FEAR Review

While the consoles are know for the survival horror genre, the PC was really where it all began. Doom was full out action that was also a little scary. Alone in the Dark was the game where you had the horror with a lot less enemies and weapons. System Shock and Half Life then took what was done previously to a whole different level. FEAR is a game that takes the classic FPS formula and tries to add another level of scare into the mix. It combines the "make-you-jump" scares with the psychological scares. Unfortunately, with a name like FEAR, you'd think it would be scarier.

FEAR stands for First Encounter Assault Recon. You are the new "point man" for the FEAR team which is a special group in the US government that deals with the paranormal. The main target throughout the game is Paxton Fettel, a telepath who controls a battalion of Replica soldiers that are genetic clones. Later on, you will learn the true enemy who is pulling the strings of the puppeteer that's controlling the other puppets.

As a FPS, FEAR takes bits and pieces of gameplay from other FPS games. These include a health meter that starts at 100 and can go even higher throughout the game. There is combat armor that will suppress the amount of damage you receive. Then there's the slow-mo button that's just like the "bullet time" of Max Payne. When using the slow-mo, the action will slow down to a crawl giving you an advantage of acting faster than the enemies. Since most enemies are patrolling or conferring with one another, they will take a moment to react to your presence before they will start shooting give you a window of time that you can take advantage of. The weapons in FEAR are limited to one gun for each type of gun such as handgun, SMG, shotgun, and assault rifle. This lets you having to choose between several weapons that act almost the same way. One downside to the gameplay is that the enemies have much more tactics at their disposable compared to you. They can do suppressive fire while taking cover, hell they can even knock down objects so they can use it as cover. Then there's you that has to hope that you're truly covered by a wall or desk even though it seems you're never fully covered.

Considering the age of the game, the graphics are pretty good. While some areas have the same bland textures, there are still parts that look great for the time the game was released. Where I see the most signs of the graphics power is the slow-mo sequences. When everything is slowed down, you can see that small details like bullet trails, bursts from the gun, and even the eyes of the enemies. Surprisingly, where it struggles graphically, is in more basic areas like climbing up and down a ladder that seemingly lag a bit.

For the audio, the developers did a great job of using the musical score to add to the tension. In particular, you'll have an area where gun turrets drop down from the ceiling, and right on cue, this music changes for a more dramatic effect. There's also a lighter side in which your character is in an elevator, and has to fend off enemies on each floor since someone pressed all the buttons in the elevator. During this sequence, the elevator Muzak is turned up leaving you to kill a squad of enemies while jamming out to elevator music. Voice acting just doesn't do anything special for me. You have traditional voices reading the script without any extra dramatic effect added. I do love that the script, sometimes, kind of reflect the thoughts the player would think at that moment such as commenting on how one particular female is acting like a bit of a bitch. Another favorite of mine is the death screams of enemies. They cry out a blood curdling yell that's sounds even more horrifying, and satisfying, since it's done over a radio frequency giving that garbled, staticy sound to it.

After beating the game, there's not much of a reason to play through the campaign again. There is online multiplayer on all versions which is your standard FPS multiplayer. You have your deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF and so on. Once again, FEAR still works just like every other FPS out there, nothing to really set it apart.

Released on multiple systems, the first version of the game was the PC. Still considered the best version, it has the best graphics, uses mouse/keyboard, and offers a lot of user created content. The 360 version came next which did a good job with the graphics and online. On the other hand, the PS3 version came out and it was evident that the porting to the PS3 was just not as good.

There's a concept here that seems to be a bit muddled. The game plays a lot like other military FPS games although it's a little light on the realism. That bring us to the horror but there's just not much there. Yeah, there are some sequences that make you jump or have a little creepiness, but definitely not to the extent of a Fatal Frame or Silent Hill. Hell the game does blatant ripoffs of Japanese horror movies like Ringu and Ju-On, but still the scare factor is minimal. What we're left with is a standard FPS game that has a mix of "bullet time" and is a little scary. I'd like to the think the developers wanted to do more than that but the game doesn't show it.

- O.G.

article id: 235 | poster: OG