F.E.A.R. Review - FEAR Game

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Load up your guns, slow down time, and creep yourself out in Monolith's latest foray into the first person shooter genre. While not living up to the horror game hype that surrounds it, F.E.A.R. is still a solid FPS worthy of your time and money.

I'm sorry, sir, this desk is closed.

When you take the plunge into the world of game production, sometimes you come out atop a heap you never knew existed. Other times you fade into obscurity, disappearing before ever really making a single wave. None mourn their passing and they disappear into the night, like a shadow fading away before the moon.

Monolith Productions has not slipped away into the passing twilight, but they have never really struck it big with any of their titles. Sure, many people recognize the excellent No One Lives Forever series and some even tried the great sequel to the movie
Tron they produced, but this company has yet to reach out into the mainstream audience, grab them by the throat, and juggling them around for a while.

Until now.

Hitting the finish line just behind Serious Sam 2 and alongside Quake 4, F.E.A.R. has hit the market like a home run slam, blasting past its established series' brethren as something truly new and unique in the stagnant market the gaming industry finds itself in. Make no mistake, F.E.A.R. is easily the best first person shooter to come out this year, and is a good contender for one of the best games period.

A fountain of Koolaid?

Obviously a labor of love for those creative guys and gals at Monolith Productions, F.E.A.R. tells the dark and mysterious tale of the First Encounter Assault Recon group, a secretive paramilitary organization set up in 2002 to combat paranormal threats to national security. And since you haven't seen too many ghosts and goblins wandering around lately, you'd assume they've been doing a pretty damn good job, right? Well, sort of.

Saaaay, who's that over there?

The F.E.A.R. team has become something of a joke amongst covert military operatives, a wasted hole for government funds to slip into when they should be routed towards better causes, like buying more paper clips for the President to play with. While the team is well trained, they simply have nothing to do but sit around and watch the world pass them by.

Until now.

In a little known industrial town called Auburn, the Armacham Corporation has been doing a little side work for the Department of Defense. Through several facilities around the town, Armacham has been perfecting an army of highly trained clone marines that can be controlled via a psychic operator, which will one day allow Generals to get first-hand battlefield reconnaissance without the need to endanger themselves. This in itself sounds like a pretty spiffy idea, until the psychic operator being tested goes berserk, takes control of the army, and sets out with one serious vendetta against the corporation that made him.

And in comes you, a bad ass, nameless F.E.A.R. operative with some amazingly fast reflexes and orders to take this dude out at all costs. Add in some truly bizarre visions, the ghostly figure of a young girl stalking and killing at will, and a massive cover-up in process, and you have a recipe for one killer game play experience.

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The Human Torch meets his end.

If a major criticism must be leveled against F.E.A.R. and its developers, it should be mentioned right up front in this review. Simply put, F.E.A.R. is not a very scary game. All of the hype and hoopla that has been thrown around regarding the scare factor of this game is simply that: hype. The story in F.E.A.R. is a very enjoyable affair and will creep you out from time to time, no doubt about it, but do not go into this game expecting to find the next Silent Hill game, because you will be exceedingly disappointed.

And if you get right down to it, the plot in F.E.A.R. is interesting, but not fleshed out altogether well. It seems as though the developers spent a great deal of time crafting a really exceptional beginning and ending to this game, but the middle just sags. At many points in the middle of F.E.A.R., the attempted scares just stop and leave you with long levels of combat to trudge through with very little to propel you forward except the promise of more combat, and the eventual resolution of this widely escalating situation.

To put it in perspective, it almost borderlines on being like Doom 3 in terms of lacking plot progression, except the game play here is much, much better.

If nothing else, F.E.A.R. has the best first person shooter game play of any game I have played this year, and I have high doubts that anything else will even come close to this. Not since the original Half-Life have I seen more cunning, ruthless, and altogether bad ass enemies trying to hunt me down around every corner. Fighting guys in F.E.A.R. is awesome.

Tom Clancy's family reunion.

Turn around a corner and see a squad of guys looking for you? If you pull back, they might flush you out with grenades, or duck into side passages to work their way around behind you. Sometimes they will throw over environmental objects to use as cover, none of which is prescripted either. They will shoot blindly around corners at you, cover one another as they approach your last known position, hide behind their heavy troopers, and even sit quietly waiting for you.

On one or two occasions, I would rush in with my shotgun and blast apart a squad, thinking I got them all, only to turn a corner and run right into the upward thrust of some sneaky bastard's assault rifle butt. Man, that hurt.

And what makes this even more interesting is the fact that F.E.A.R. breaks the time honored FPS mold of having weapons in your hands becoming more powerful than those of your enemies. Simply put, in F.E.A.R., your weapons deal the exact same amount of damage to you as they do your foes. A pistol shot to the head without armor? Say goodnight. Chest shot with a shotgun, followed by a roundhouse kick? You'll be dead before you hit the ground. F.E.A.R. forces you to be as tactical as possible, constantly using your environment and every piece of equipment you have to your advantage. If not? Well, then you'll be restoring quite a bit.

Office Space 2: Armaggedon.

To give you an advantage in the fire fight, your F.E.A.R. Operative is able to slow down time temporarily in order to out maneuver and hopefully out shoot your enemies. Unlike Max Payne, the meter automatically starts to refill when it is not in use, meaning you will never have to worry about going into a gun battle without it, provided you rest for a moment before barging ahead, spewing molten lead in your wake. However, you will never have a true overabundance of it at hand, which makes it crucial to conserve and use it carefully, as once again, this game makes you bite and claw to stay alive.

