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Fear is here! Atomizing first person shooter begins a new franchise

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: October 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

`Half-Life', `Doom', `Quake', `Farcry' and now `F.E.A.R'. Boasting the new Havoc engine and a story as big as Half-Life 2 it is not hard to see why F.E.A.R is occupying a whole shelf by itself. Sierra has certainly found a new contender that is going to demand some sequels. F.E.A.R is a mixture of all the well loved first person shooter titles, and then some more. You are a member of a tactical recon team pitted against other recon squads that are controlled by a telepathic genetically engineered squad leader. It mostly resembles `Half-Life 1', not `HL2', as the action takes place inside buildings. The new Havoc engine is similar to the Source engine in that most objects in the game are movable and or destructible. There is a higher degree of special effects in such things as bullet impacts, dust effects and blood gushes. The F.E.A.R engine also includes slow motion bullet time effects so you can literally find yourself using a shotgun to blow the enemy into a pile of guts while moving through the spray. The atomizing effects make fighting more furious and certainly creative leaps and bounds ahead of any other game out there. F.E.A.R simply has an astonishingly evolved enemy AI that leaves `HL2' to go pound on sand. The enemy AI is a step beyond `Farcry'... in fact, is a step beyond anything you have seen before. The enemy reacts realistically enough to hide, aim, miss, crawl, limp, walk wounded, shoot you, gang up on you or leap over a stairwell. F.E.A.R now owns the enemy AI market! Sierra delivers on its promises. You will be enjoying hours of going around office floors just blowing everything to dust while the enemy advances. Expect a non-stop running, window splintering, limb flying and cement shattering experience all the way. In terms of scares, `Silent Hill 3' still rules, and `Doom 3' is one big scare-a-thon, but F.E.A.R can compete. Even though it rips off the movie `Ring' completely, and mixes it with dashes of `Resident Evil' the hybrid nature of F.E.A.R being a combination of all the top material does not stop it from being a contender... and that it is... very much so. There is a number of interesting in-game dream sequences that are semi-playable. There are various subliminal ghostly flashes and lots of environmental poltergeist activity. It has a `Doom 3' atmosphere where the story is told by listening to phone messages or downloading vital information from a laptop that is relayed to you `Splinter Cell' style by your advisor on a microphone. Although being a five star experience, this does not necessarily make it the first person shooter replacement by any means. The texture detail, modelling and environments try to compete with Half-Life 2 but HL2 still rules them. F.E.A.R also still resides in the world of button touching puzzles that are easy to understand and beat. It is hardly likely that you will get stuck anywhere or have your brain teased much. The new Havoc engine, for all its glorious special effects (the main reason to play F.E.A.R), can be a demanding game engine like HL2. If you use DirectX 9 then ensure that DirectX 8 shading is turned off (it is automatically on sometimes) or else it will only play with your systems settings and allow you minimum settings. Turn it off and DirectX 9 will allow you to max out even on a 265mb card. The Havoc engine is all about particles and time dilation, and for that it scores in aces. With that said and done F.E.A.R can literally display bullets rippling through the atmosphere. This means that F.E.A.R is a fully fledged Directx 9 first person shooter. The single player campaign is closer to HL1 than any other first person shooter out there (except for Half-Life 2). It has elements of `Die Hard' where you shoot up about a thousand foot soldiers in the Armacham Technology Park buildings. Sweeping through each floor gives it a real recon feel. There is lots of vent crawling and automatic laser dodging to keep you occupied. You can also save wherever you want to save and it is not like the current wave of checkpoint save games that have found their way into mainstream gaming that has drawn so much negative criticism. However F.E.A.R lacks the number of enemies that "HL2" and "Doom 3" have to offer with five or six variations in characters... eeekk, however the animations of these characters are top of the line stuff. Another downside is that the weapons are limited to about six or seven that offer nothing really new, but the machine gun is by far the best any game has had to offer and feels the smoothest of any of the shooters. Instead of using target area pixel sensors, it actually feels like the bullets are moving through the air and impacting with the target. Overall it took me 3 days play to beat the game. That is akin to HL2. Does it beat HL2? Not by a long shot. Does it have anything new to offer? Yeah, heaps! That is why the name F.E.A.R will be household terminology soon enough. F.E.A.R has its power in being the only first person shooter to do slow motion. And for that it is an exclusive smash hit... and yes F.E.A.R rules "Quake 4" that was released at the same time. Q4 is all scripted (no enemy AI) with OpenGL graphics that are not a patch on F.E.A.R - the new DirectX 9 screamer.

