F.E.A.R.
October 25,2005 - F.E.A.R. could be described as the game that took elements from John Woo’s antics on the big screen, scenes from the macabre Ring and bullet time from The Matrix and fused it together with unerring procession to create a game that manages to progress the FPS genre in one way or another.

For instance, F.E.A.R. is a shooter that genuinely tries to spook you. We’ve experienced uneasy nights with the Silent Hill titles among others, but few shooters try and turn your pants a shade of brown.

F.E.A.R. tries.

Video Review

We conquer fear in our very first Amped IGO video review

And it’s not entirely unsuccessful. Put it this way: F.E.A.R. is a game steeped in an oppressive, clingy atmosphere. You’ll traverse through locations that are bathed in…. well, darkness. It’s not as dark as Doom 3 was and Monolith is not as keen to scare you, either. The presence of Alma (the spooky, scary girl) lends a supernatural flavor to proceedings. Without Alma’s presence and the supernatural undertone you wouldn’t have F.E.A.R., frankly.

You see, the player assumes the role of one of the F.E.A.R. elite, trained to deal with paranormal situations. So when military official Paxton Fettel loses his grip on reality and takes control of a squad of cloned super-soldiers, the F.E.A.R. team is sent in to deal with the situation. But cue Alma, who has a penchant of playing with soldier’s minds and killing them by way of mental thought. And she has a hold on Fettel, too.

The situation goes pretty haywire. But that’s a good thing. F.E.A.R. is fuelled by explosive, kinetic energy and as you jump into the fray and battle the cloned soldiers you, the player, will likely feel a desire to spray lead into every conceivable crevice. The thing is, these soldiers have a mind of their own. To say F.E.A.R. has the best enemy AI ever is no exaggeration. They’re smart and tenacious and terrifically bloodthirsty. They’re terrifically terrific too. Not are only are the foes good shots, but they make use of the environment. They’ll hide behind sofas, dive under tables and take shots at you from every angle. Get too close and a soldier will look to kick you back or land the butt of his gun against your head. But the melee attacks extend across to the player too. You can perform sliding kicks and flying kicks, and although difficult to execute, these both prove instant takedowns. It’s strange that a kick could kill a soldier who’s adorned in heavy armor, and a soldier that can withstand the rocketing projectiles emanating from your assortment of weapons though.

Ah yes, the weapons. F.E.A.R. only affords you the option of carrying three at any one time, along with a collection of grenades. It certainly does lend the experience a tactical edge and the guns themselves are agreeably diversified. You have your pistols, your machine guns, the weapons with the scope and so forth. Disappointingly, the last weapon you encounter in the singleplayer campaign is less powerful than you’d perhaps expect, and the “Penetrator” is rather less penetrative than the name suggests. But firing these things is fun, and it’s even more enjoyable when a bullet pounds into the chest of a grunt and sends him backwards with stunning élan. Thank the shotgun for these moments. It’s ace.

But better than the shotgun still is the ability to enter a heightened state of awareness. In other words, “bullet time”. The game slows down and is accompanied by fantastic warping effects. Watching F.E.A.R. during one of these moments is both awe-inspiring and exhilarating. And although “bullet time” can make some sections in the game easier, it’s by no means essential. If you wish to make things more difficult, simply don’t rely on the feature, although you’ll be missing out on all the graphical trickery that, as aforementioned, accompanies the heightened awareness.

Heightened awareness? Bollocks. It’s merely a scapegoat for introducing a gimmick that’s both beautiful and a frustration alleviator. It also adds some welcome depth to the F.E.A.R. experience, because for all the game’s brilliance, F.E.A.R. is missing ounces of variety.

Ok, so you’ll travel to different environments, but they all fall into the same overarching category. You have your warehouses, underground facilities and so forth. Everything is dimly lit and your weapons only have a limited flashlight life attached to them. This is one particular oddity that is not only annoying, but smacks of FPS convention. And why doesn’t your marine have a name? And why does Monolith spend so little time on character development? These annoying FPS quirks are largely why F.E.A.R. isn’t a truly “new” shooter and why it isn’t a game we can safely say takes the genre into the 21st century.

You’ll also spend much of the game bereft of help, which is a huge shame. It does mean you’re more likely to get scared, but some of the best moments in Half-Life 2 came when you were fighting alongside a squad of teammates. F.E.A.R.’s action is so bloodcurdlingly good that it cries out for two groups of soldiers against one another in one situation. 

But for this to happen, Monolith would probably have had to make the areas in F.E.A.R. rather more expansive. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing. At all. Areas are tightly confined to a point of claustrophobia. For the first five hours, things are fine. You just wish that after that point, Monolith stood up and said, “now for something different boys!” F.E.A.R. suffers for a lack of variety and for the fact that so much of the action is the same. It’s good; in fact, it’s brilliant, but many shootouts seem recycled to the point of disappointment. You’ll yearn for something new.

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