F.E.A.R. (PC) Review
F.E.A.R. (and I'm not going to type all those periods again) is getting to be a bit of an old game at the time of this writing, nearly four years after its release. I remember thinking when it first came out that it didn't sound all that interesting to me. The sequel, which recently was released, did catch my eye, so I thought it would be appropriate to play the original and hope that it would give me an idea of what was going on when I loaded up the sequel. And that leads us to this review.
FEAR feels a lot like playing Shogo, which shouldn't be a surprise considering they share developers. FEAR is a first person shooter that imports the tropes of recent Japanese horror movies, producing a sort of FPS-Survival Horror hybrid. It succeeds as a shooter, but generally falls flat as a horror experience.
Like most modern shooters, the controls handle well and are generally intuitive. They're also highly configurable, an option I noticed only after my fingers had gotten used to the default layout. My only gripe with the controls is that too often I found myself hitting G (which throws a grenade) instead of F (to interact with an object), or hitting Z (using a med kit) instead of X (toggle my flashlight on and off). Maybe that's not a problem for anyone else, but I wish I'd changed the controls to make that a non-issue before I had gotten used to the default controls. Only being able to carry three weapons at a time is also a bit of a downer, though I can understand from balance reasons why the limit exists. I would have preferred a system more in-line with Crysis where you can carry two main weapons, your pistol sidearm, and then a heavy weapon. Ultimately this is just a minor nitpick because guns come and go so often in FEAR that what you drop in one fight is likely going to be found just one or two firefights down the line.
The enemies are smart, very smart, or at least seem to be. They use smart tactics, rushing at the player when they have numerical superiority or using grenades to flush the player out of cover. They try actively to get behind the player and generally make a nuisance of themselves. The foot soldiers are great fun to fight against. Later in the game, robots and flying robots appear. These are much more dangerous than the normal enemies, and also are generally less fun to fight against, appearing in groups too small to use any interesting tactics the fights devolve into contests of who has more really big guns. Later on ghost-like enemies appear and attack as well, though they're more of an annoyance than a threat except in very large numbers.
The situation that pits you against these foes is somewhat cliché. A top secret military research project goes crazy and starts killing everyone. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the research project was a crazy psychic with an army of clone soldiers that mentally controls. This is bad. So the government sends in FEAR, a small strike team dedicated to dealing with paranormal threats. You, the player, are the newest FEAR member. What a way to start your career.
As you go in to start investigating, the player character starts tripping out and hallucinating. Visions of hospital rooms, a man with a moustache, a little girl, and the crazy cannibal psychic you're supposed to be shooting flit across the screen in brutal succession. As the game wears on you can discover clues by listening to phone messages and searching laptops. To an extent the game tries to copy the story telling techniques of the venerable System Shock games, fleshing out back story as needed as the game progresses through recordings left by the people involved. This is always a nice change of pace from the more sedate Resident Evil plot advancement technique of stopping everything and forcing the player to read a couple paragraphs of text.
Shooting is a joy in the game, but it's interrupted frequently for the horror part of the game. Sometimes it's just a grotesque image appearing on the screen for a moment, other times the player is transported to an alternate world of fire and ghosts, other times the geometry changes around the player, or drops the player into a pool of blood, and so on. It's shocking the first few times, but the novelty wears off quickly. Far more effective in being creepy are the people that appear for a few moments then fade away, or the (not so) random sightings of the creepy little girl in an area. Maybe I'm jaded and knew too well what to expect from watching the Japanese horror movies that the game steals its tropes from, but except for a few moments the scares were mostly predictable. Still, the game tries pretty hard on the scare factor, and it's mostly well done. I didn't find myself rolling my eyes and wanting the scary scenes to be finished, even at the end of the game, at least.