Pros:
- Enemy AI is the best ever
- Abundance of frights
- Multiplayer is not bad at all
- One big gunfight from start to finish

Cons:
- Heavy system requirements leave a lot to be desired
- Last scene is terrible!
- Not enough characters.
- The whole game is set indoors.

Great, creepy, atmospheric FPS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: November 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Honesty, I loved this game. Graphically, it's a beautiful game, content-wise it has a lot to offer and only comes up a bit short in the variety of foes you face (that's really the result of the tight storyline so a bit of a trade off there.) The AI for the enemies is extremely well done also, one of the best ever I think. Good variety of weapons. Nice elements with other gear like the flashlight which only stays on for about 20 seconds at a time then you let it recharge briefly, 5 seconds, will sometimes leave you in the dark for a couple suspenseful seconds.

The music and ambient sounds are terrific, also the chatter of the enemy soldiers who are constantly dropping the F-bomb when your attack catches them by surprise. There's a great variety to the music and it really helps flesh out the horror aspect of the game.

Without getting into the story too deeply I'd characterize it as Delta force + X-files + The Ring. It's very well crafted, not a cliche'd version of those elements but rather a package that really delivers and draws you toward the conclusion of the tale. It's fairly linear but in a good way since the story is quite compelling and you'll want reach the final scenes.

For state of the art FPS action plus horror you couldn't do much better than F.E.A.R.

FPS of the year

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This has to be one of the best FPS I played in a long time. Take Half Life 2, a little Resident evil, The Ring, and Matrix like movies and you get F.E.A.R. I kind of dislike most games, but I would recommend FEAR as the FPS of the year

FEAR places you in the role of an unnamed soldier who serves in a secret agency known as FEAR. FEAR's job is pretty much to investigate paranormal activity. Its like the men in black expect without the aliens and more cooler weapons. Your job is to hunt down a man who escape from a government facility a man who pretty much as a taste for human flesh.

The only thing that is blocking you from this Dr Hannibal Lector wannabe is an army of clone soldiers. Along your way through this game you are haunted by strange visions, whispers, and the haunted image of a little girl who burns everything in her path.

And they don't call it FEAR for nothing. This game really does deliver in horror. I would say that its probably scarcer then Resident Evil and Doom 3. There is this one scene that has you walking through a sewer and all of a sudden you hear this girls laughter right behind you. Just as you turn around you see a silhouette of a little girl out the corner of your eye. It gives me ghost bumps every time I see it and I don't scare easily. Play this game with the lights out and surround sound turn up!

But of course like any FPS game your not just an average joe soldier. No! You have "super fast reflexes". This gives you the ability to slow down the movement of everything around you and go into a matrix like "bullet time". I love walking into a room with 4 bad guys in them, hitting the slowmo button and dropping them all with one clip of my submachine gun. Your character's Kung Fu fighting would make Chuck Norris jealous. Jump up in the air and press the right mouse button and your character will perform a jump kick that can take down foes with one hit. The environment itself is very realistic. Boxes will fly off shelves, windows will break, Its awesome seeing everything around you explode in chaos as your bullets rip into a nearby storage shelf in slowmo. Kudos to the outstanding physics engine in this game. I might also point out that even though you have these cool features, these badees are no push overs. They will duck, seek cover and dive through windows at the slightest hint of combat. The enemy AI in this game is superb. Probably the most smartest enemies I ever see in a FPS.

Though the single player is worth the price i can't say that the multi-player is really that great. I was let down when i saw that most servers only have 8 to 16 players in them. You might be looking for a long time for the kind of game you want. You'll find yourself wondering around the map for a long time due to the fact that the maps are generally too large for a 16 person game. And you only get to choose from either 5 or 6 weapons, can't remember the exact number. Some of these guns like the dual wield pistols are almost pointless to use as anybody with a submachine gun could easily defeat them. The real draw to the FEAR MP is the slowmo games like slowmo DM,CTF,TDM. This gets every entertaining as one player can control the speed of the game for a couple of seconds.