And to make it all seem effective, combat just feels like combat. As much as I love and tout Half-Life 2, if you ignore the story, you never really feel like you are fighting for your life while you play it. Sure it is cool to blast some guy and send them flying off a building, or to swoop through hallways with a handful of rebels picking off Combine Forces, but the situation never feels truly real.

F.E.A.R. does.

When you battle it out in F.E.A.R., everything happens in a blinding fast blur. Combat is often over in a matter of seconds, but in that small, almost insignificant frame of time, everything is literally torn apart. The walls buckle and are blasted full of holes, glass shatters in every direction, debris is kicked up all around you, blood splattered across every surface, bodies twitch, limbs blast off, people go flying, voices scream, people panic, everything is pounded in a heart-rendering instant that leaves you panting for breath when it is over, watching as the dust and smoke slowly settles over the carnage that you just unleashed on the world.

In short, combat in F.E.A.R. is fantastic.

Why put the dining room table in the hall?

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Graphics aren't everything. Some of my favorite games of all time are graphically far inferior to everything we have now. But if a look works, it definitely adds to the experience, which is something no one should be able to deny. F.E.A.R. looks amazing, provided that you have a powerhouse of a system that can run it. While characters lack the full facial details that made Half-Life 2's stars look so impressive, everything else in this game far surpasses anything else out on the market today. F.E.A.R. looks like Doom 3 on steroids, and plays better too.

But as I mentioned, the cost here is great.

Oh, yeah, duck and cover, you'll be fine.

While I'm not sure what the minimum requirements specify, I cannot picture anyone running this on something lower than a GeForce 6000 level card without having to turn every detail level down to its lowest setting to get a decent frame rate. On my GeForce 6200 256mb AGP card running on a 2.8 gig Pentium 4 processor, by no means top of the line right now, I had to turn most of the shadows off in order to play the game decently, and I couldn't even touch Full Screen Anti-Aliasing with a ten foot pole. Brought down further, the game begins to look certainly less appealing to the eyes, so don't expect the wide range of scalability as Half-Life 2 offers people.

But when it looks good, the game looks great. Characters animate realistically and fluidly, particles explode out of every bullet hole, shadows darken the already creepy environments, and the locations all feel like true places. The people at Monolith have done their homework with these maps, adding lots of little touches that make this world seem viable. I don't think I've ever seen a game before that actually implements handicap accessible ramps in a level in addition to stairways right next to it, unless this was done for a specific way to lead you along a set path (say, for instance, that the stairs are blocked by debris. Better take that ramp!). Here they are just placed regularly, along with bathrooms, water fountains, coffee machines, small touches around the environment that bring the world alive in ways that many hallway-romping FPS's simply don't do.

Got milk?

And it is a good thing that they do this, because unfortunately, you won’t find yourself in many places aside from typical urban locations. Office complex, industrial compound, scientific facility, and run down slums are pretty much the only places for you to run through in the game, which fits with the story nicely, but gets a little tiring after a while.

Then you have sound in the game, which fairs well with the high production values of this game. The voice actors who bring the characters to life are all effective, something of a trademark for Monolith games, but none of them really stand out as being exceptional, which doesn't help differentiate the characters from some of the stereotypes they seem to embody. And while the guns, grunts, and bangs in the game sound appropriately meaty, it is the music in the game that I take issue with, or more specifically, the lack of it.

There is music in this game, but it is of such unremarkable quality that I dare you to try and remember any of it after you have completed the game. Most of these tracks are just low, techno-ish beats meant to heighten the creepy mood of the environment, which often times works just as well without it. Is it too much to ask for to have even one good track? Hell, even Doom 3 and Far-Cry had that.

Then you come to the post-single player campaign experience: multiplayer. F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer does some interesting things, in addition to all of the standardized modes that we all know and love. Monolith Productions has successfully found a way to integrate SloMo into all of its multiplayer modes in a way that is fun, creative, and very different from the pack.

Special delivery!

In each map, SloMo is found in the form of a hypodermic needle that you carry around with you and use at will with a touch of a button. When activated, you will remain at normal speed, but everyone else in the level is slowed down. However, the SloMo meter must be almost fully charged before this ability can be used, unlike in Single Player when you can just keep hitting the button until it runs out on you. The disadvantage to this ability, though, is that your position is shown to every player at all times, indicating you in the environment around them with a little beacon that shines through walls and removes your ability to surprise anyone. This creates an especially fun experience in Team multiplayer games, where your entire team is granted the speed advantage when you use it, while the other group is stuck moving slowly. This lends itself to some great coordinated attacks that you just can't find in other shooters.

But, if this mode of play isn't up your alley, then don't expect to find much else here to wet your appetite.

F.E.A.R. is worth your time, though. There are plenty of first person shooters out there right now, with many more to come, but the fact that this one stands out from the rest so well on its own warrants a purchase by all of you out there who have grown tired of the market's stagnation. While the story is a little lackluster and it isn't as scary as we've been led to believe, it is still one of the best games of the year, without question. Pick this one up and let Monolith Productions finally bask in a job well done.

All images provided are officially released screenshots.