The various characters you meet throughout the game lack the charm to really make it feel emotional when some of them inevitably die or meet some other bad end. The phone messages and radio chatter don't convey enough character and emotion to make the cast seem like more than cardboard cutouts. This is one of the few points where the developers missed the mark. Either better writing, or better voice actors, would have really helped. The one character that does have enough personality to be interesting is the villain you chase through the game, which helps to keep interest in the game going.
The other place that the developers miss the mark is in the environments. FEAR is full of offices and concrete walled crawlspaces and, it felt like, little else. Environments often have two ways through them, but they lead inevitably to the same place. Paths often curl about and double back on themselves, which actually helps prevent backtracking, since when they do loop around, it's because you've hit a switch and opened a door, and the path then leads you back to that naturally via an alternate route instead of expecting the player to hoof it back over a path that's been traversed already. That's not always the case, and the few times where the game doesn't naturally provide a way back to the unlocked door can be a bit confusing. It's also not always immediately clear where to go, despite the game being very linear in the paths. The level design is therefore kind of mediocre and repetitive.
Now for a quick scoring summary for those of you keeping track of the numbers:
Gameplay: 8
Good, tight controls. Mostly intuitive layout on the keyboard. Enemies are well balanced, and there's a great selection of firearms. Some frustration with the robotic enemies exists, though. And there's also slo-mo that can be toggled on and off, but that's sort of an overdone feature in many shooters these days and barely rates this mention of it.
Graphics: 8
Even compared to its contemporaries, FEAR isn't that good looking of a game. It pulls off the Japanese-inspired horror effects pretty well.
Sound: 8
Sound effects are crisp and appropriate. The ambient music fits the game perfectly. The voice acting is merely adequate.
Replay: 3
I don't think there's much reason to replay FEAR. Not with two expansion packs and a sequel to give similar gameplay without having to go through the same boring levels again. It might be worth playing through again and finding all of the phone messages and such to decipher more of the story, but I have a feeling that won't be enough to get me to replay it.
Other: N/A
Sadly I haven't been able to give multiplayer a try, so this review is based entirely on the single player experience.
Overall: 8
A very good shooter in most respects. It tries for a different ambience than most of its genre does, and pulls the horror effects off with mixed success. It's a pretty unique experience, and considering that the price of the game is down to ten bucks at places like Best Buy there's really not much excuse in not picking it up and giving it a try.
FEAR feels a lot like playing Shogo, which shouldn't be a surprise considering they share developers. FEAR is a first person shooter that imports the tropes of recent Japanese horror movies, producing a sort of FPS-Survival Horror hybrid. It succeeds as a shooter, but generally falls flat as a horror experience.
Like most modern shooters, the controls handle well and are generally intuitive. They're also highly configurable, an option I noticed only after my fingers had gotten used to the default layout. My only gripe with the controls is that too often I found myself hitting G (which throws a grenade) instead of F (to interact with an object), or hitting Z (using a med kit) instead of X (toggle my flashlight on and off). Maybe that's not a problem for anyone else, but I wish I'd changed the controls to make that a non-issue before I had gotten used to the default controls. Only being able to carry three weapons at a time is also a bit of a downer, though I can understand from balance reasons why the limit exists. I would have preferred a system more in-line with Crysis where you can carry two main weapons, your pistol sidearm, and then a heavy weapon. Ultimately this is just a minor nitpick because guns come and go so often in FEAR that what you drop in one fight is likely going to be found just one or two firefights down the line.
The enemies are smart, very smart, or at least seem to be. They use smart tactics, rushing at the player when they have numerical superiority or using grenades to flush the player out of cover. They try actively to get behind the player and generally make a nuisance of themselves. The foot soldiers are great fun to fight against. Later in the game, robots and flying robots appear. These are much more dangerous than the normal enemies, and also are generally less fun to fight against, appearing in groups too small to use any interesting tactics the fights devolve into contests of who has more really big guns. Later on ghost-like enemies appear and attack as well, though they're more of an annoyance than a threat except in very large numbers.
The situation that pits you against these foes is somewhat cliché. A top secret military research project goes crazy and starts killing everyone. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the research project was a crazy psychic with an army of clone soldiers that mentally controls. This is bad. So the government sends in FEAR, a small strike team dedicated to dealing with paranormal threats. You, the player, are the newest FEAR member. What a way to start your career.
As you go in to start investigating, the player character starts tripping out and hallucinating. Visions of hospital rooms, a man with a moustache, a little girl, and the crazy cannibal psychic you're supposed to be shooting flit across the screen in brutal succession. As the game wears on you can discover clues by listening to phone messages and searching laptops. To an extent the game tries to copy the story telling techniques of the venerable System Shock games, fleshing out back story as needed as the game progresses through recordings left by the people involved. This is always a nice change of pace from the more sedate Resident Evil plot advancement technique of stopping everything and forcing the player to read a couple paragraphs of text.
Shooting is a joy in the game, but it's interrupted frequently for the horror part of the game. Sometimes it's just a grotesque image appearing on the screen for a moment, other times the player is transported to an alternate world of fire and ghosts, other times the geometry changes around the player, or drops the player into a pool of blood, and so on. It's shocking the first few times, but the novelty wears off quickly. Far more effective in being creepy are the people that appear for a few moments then fade away, or the (not so) random sightings of the creepy little girl in an area. Maybe I'm jaded and knew too well what to expect from watching the Japanese horror movies that the game steals its tropes from, but except for a few moments the scares were mostly predictable. Still, the game tries pretty hard on the scare factor, and it's mostly well done. I didn't find myself rolling my eyes and wanting the scary scenes to be finished, even at the end of the game, at least.
The various characters you meet throughout the game lack the charm to really make it feel emotional when some of them inevitably die or meet some other bad end. The phone messages and radio chatter don't convey enough character and emotion to make the cast seem like more than cardboard cutouts. This is one of the few points where the developers missed the mark. Either better writing, or better voice actors, would have really helped. The one character that does have enough personality to be interesting is the villain you chase through the game, which helps to keep interest in the game going.
The other place that the developers miss the mark is in the environments. FEAR is full of offices and concrete walled crawlspaces and, it felt like, little else. Environments often have two ways through them, but they lead inevitably to the same place. Paths often curl about and double back on themselves, which actually helps prevent backtracking, since when they do loop around, it's because you've hit a switch and opened a door, and the path then leads you back to that naturally via an alternate route instead of expecting the player to hoof it back over a path that's been traversed already. That's not always the case, and the few times where the game doesn't naturally provide a way back to the unlocked door can be a bit confusing. It's also not always immediately clear where to go, despite the game being very linear in the paths. The level design is therefore kind of mediocre and repetitive.
Now for a quick scoring summary for those of you keeping track of the numbers:
Gameplay: 8
Good, tight controls. Mostly intuitive layout on the keyboard. Enemies are well balanced, and there's a great selection of firearms. Some frustration with the robotic enemies exists, though. And there's also slo-mo that can be toggled on and off, but that's sort of an overdone feature in many shooters these days and barely rates this mention of it.
Graphics: 8
Even compared to its contemporaries, FEAR isn't that good looking of a game. It pulls off the Japanese-inspired horror effects pretty well.
Sound: 8
Sound effects are crisp and appropriate. The ambient music fits the game perfectly. The voice acting is merely adequate.
Replay: 3
I don't think there's much reason to replay FEAR. Not with two expansion packs and a sequel to give similar gameplay without having to go through the same boring levels again. It might be worth playing through again and finding all of the phone messages and such to decipher more of the story, but I have a feeling that won't be enough to get me to replay it.
Other: N/A
Sadly I haven't been able to give multiplayer a try, so this review is based entirely on the single player experience.
Overall: 8
A very good shooter in most respects. It tries for a different ambience than most of its genre does, and pulls the horror effects off with mixed success. It's a pretty unique experience, and considering that the price of the game is down to ten bucks at places like Best Buy there's really not much excuse in not picking it up and giving it a try.