User Reviews (1 - 11 of 28)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Great but graphics very sketchy

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game has fun with shooting and stuff. It is very freaky and makes u jump. Graphics sucked. You'd think that since it was blu-ray the graphics would be good.

Inept Commando Struggles to Save Dreary World of Monotony

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

!!SPOILERS BELOW!!

This game was all the rage on PCs back in 05, and had a successful and well-regarded port to the X360 last year. As I never had a PC good enough to run the original version, I hoped the PS3 version would let me know what all the fuss was about. Sadly, I am still wondering.

First, PS3 issues - the graphics are washed out and drab, and other FPS shooters for the platform look vastly better. The load times are also unacceptably long, and even such graphically complex games as Oblivion load much more quickly on the PS and also offer much better detail and color once the load is done. This is a very sloppy port, one that makes the PS3 look much worse than its capabilities would suggest.

Next, intrinsic problems of the title. First, the graphics though poorly done for the PS3 are intrinsically boring. The environments are dull, linear, almost completely uninteractive, and look very similar to each other. The settings are numbingly dull, and the effect is one of repetition and monotone. Another grey hallway, another pile of boxes, another loading dock, etc. This would have been understandable on the PS1, but level design and graphic capabilities have come a long way since then.

Next, the enemies. Or lack thereof. 95% of this game consists of you shooting it out with the exact same enemies, clone troopers armed with conventional small arms. Occasionally some of them will have heavier armor, sometimes they'll have high tech weapons, but essentially the enemies are the same throughout the game. The game starts by telling you that the enemy has 1,000 soldiers in his clone army, and by the end of the game, it feels like you've killed about 850 of them personally.

Admittedly, the enemies are smart and use reasonably clever tactics like throwing grenades, flanking, and taking cover. But this is hardly stunning design - Halo on the Xbox did the same thing 10 years ago, and had a variety of enemies and settings to experience. If this game was a SOCOM title, I would expect to shoot several hundred of the same conventional enemies, but the whole premise here is that your commando group is supposed to deal with paranormal situations and unusual opponents. Instead, you kill a couple of hundred of blandly generic foes, in a limited number of blandly generic environments.

The novelty here comes from the Japan horror plotline of evil young girl with psychic powers who keeps popping up to spook you and drive the plotline along. This is a nice cinematic touch, but the more familiar you get with the plot, the more tired it seems. The dull saga of corporate villainy pieced together from voice mail messages and the scripted messages from your commander are unimaginative and tedious. In the end, the plot goes nowhere, and the big confrontation with the cannibal clone leader and Alma is surprisingly un-engaging. The ultimately limited imagination of the plot is nowhere near enough of a new experience to offset many long hours of killing generic clone troopers in interchangeable concrete hallways.

Finally, the sheer stupidity of the plotline needs to be mentioned. As is standard Monolith procedure since Alien Vs Predator, your actual teammates never fight by your side. They either get killed en masse while you are elsewhere or spectating in a cut scene, or there is some idiotic pretext as to why sending a solo trooper ahead makes sense. "Oh, we'll stay with the body. You go on ahead and take care of those several dozen heavily armed clone troopers in the warehouse on your own." Though other titles like Doom have also maintained this honorable tradition, it makes not much sense in this specific context. Where is the rest of the FEAR unit, Delta Force, and the US Army for that matter?

The game's own plot acts against it. If your FEAR commandos were fighting something weird, like werewolves, demons, or leprechauns it might make sense that the rest of the armed law enforcement / military community might sit things out, but as your opponents are essentially 1,000 rogue soldiers armed with small arms, the lack of engagement by any other units seems both contrived and stupid. The govt basically seems willing to cordon off huge areas of the city and let the clone troopers blow things up, and the only response is to send in your own character. The government supposedly can track the clone army leader rather precisely by means of a transponder inside of him, yet they never try to take him out with an air strike, artillery etc. Instead, they rush your poor overworked character around the city to various spots where you will be too late to kill Fettel, outgunned, and outnumbered.

