F.E.A.R.

awesome graphics, just awesome for the time. the amount of care and dedication to the lighting and "feel" of the game is unmatched even by 2016 games (most games now are trash) the combat is fucking excellent and you can tell a lot of time went in to making this game feel right. JUMP.KICKS.FOR.DAYS. sick game, not very scary though, but yeah its about the FPS action

8/10

FEAR is a great FPS, but a not so much sucessful horror game.

The story is not that interesting to be honest, it basically follows the same tired cliche plot of child who suffered experimentation and turned on its captors, and eventually caused the doom of the entire city. There is really not much to chew on here, except that you are being hunted by a disturbed child throughout the game. The child haunting you is one of the biggest flaws of the game. Despite being frighting and scary, its always an illusion, and as soon as you realize that she poses no threat to the player the illusion of horror is a bit broken.

But to be fair this game is not really praised for the horror atmosphere, its the gunplay that brings all the boys to this yard. And yes the combat gameplay in FEAR is excellent. You have a small range of weapons, but they are all excellent to use. They feel impactful, and together with the slow motion power your character can use, they can create some really incredible action and gorey moments. There are not many enemy types in the game, but they feature one of the most developed AI system in a game. They comunicate with each other, flank you, and are more coordinate than the enemy team in an average counter strike game. They really make a formidable oponent. Unfortunatly the difficulty is a bit all over the place, with some enemies being bullet sponges which are annoying, as well as some weapons that can take you down in one shot.

The level design is a bit of a let down in this game. Considering the horror atmosphere you would hope for more varied and atmospheric environments, but unfortunatly most of the game is spent inside the same copy and pasted grey offices. Makes the game really monotonous at times, but fortunatly the gameplay never really gets old.

Overal its a very solid shooter, but because of its issues when it comes to the level design and the way it handles horror i dont think its one of the GOAT like so many claim it to be.

I don't know how long it took me to beat this game, I think about 10h with the bonus mission and the Instant action missions.

I actually kinda liked this game, it was pretty repetitive but had also a nice atmosphere, and sometimes even jump scared me (which I liked) I think this game is Inspired by Half-life because it felt like a Half-life without aliens and more horror, I also liked the long missions of the game instead of changing the location every mission you stay there for a while.

now I can't talk too much about the story (which I will talk about why that is the case), but I think it's a fine story nothing too deep or special, the only thing that bothered me, was the game tries to make a logical explanation every time I have to go in solo but it fails miserably and it just makes no sense, like the Helicopter crash in one of the last missions both teammates except you ofc can't help you anymore and you have to do everything solo again, it's like they don't want to work.

So now let me talk about the Bad things, mostly because of the horrible PlayStation 3 port. The game runs with about 10-25 fps and that is so bad, the games stereo was glitched for me, everything that was left I heard right and the other way around (couldn't find anything on the internet about this bug), The whole game tries to show you the plot through phone messages or com talk but bcs of some reason that dialogue is super quiet, every dialogue you have with a person front to front is fine, only the messages are so bad that I couldn't grasp the Story efficiently ( had to read the plot at the end to get what I was playing, it would've been fine if the game had subtitles btw, but it doesn't), now as i stated idk if this is also the case for the other versions.

But I did like the Gunplay the different weapons, and the Slowmo mode is also pretty neat, I especially liked it while fighting against those invisible guys. The game's enemy ai is also awesome and hearing them talk to each other was great, this game has ai that is better than some games from this decade lmao. Water reflections were crazy good, great physics, generally speaking, the game is pretty for 2005, but it was also sometimes pretty lazy, in the Second mission, while I was in the big building from the corporation, I could see outside the end of the street where the skybox began, it looked pretty harsh (but the Skybox and the atmosphere was point on in that mission), but that could also be the limitations of the hardware or it being a 2005 game.

Now the ps3 came with a bonus Mission which was alright just a bit of backstory for the 2nd mission but nothing too special. Also, the instant action missions were pretty cool, tho I didn't like the first one.

All in all great game hindered by an awful port, I would like to play the game on PC in the future, I also saw that this game is expensive for Ps3, saw physical copies for 20-30€ and that's not worth the 20fps spectacle, get a 2€ key on PC and you good.

This game is incredible from head to toe. The levels are inventive, albeit some might be a little complicated. I played it on the Xbox 360 years ago, and I recently played it again. Without giving too much away, the plot is incredibly well-developed and terrifying if you allow yourself to be sucked into the atmosphere. Now I must add that if you are using Windows 10, there is a bug where the game will entirely stop functioning on the PC version. This can be fixed by going to the game's files and selecting properties. Before pressing agree, you must adjust the version to Windows XP version 3. Give it a try, you won't regret

July 29, 2019

While the combat and horror elements are well done, and F.E.A.R's graphics still kinda hold up, unfortunately I can't recommend it. The pace of the game, the variety of its levels and the way it tells its story wasn't great in 2005 and certainly isn't great now.
I like a lot of the game's design decisions and the its overall aesthetic, but I really wish it was more well directed and varied.