Another thing that upsets me is that the producers seemed to make this game with computer geeks in mind. Chances are if you don't have the most expensive most new video card in the market then you aren't going to see the game in its full beauty. Before I installed this game on my Alienware i tried it on my dad's 9500 Radeon computer and the game looked like something out of the early Playstation 2 days. It was a little better on my Alienware that has 9800Radeon installed. If you have a really old computer don't get this game...just hope they make a port for Xbox360 or something cause it would be cheaper then getting your computer upgraded considering that a new V chip can go for 300 dollars these days

Great Game.... Top 5 ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

So much fun, I'm playing it again.

One of the best games played, since Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and a few others.

First, this is the first game since Far Cry to actually STRESS a system I built. With an AMD X2 3800+ (OC'ed to 4800), 1024MB RAM, BFG 6800OC AGP, I was unable to turn on all the Graphics, but after trying out the "System Test" was able to play it with:
2x AA
8x AF
Computer Settings: High
Graphics Settings: Custom (Mostly Med/High)

Shadows cause huge reduction in frames/sec but is worth the performance loss. Makes the game so much more creepy.

Perfect game from anyone 17 or older per the MA rating.

If you needed an excuse to buy a better video card

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Game Play:
Severed limbs! Decapitations! Intense (and repetitive) cursing! Fabulous graphics and great physics. Fairly simplistic and linear game play. No puzzles. Only occasional supernatural bad guys.

This is a first person shooter. You carry up to three weapons and up to three types of grenades. The unique feature is a slow-motion key that gives you a few seconds of being much faster than everyone else.

The AI is actually quite good. The bad guys will gang up on you and try to sneak around corners, hide and jump out at you when you think the coast is clear. They do tend to get "penned in" and won't roam outside of specific areas. In other words, they generally won't run out of a room and smoke you in the hallway. So, if you pop in and out of a doorway you can remain fairly safe while you pick them off--although they have a nasty habit of tossing grenades much more accurately than you can.

You can run short of supplies although (amazingly!) you tend to find what you need to progress through the game. Because you can carry only a few weapons, you'll need to make decisions about what will work best.

Graphics:
The game developers put a ton of time in on the visual aspects of this game and you do get finely textured and beautiful surfaces and objects. Smoke and water features are beyond excellent although you'll need heavy duty computing to handle it. (See below.) People and machinery move realistically and characters you interact with are lovingly detailed and artistically rendered. (No more baseball mitt hands!)

Entertainment factor:
It's a pretty fun game and they've mixed in some horror aspects that under the right conditions (playing at night with headphones, say) can scare the begeezus out of you. The creepy little girl running on all fours never stopped freaking me out. I like a little more "puzzle" in my games but this was pretty fun.

The Tech Talk:
I received this game as a gift and it cost me a few hundred extra dollars for the smokin' fast graphics card to run it. I'm playing on a Pentium 4, 3 GHz computer with 1 GB of ram. My old graphics card (GeForce 5200) that I played Halo, Half Life 1&2, Far Cry, etc could not handle this game at all. I dialed all the performance options down to "crappy" and it was still unplayable. Now with a GeForce 7800, it runs perfectly with everything turned all the way up to "eleven."

little on the weak side

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a FPS player almost exclusively and I have been since Doom and Duke Nukum. The game itself definitely kept me wanting to play and kept my interest but some of the breakaway and flashbacks left me with a "could you hurry up" mentality. The game doesn't do a good job of explaining anything to you as the player and when I reached the end I was thinking "what just happened? Is this it" I had to check out the internet for a explanation of the back story.

The game itself was excellent in the playing and if you retry a area the actions of the game would not be the same, the NPC's definitely look for you on several occasions so running in and destroy isn't going to be the mode of play. The graphics were awesome and lent a great deal to the game ie watching a shadow grow larger for your attacks etc. I completed the game in 6 days with 2 to 3 hours a day into it. Although I am a "sweep the room and smash everything" sort of player

I am running a 2.8 Intel system with 1.5 gig of ram and a X800 AIW. The game overpowered the system video wise only a few times but I was playing maxed. Although the "saving checkpoint" times were 3 to 5 seconds long most times.

Good luck, I am going to order the expansion pack today.

And the little girl shall lead them...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I've never been much of a computer game player. They seem too much like work, and after being on the computer all day I'm rarely looking for a reason to be on even more.

Two games have managed to really hook me. The first one was the original Doom, lo so many years ago. No real puzzles to solve, just visceral and scary. The second one is this game.