The plot in general is very unsatisfying. Your character appears to be an idiot. You accomplish basically nothing, failing to save anyone you are assigned to save, taking the entire game to kill your primary target, and are perpetually deceived and hoodwinked by the generic corporate villains that you encounter along the way. In the end, you prove incapable of stopping Alma, or perhaps even complicit in releasing her. (In the sequels, not available on PS3, your incompetence grows in magnitude, as your few surviving allies from the first installment get killed despite your best efforts, the clone commander mysteriously comes back to life, and the survivors of the 1,000 man clone brigade appear to destroy Western civilization despite the fact that your character seems to have killed off most of em in the first game...) Your character plods along in this game like a personality-deprived boy scout, and his only talent appears to be the mechanical killing of clone troopers in large volume. Your character's blandness and mediocrity are well suited to the equally tedious and dreary environment and enemy design, but this consistency is not much of a triumph.

What's good? Sound effects are nice. The weapons are fun and look real, and the gunfights are exciting at first, until they are repeated ad nauseam. The freaky hallucinogenic moments are occasionally fun. The frame rate held up well, and the controls work well.

All in all, I remain uncertain as to why this game was a hit on any platform. Even if the graphics were superb for the period, the monotonous game play and brain-dead level design sap a lot of appeal out of the end product for me. The logically challenged plotting, boring enemies, and unappealing protagonist are also pitfalls to any impetus conveyed by graphical splendor. The fact that the PS3 version utterly lacks whatever graphic splendor may have existed in other versions is the final dab of foul icing on this manure cake. If you like shoot-em-ups, are very undemanding, and can buy this for $20 or less, you might have some fun here. Otherwise, PS3 owners should pass on this poor port of an over-hyped title that has aged badly.

Some great stuff, but overall pretty shallow

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 26, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I just finished this on the easiest difficulty setting. Although certainly not a bad game, there's nothing really new here. I'll take the good, the bad, and the ugly route:

The good.
Weapons - there are several really nice ones. My favorites are the penetrator (assault rifle that will cut through just about anything), the plasma rifle (fries enemies to a crisp, one of only two weapons with a zoom scope), and the automatic shotgun (you gotta love a shotgun that fires like a machine gun). The ASP rifle also has a zoom scope, but is rare and fairly useless given the enemy AI (more on that).

Graphics - in a word, excellent. The surroundings are very well detailed, weapons leave environmental damage consistent with each weapon (a single bullet hole from a pistol, a smattering of holes from a shotgun), and you can interact with most things around you. Knock a phone off a desk and you'll hear the off-the-hook tone and the friendly lady telling you to hang up and try again. Shoot a wooden box and it splinters to pieces like a real box would. You can machine gun your way through a box to hit a bad guy lurking behind. Particle effects like this are very highly detailed. Major events like big explosions are killer.

Sound - almost perfect. From the tinkle of shell casings, the whiz and ricochet of bullets, and the different weapon sounds, to the ambient sounds of your environment and creepy background music, almost every base is covered. Played in surround through my home theater, it was great.

Enemy AI - good. They will act with teamwork, pause to reload, and try to flush you out with grenades. There are also a couple of clever bad guy types (the invisible guys are especially cool).

Slow-mo - Slows time around you (or speeds you up?) so you can hose down enemies for a few seconds while they're stuck in slow motion. Very, very helpful.

The bad:
Enemy AI (again) - The problem is they're almost physic in knowing you're there. Only once in the entire game did I have the opportunity to sneak up behind someone or snipe more than one. Peek around a corner and in almost every situation you're instantly spotted.

Controls - They work fine once you've made a short adjustment, but who's idea was it to use R2 for fire when R1 is typical for FPS's? Even by the end of the game I was sometimes hitting R1 and switching weapons when I wanted to be firing. Leaning isn't very helpful. You don't lean far, which limits your field of fire, and you're almost always spotted immediately.