My favorite type of FPS games are gory, faster paced shooters but linear ones with fantastic feeling combat, and awesome graphics. I am always on the hunt for games with those criteria so I can listen to a podcast and blow stuff up. That is why despite its issues, I have played Wolfenstein II more than I really should. The objectively better game that fits this mold to a tee, is FEAR. Released in 2005 and developed by one of the most versatile studios around, Monolith Productions, FEAR is considered by FPS fans to be one of the last of the classic shooters before Call of Duty 4, despite its high quality, created the spunkgargleweewee, modern military, jingoistic shooter that stagnated the genre until Doom 2016 shook it back to life. FEAR combines spooky moments, an interesting story, and some of the best feeling combat and AI ever created for an FPS to make one of the most memorable and notable games in the lineage of classic shooters, and is a must play for any fan of the genre who wants visceral combat.

The story in FEAR is delivered pretty well and is interesting. You play as the Point Man, a member of the First Encounter Assault Recon team, or FEAR for short. The Point Man is one badass dude with reflexes that are off the charts. You are sent on a mission to find one Paxton Fettel, a cannibalistic psycho who commands an army of psychic super soldiers out to kill people. With this wacky concept in mind, it is up to the Point Man to find out why Paxton is eating up people, who is this creepy little girl walking about with him, and why is the Armacham Corporation involved in this? The story is told rather well with mostly telephone messages, and emails on Alienware laptops found around the levels providing the exposition. The only character that seems like they care about you is oddly enough the leader of the FEAR team, with most of the other characters being not as interesting as Paxton Fettel. Paxton and The creepy little girl in the game have tragic back stories that are straight out of Resident Evil but makes them very compelling characters that you unfortunately don't directly interact with. The story is mostly there to get you from place to place and have a motivation to shoot bad guys, and for a mostly in the background 2000s FPS story, it is pretty good.

The gameplay is where FEAR shines. This is one of the most fun and intense FPS games ever created. You run and gun throughout office complexes, storage rooms and city rooftops against some of the most intelligent enemies ever put in an FPS. The enemies through the power of GOAP AI flank you, communicate with each other, jump through windows, knock over objects for cover and intelligently navigate through the environment making them really fun enemies to fight. They never do the same thing twice, so every encounter is fun, and white knuckled. They even know where you are if you turn your flashlight on, and check to find out where the light is coming from. That is smart. Disposing of these enemies with FEAR's weapons is a masterclass in satisfying FPS combat. Enemies do back flips after pumping them full of lead, explode into gibs after being blown up, and have their heads fly through the air on head shots from the shotgun. The weapons all feel satisfying not just because of some of their sounds, or the animations, but because of the enemy response to damage which is communicated to you very clearly with enemies flinching, getting covered in blood, and having their limbs fly off after receiving tons of damage. It sounds morbid, but the gore in FEAR is important to the weapon feel. The weapon roster is your typical 2000s FPS fare but some of the weapons are interesting. You can dual wield pistols, which you will most likely not do after getting the rest of the weapons. There is an SMG that is basically a full auto pistol. An Assault Rifle that serves as the second most used weapon in the game. A rocket launcher, and the 2000s FPS "wacky weapons", like the Penetrator gun that shoots iron rods, and the particle gun that turns enemies in the skeletons in one shot. The final gun in the game is the glorious shotgun. The FEAR shotgun cemented itself as one of the most legendary shotguns in a game ever, up there with the super shotgun from Doom, and the shotgun from Resident Evil 4. It has awesome range for a shotgun, has wicked damage, and at point blank range, causes enemies to explode into gibs, or do a back flip through the air with a cloud of blood flying out of them. It is one awesome shotgun, and the weapon you will use the most in your arsenal. The throwable weapons are grenades that explode on contact, land mines and a remote detonation bomb that deal a ton of damage, and can give enemies the slip. All these weapons are fun to use and some are useful in their own ways with no weapon feeling redundant, or difficult to find a use for.The level design is really good too. Yeah the environments aren't very colorful or the most interesting places in the world, but FEAR's combat arenas are full of cover and interesting enemy placement making it always fun to fight. The game is not perfect though. The bullet spongy enemies are not fun to fight. There are some heavy type enemies that takes so many shots of the particle gun to take down that they slow the game down to a crawl. You also have a 3 weapon limit which for a game with as many awesome weapons as these, is really disappointing. I can see that having every weapon though could make the combat too easy, but still, having every weapon in your arsenal could create some interesting fights later in the game. The final criticism I have is the horror sections, the game is called FEAR after all. Sometimes, the game will have creepy sections with long hallways and will try to scare you with blood soaked hallways, ghosts, shadows and skeletons. It may scare people who play the game for the first time, but I never thought FEAR was the scariest game ever. The horror in FEAR is rather predictable and sometimes, a bit silly. Granted some of the jumpscares later in the game are pretty good, and the horror would get way better in the expansion, FEAR Extraction Point. Overall, FEAR is a masterclass in FPS combat and is a title that fast paced shooters should aspire to be like.

As far as presentation goes, FEAR holds up very well. Developed on the Lithtech Extended Engine, FEAR used to be the Crysis of its day. This used to benchmark top tier gaming PCs, but now you can run FEAR on modern hardware like a breeze. However, if you run Logitech peripherals like my mouse, you will need to install a fan patch, which is really bizarre. Some animations also break if you let the frame rate skyrocket so I recommend also turning on Vsync so said animations don't get messed up. The graphics hold up pretty well to me. Yeah, there is no ambient occlusion, or physically based lighting in this title, but it has a 2000s PC game aesthetic that I find really charming. FEAR looks very similar to a game like Doom 3, lots of normal mapped textures, crisp stencil shadows, and blocky, low poly models. The sharp stencil shadows always looked more interesting to me than soft shadows you find in games nowadays, and the soft shadows in the game's settings really look quite dreadful anyways. Monolith really wanted to showcase the dynamic lighting in this game and it still impresses today. The thing that puts FEAR over the edge though is its attention to detail when in combat. When shooting a wall, massive parallax occlusion mapped bullet holes spawn from gun fire, dust flies in the air as enemies rain suppressing fire on you, shooting paper spreads it around in all directions, sparks, fire and tracer effects are seen everywhere, and explosions even distort your view making it even more powerful looking. FEAR's visual aesthetic is heavily inspired by films like The Matrix, and Hard Boiled, which are two films that appeal to the action movie side of me, and being able to fight in spaces that are as chaotic as those movies is so much fun. The most dated aspect of FEAR's graphics are the animations. The lip syncing, and weapon animations don't really hold up today. The weapon animations are a bit floaty looking, especially the reload animations, where most of the time, Point Man just lowers his weapon and then pops it up again, no loading shells or dropping magazines here. The lip syncing, compared to games that came out before like Half Life 2, also don't hold up that well. The mouths don't match up with the dialogue most of the time, and NPC animations as a whole are more floaty compared to other games that would come out later, and even some before like Half Life 2 again. The sound design is a mixed bag. The ambient sounds are really good creating atmosphere in the desolate cities, and office complexes you will be fighting in. The voice acting for 2005 is pretty good too. A character by the name of Mr Mapes' voice actor really gets his Dennis Nedry on making him one annoying sonofagun. The leader of the FEAR team telling you what to do sounds authoritative and experienced, and the voice actor for Paxton Fettel is really creepy as well. I especially love the soldier voice acting, where they sound smart and coordinated, ready to beat you up. They almost sound like updated Half Life 1 soldiers with the radio static effect on their voices. The music by one Nathan Grigg is really great. It's an orchestral score with some arabic sounding singing over the action some times, which is an interesting musical choice for this score. The action music sounds like an action picture from the 90s complete with orchestral swells, and stings for the horror events, and there are even some "hi jinks music" that appears whenever Mr Mapes shows up to screw you over. While there aren't very many memorable melodies or stand out tracks, the score fits the aesthetic of the game very well. My only gripes with the sound design is some of the weapon sounds, and the audio mixing. For as much as I praise the combat in this game, some of the weapons sound really weak. The assault rifle is the main culprit here with one underwhelming firing sound effect. It doesn't really sound like a powerful rifle, and more like someone dropping books on the floor. The SMG also sounds more underwhelming than it should. However, that is all made up by the sound of this shotgun. The Shotgun sound, especially in slow motion sounds like God slamming his Rolls Royce car door shut after driving home from a day of creating the Earth and all its creatures. It's incredible and makes it one of the best sounding and feeling shotguns in FPS history. The pistols and the Penetrator sound powerful too. The audio mixing on the other hand is a bit wonky. Moving objects around is really loud, and if buckets or weapons fall to the ground, they sound really loud as well. Not alot of people pointed out that some sounds in this game are way too loud which is interesting. Overall, the presentation in FEAR mostly holds up today. Its emblematic of an era in PC gaming, that is missed by some people, and I think FEAR has a charm to it that makes if appealing to me.

In conclusion, FEAR combines spooky moments, an interesting story, and some of the best feeling combat and AI ever created for an FPS to make one of the most memorable and notable games in the lineage of classic shooters, and is a must play for any fan of the genre who wants visceral combat. One of my favorite games of all time, FEAR is FPS royalty and it deserves its spot in the hallowed halls of FPS legends like Half Life 1 and 2, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Quake. It is only now that developers in the indie FPS scene are creating games that are inspired by FEAR like Severed Steel, and the upcoming Trepang2, and Selaco, making FEAR get the respect that it deserved years ago. I hope one day, Monolith after working on the Middle Earth games and Wonder Woman can finally return to the FEAR universe to bring back a gory, faster paced shooter, with linear levels, fantastic feeling combat, and awesome graphics. We need more of those games in the AAA space right now.