It is something about the creepy atmosphere, like that of a really good horror movie. This game has it, and before long you're not just watching it, you're in it!

The little girl was especially scary, and really added to the suspense. I often didn't know if she was there to help or hurt, but whenever she popped up the hair on the back of my neck went up.

The only flaw I found was something that many adventure games have difficulty with, and that is the case where I've missed something and the game grinds to a halt.

For example, I'm supposed to crouch down and jump out a window to get to the next area, but I don't see that, and I'm left hanging around with nothing happening while I try to figure out the incomplete step. It doesn't happen very often, but it is worth mentioning. I think it is an unavoidable attribute of any game that has a little complexity to it.

The effects are well done, particularly the lighting, water reflections, and smoke. If you want to play this game at a very high resolution or have an older graphics card, it will let you scale down these effects for a good balance between speed and appearance.

There is also an expansion pack available. Make sure you don't buy only that one, because the expansion pack will not work without installing the base game first.

The controls are fairly standard for a first-person shooter, and use the mouse for easy movement in conjunction with the keyboard for more complex commands. I didn't find it hard to navigate through at all, which is great because sometimes three dimensional games can make the simple act of walking difficult.

There are also plenty of cheat codes available with a quick Google search in case you get stuck and decide you need one. Some folks don't like them, which is fine, but I tend to use them when I get stuck as I think it is better than just turning it off and not finishing the game.

If you like first person shooters with atmosphere and a good back story, this is the game for you!

Highly recommended!

Sean P. Logue, 2008

A certain kind of creepy...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

...It's the kind that sticks with you, even after you've completed the game, reeling from the jarring denouement; after you've climbed into bed for the night and turned out your bedside lamp, because it's then that you start to see the ghostly countenance of Alma Wade flickering in and out of your mind's eye, and if you have the heart of someone who can emotionally involve his or herself in a good story--a heart unhardened by cynicism and unspoiled by desensitization--you can feel her anguish and hatred and the fear it instills.

Certainly the gameplay is solid. Always frantic and seldom predictable, due mostly to the outstanding AI--the best I've ever seen in an FPS--even though the slow motion mechanic can be a crutch at times and should have been handled more akin to Max Payne's slow-mo: that is to say, getting more "Bullet Time" for each enemy you kill rather than having it gradually recharge when not in use. Furthermore, ammo could have been made more scarce to up the challenge since melee attacks are an option when push comes to shove, if you will. Still, pulling off impressive combinations of marksmanship and melee in slow-mo is supremely satisfying.

Enough about the gameplay. It's a fun game to play. What really makes F.E.A.R. deserving of your hard-earned cash and dusty shelf space is the game's oppresively eerie atmosphere and the execution of the story--which, by itself, isn't going to win any awards, but remains a sufficiently twisted and macabre vehicle for the characters. Alma (the terrifying little girl) in particular, because this is primarily her story, and her anguish at the injustice of her existence is palpable, particularly in the latter half of the game as things begin to come full circle. Coupled with her merciless and seemingly limitless psychic abilities, you have one of the most piteous and fearsome anti-heroes in all fictional media.

When Monolith tries to frighten you with scripted events, sometimes they try the Doom 3 tactic--jumping out and going BOO!--but more often the scripted events are quite chilling and provide obscure hints about what this whole business with a psychic commander and a freaky little girl is all about.

A common complaint I've heard about F.E.A.R. is that too much is left open to speculation, and when I hear these kinds of complaints abouts works of fiction--horror in particular--I'm often perplexed. It seems that no one appreciates subtlety, mystery, and insinuation anymore. In spite of such complaints, I argue that what we have in F.E.A.R. is an excellent example of storytelling in the video game medium that the medium can truly call its own. The use of dramatic irony at times is positively delightful. ("We're giving up on Jankowski. Hopefully he just bumped his head and is wandering around the docks with amnesia.") The game's publisher heralds it as a cinematic experience, which, I think, is selling the game short by judging its worth according to standards of an older and quite different medium. No. Like the Half-Life series, F.E.A.R. is a brilliant example of how video games can, without being too reliant on cutscenes or lengthy reading, convey story in an involving and intriguing way like only video games can.

Like Playing A Horror/Suspense Movie

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Quite a few people have criticized F.E.A.R. for having repetitive settings, and I can understand why they might feel that way. That having been said, however, this game is not about variety of settings. It is not like those games where you inch to the edge of a cliff so you can look around and say "purdy". If you want a game like that, go elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, the graphical look and feel of this game is stunning. It's just not a photo gallery of an experience. It's a horror movie.

In horror movies, the setting is established early on, and the rules are laid down under which the horror unfolds. Within those confines, some truly creepy things happen, and I have more than once jumped in my seat when something does occur. (Much to the amusement of my wife.) There are moments when I feel anticipation building up and dread walking around the next corner. THAT is what this game is about, and it does it masterfully.

THERE'S NOTHING TO FEAR BUT F.E.A.R. ITSELF

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: June 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Wow! I just finished this game a few minutes ago and my body STILL feels a bit chilled! I have to say that I was really impressed with this game, especially the ending. As for everything else, I'll break those down below:

GRAPHICS: 4/5 STARS. I don't value graphics all *that* highly, but the lighting effects (and others), were absolutely wonderful. And I'm not even playing on a fancy computer (it's just a Dell Latitude D620, by no means a gaming machine).

SOUND/MUSIC: 4.5/5 STARS. There isn't much real MUSIC in this game, but the sound effects are definitely creepy enough to set the setting. Especially the high-pitched "Psycho" type sounds when something really scary happens to you.

STORY: 4/5 STARS. To be honest I didn't pay as much attention to the story as I should have (voice mails and laptop audio), but I still got the gist of it all. Guess I'll have to play through it again, but I won't mind that. Basically, if you take Hannibal Lecter and the girl from "The Ring" in this video game, add a creepy storyline revolving around the paranormal and a birth gone wrong, this will equal the ingredients for one helluva story. If nothing else, the paranormal aspect of the game is so refreshing after games with plots like, "experiment gone awry" and "kill every Nazi in sight".
I beat the game in about 20 hours, which seemed pretty adequate to me.

FRIGHT FACTOR: 4.5/5 STARS: This is where this game truly shines and probably what you'll remember it best for. I remember getting a few chills in Doom 3, but F.E.A.R. had moments where I was CHILLING--especially towards the end. The scariest level by far was "Alice Wade" and then the last level.
Remember in movies like "Predator 2" where guys just shoot in every direction because they don't know what's attacking them? I had more than a few of those moments. Sometimes you'll even find yourself shooting at things you know you can't kill!
There is blood in this game, but unlike Doom 3, it is used sparingly and not gratuitously for maximum effect.
The fright factor is definitely increased by playing this at night and with the volume turned up, but even in the daytime you might let out a yelp or two.

ENEMY AI: 4.5/5 STARS: The second thing I think people will remember this game for is the AI. In the course of the game, I've seen my enemies crouch, roll, run, toss grenades, flank, low-crawl, jump from a higher level to a lower level, shoot around corners (exposing very little of their body), and call reinforcements. These guys don't play around! But it makes for some great firefights and I'm just dying to play again on a harder difficulty to see if I can still waste them.

WEAPONS: 4/5 STARS: Pretty much standard FPS fare. You have your hand guns, your machine guns and shotguns, then finally your weapons of mass destruction. But what was really impressive was what these weapons do to your enemies! When you shoot a guy in this game you really feel like you shot someone (or close enough). I've pegged soldiers to the wall, caused them to fall off railings, bend over railings, get knocked down and then struggle to get back up again, and last but not least, just simply skeletonize them!

NEGATIVES: Like all games, this one is not perfect. Even after downloading a 400MB game update I still noticed that my proximity mines had a consistent habit of floating up into the sky. Occasionally the enemy soldiers will get stuck. The level-layout is a bit linear, which can be a good thing if you hate getting lost. And finally, the levels themselves have redundant textures--apparently everyone in this world reads the same two magazines and there's a cruel office policy about personalizing your cubicle. Oh, and coming from a military background, I found it amusing that so many weapons (sensitive items, beyond a doubt) are just lying around in offices, unattended.
But to make sure I'm clear, all these negatives are really just nit-picky things.

OVERALL: 4.5/5 STARS: I was going to give this 4/5 stars, but the ending was so well done and so DIFFERENT that I can't just shrug it off without giving credit where credit is due. I haven't been this involved in a FPS since Half-Life (can't compare it to HL2, haven't played it yet). Simply put, if you like first-person shooters or the horror genre then you owe it to yourself to play this great game!

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