F.E.A.R. Review

John Woo meets The Ring, little girls with long hair and shootouts in slow motion, enter the world of F.E.A.R. This game is going to be released in two days (18th october), the same day as Quake 4, and it got a huge chance to outsell Id's latest creation.

A research experiment goes horribly wrong and a genetically engineered psychic commander goes mad and starts to control a battalion of clone supersoldiers. A special tactics force is sent in to investigate but are never heard from again, so it's now up to you as a part of the First Encounter Assault Recon (F.E.A.R) team to go in to both investigate the disapperance of the other soldiers, and to eliminate the psychic commander.

The first map is actually one of those who were created last in the development and therefore has a huge resemblance to the later additions of the game. It also acts like a tutorial and as a introduction for the game. This maps already shows the huge flaws in the level design, they re-use items everywhere and goes for the same palette theme throughout the whole game. Most often the levels are made so there's a obstacle you can't go beyond so you have to take another turn, activate a switch, and then return where you came from and you should be able to pass that obstacle. Also, it's rather easy to start to go around in circles on the levels and they feel like they've just been made longer so the game won't feel so short. A positive aspects of the levels are the lightning, sounds, placement of enemies, and sometimes the scripted horror events.

This game is all about the feeling, it really feels like you're in the middle of a action-horror movie. The music and sound effects keep your adrenaline pulsing while you run down a hallway in slow motion, emptying magazines and watch the particle dust scatter all over the place. A moment later you find yourself in a dreamlike state, surrounded by fire, demons and blood. The weapons are really well balanced, and it's as good to use martial arts in close combat as any of the weapons are. There's no feeling like slidetackeling a enemy, sending him spinning through the air and watch as his head hits a sharp corner and making his body rotate in a different angle before it lands heavily in a corner.

When running around in the levels, you'll stop time to time, just to watch the stunningly beautiful graphics, it looks better than anything that is out today, and even runs smoother than Doom 3. Water reflections, particle dust, blur effects and bullet decals that actually looks like a hole in the wall and not just a flat marker. The lightning and shadows are also impressive, and it's a wonder that it manages to run smoothly when it's combined with like five enemies with advanced A.I.

Your arsenal is based upon six different weapons and three different kind of grenades and mines. Pistol (able to be dualwielded), Combat shotgun, Sub-machine gun, Assault rifle, Semi-automatic rifle, Penetrator (Like Painkillers Stakegun, it got the ability to nail enemies to the walls), Type-7 particle weapon (Railgun anyone?), Repeating cannon (yes it's a cannon) and the Multi-rocket launcher (fires three spinning rockets). The grenades and mines are a standard grenade, a remote mine (you can stick this one on enemies) and a proximity mine.

You don't meet a huge variaty of enemies, basicly you got the supersoldiers, ATC workers, a heavy armored supersoldier, a huge exterminator robot (like the one featured in Robocop), one type of demon and some kind of stealthed ninja supersoldiers. Also you got those hovering laser shooting kind of robots. Even if there isn't a huge variaty of enemies you meet, those who you get to meet isn't the kind you want to take home and introduce to your parents, no these suckers are mean. With mean I mean they are a nasty bunch that always tries to outsmart you by attacking from multiply directions or flankning you while you're busy with their other team members. Their A.I. is the most impressive I've ever seen in a game, and even though I got a save point right before a fight, every fights turns out completly different. They take decision by themself and even refuse orders ("Move in.", "No fucking way!") from their teammates if they feel it's too risky.

Sometimes you get the feeling that this game is heavily inspired of Half-life, with the research experiment gone wrong and soldiers that wants nothing more than to penetrate you with their bullets, but all in all this is a rather different game and probably the best first person shooter that has been released since Half-Life 2. And the multiplayer is just too much fun, with the different game modes of slowmo, deathmatch, capture the flag and elimination, which all can be played either in teams or all versus all (except for capture the flag, which is always team based). My favorite way of playing deathmatch is team elimination where I run around with holstered weapons and do my matrix-style martial arts on whoever stands in my way.

All in all, it took me around 8 hours to complete the game on hard skill and I would gladly recommend it to anyone that likes first person shooters.

Gameplay: 9
Graphic: 10
Sound: 10
Design: 6
Total: 9

F.E.A.R.
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