Story - things that make you go...huh? I spent the entire game wondering what the point was, and when it ended, with the expected sequel set-up, my only thought was "Huh? What?" There's something vague about genetic engineering involving some bad guy ghost and a dead girl, but you're still left wondering what it's about, even if you catch all the background (usually gained by listening to people's phonemail and downloading laptops lying around).

Sound (again) - Incoming messages are almost impossible to hear, even if you adjust the in-game sound settings. I even tried various surround settings on my home theater and nothing helped.

The ugly:
Load times - They take FOREVER. Don't worry, you're PS3 hasn't locked up. It really does take that long for the progress bar to start really moving. In a way this is OK because there's so much detail of every type being loaded, but you could go have a snack.

Level endings - I really HATE games that end a level without warning you or making it obvious somehow. At one point in particular I wanted to investigate an area before I left but ran into the end-of-level spot. Grrrrr!

In sum, F.E.A.R. is a beautifully wrought game, but brings nothing new to the FPS genre. It's basically just sneak through and shoot everything that moves. The creepy factor is a nice touch but not unique, the environments aren't varied enough (you spend half the game running around an office building, the other half in a sort-of factory), and there's little to surprise and delight. Graphics aside, it's just a basic run and gun FPS. Fine if you just want a simple, good-looking game to wile away a few hours, but not something that makes you tap your foot waiting for a sequel.

Not as good as the review lead you to believe.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought the game thinking that it was great like the reviews always have been spreading to people. But when i bought the game I could not help but feel really bored by this game. I hope some people had more fun with this to me this game felt repetative and the controls were very clunky. And I don't know about the PC version but the graphics for the PS3 did not feel so next-gen to me.

Great game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game was fun but a little confusing I really enjoyed the game. Quick shipping.

Fun and freaking scary

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

People can say what they want about the graphics in this game. Theyre right, if you play call of duty 4 right before popping this in youre not gonna like it. But if you actually play the game you realize just how awesome it is. Sound effects that make the hairs on your neck stand up, and gameplay that makes you not want to put the controller down. The story behind it could be compared to like The Ring mixed with Resident Evil but twice as scary as both. I played this whole game alone in the dark and it freaked me out. My little brother even refused to play it cuz he was too scared lol. Bottom line, pick it up if you like suspense you wont be disappointed.

Considerations!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

F.E.A.R. is a good game and I don't know why people are fussing so much. Now I have to agree with everybody that, yes the graphics were shocking and lacked the proper fruit of what the PS3 can dish out. The story line is not too enticing either. But the gameplay is astounding. I think that people can look past the polish and glitter aspects of a game and appreciate this one for its action-shooting thrills. The blood effects were very well developed. The art of every weapon is very well detailed. It may not be creepy, but can drive the imagination. All in all I think if you like action and shooting games F.E.A.R. will serve you plenty of fun.

Fun game, not much repaly value...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is very fun to play and I enjoyed going through the game a lot. The only thing is unless you have PS3 Online, it has very little replay value, because it's only a one player game without an internet connection. The story line seemed slightly "reckless" and didn't really seem to grab your attention. Other than that the game is great...I'd say it would be a really fun game to rent rather than purchase...

Great and Creepy Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I just bought this game and it is very fun and scary. I have a 51 inch big screen and let me tell you the graphics are great I don't know why people complain about the graphics and why everybody is hating on this game. If you like FPS games that are scary then I would recommend you buy this game. It pretty scary playing this in the dark with a 51 inch TV with great sound.

A great game, mediocre presentation

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: July 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Ok, so FEAR on the PS3 is easily one of my favorite games. My favorite types of movies are action and horror and they blended both very well in this game.

Sound: The sound on this game is perfect for setting the mood. The soundtrack is very creepy.

Graphics: This is where the game really hurts. For a PS3 game, the graphics are disappointing to say the least. They really should have put more polish on this game. The lighting however is top notch.

Gameplay: Even though this game is an FPS, the gameplay is actually quite different from the competition because of the horror elements. It made me jump a few times when Alma pops out in random spots.

Even though the graphics need more work, this game is still really fun and should not be missed,

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions