this title. Indigo Prophecy not only provides you with lots of thought-provoking situations, but its hunter/hunted dichotomy is something that will have you basically be playing against yourself, a rare treat in any game, much less a problem solver. If you aren't into the adventure scene, you might want to give this game a rent anyway; if for no other reason, the story, characters and sheer freedom of choice should draw you in pretty easily.