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A great game ... until the end

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The graphics are awe inspiring. The game play is smooth. The weapons are fun. The mood is downright creepy. The AI is fairly decent. It's everything that it has been hyped to be.

But as you play, and play, and play, you find something missing ... boss fights. And then you get near the end and that ammo stockpile you've been saving up for a boss fight vanishes and you start over with a pistol. And then again. But hey, it's okay that you have no more cool weapons. Why? Because there IS no boss fight at the end. Well, okay, so there kind of is, forced to be done with a pistol, and easy as sin. It's so stupidly simple that it's very hard to actually count as a boss fight.

The first 90 percent of the game is just great. It's the ending that just really kills it. It leaves you feeling cheated, like they just forgot to include the actual final level or something.

And, of course, there are a number of annoying bugs, even after the patches so far. But then for a PC game, that's expected these days. (As sad as that is.)

If you've got some serious gaming hardware (which you'll need to run it with decent graphics settings) then buy it. It's a great game. But be prepared for one seriously anti-climactic ending, which seems to come all too soon.

Great Game play but too short and slightly random

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

F.E.A.R looked as if it was going to be awesome and it didn't dissapoint in the early stages. The surreal interludes were chilling and very well done. The enemy AI worked well but had a very half-life feel about them (as did the graphics). Typically you would hear the enemy before you saw them so you got chance to quick save before the action began.

The "bullet time" was lifted straight out of Max Payne and was near essential towards the end of the game. It was nicely explained as "lightening reflexes" but I prefer the "Assasin Rush" from Fable or "Force Speed" from the Jedi Knight series, where you move faster rather than them moving slower. Of course Fable also has the "slow time spell" for good measure...

As the game went on there was more of the 10 minutes skulking around corridors followed by 2 minutes of intense action. There was a good mix of puzzles but the best part was where the level designers bothered to give you choices as to how to approach the enemy. This didn't happen enough but when it did it was really satisfying to do. One particular example was a place where if you followed the obvious route you would walk through a door into an ambush, but if you back-tracked you could find a ventilation duct which brought you out above the enemy and it was like a duck shoot - brilliant!

For me the worst part was the end, particularly as it came after only 16 hours of of non-hurried play. It was just like the team ran out of steam (or money). At the very end you are dumped in a room with just you, your pistol and the end of game baddy. Having managed to do the whole game without pressing shift (which makes your aim more accurate) It took me about 10 attempts to realise this was the only way to inflict enough damage before you were got - lame or what!

To summarise, fantastic graphics, good game play and AI, good mixture of intensity and anticipation but looses the plot (literally) towards the end.

boring shooter, creepy chick

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm only about 4 levels into this right now. I have a tendancy to buy most shooters when they come out. When I first bought this, I took it home and played for a night or two, irritated by the card requirements. I have a Radeon 9800. The next weekend I realized that all the jumpiness and white walls were due to the fact that I hadn't updated my driver in a while, so I did and it runs very well now. As a shooter, it's pretty run of the mill. The slo-mo effect is pretty cool, but I rarely use it. I prefer to simply play with more stealth and forget the extra key-strokes to get the job done. I'm sure, soon (as I progress through the game), I will need to use this feature more. The one thing, though, that is kind of creeping me out is the little girl who is seen throughout the game. I don't want to sound like a pansy, but I play this game from 12-3am (when I have time), when my house is silent. I stay up late at night because I have a newborn, and am constantly 'listening' for him to wakeup. There are no lights on, I live in the middle of nowhere, and I just have a creeped out feeling when I see her run across the screen. I know this is laughable, but I have gone to being creeped out to simply irked by her. I simply don't understand the significance of her in this game --- yet. But from reading other reviews, I don't think I ever will. The multi-player is terrible -- like playing doom. While I have conveyed my late-night pansiness to you, I have to admit that this freak element has engrosed me a little more into this game. As I said at the start, I buy every shooter when they arrive in stores -- seriously, I have them all. I have a bad habit of becoming bored with them and moving on before completion. This is the first time, though, that I have had some inclination to see what this is all about ...

Nice graphic but boring story.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When I get this game about 2 weeks ago, my computer had P4 3Gz HT, 1GB RAM, ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB AGP and a 19" LCD monitor. I barely ran this with this configuration under 800x600 resolution with minimum graphic setting. After playing for 2 days, I just can't stand for the low resolution so I decided to upgrade my graphic card to ATI X800 XT 256MB AGP. X800XT and XL are on sale now, you can get X800XL around (...)and X800XT All-in-wonder for $270(on Zipzoomfly.com until 12/4). If your computer has PCI-Express interface, don't hesitate to upgrade 7800 or X1800 ((...)). Technically, this game requires a 256MB graphic card to enable most of graphic features, so if you don't have 258MB graphic card, upgrade it before you buy this game.

Based on the new hardware configuration, I used the performance test to determine the graphic setting: 1024x768, maxima graphic setting, and software-shadow off. (Software-shadow will use a lot of resource so it is recommended to turn off). The test result is satisfactory (50% above 40 frames per second). The graphic didn't go smoothly on 1280x1024 so I decided to change it back to 1024x768.

Overall, the best thing about this game is about the visual effects when you are shooting something, you will enjoy the smoke, explosions, bloods, seeing bullets flying in SlowMo. The AI about this game is great. The enemies will try to flank you while you are hiding behind the wall, which is a lot of FUN.

The story-line itself is poor comparing to Half Life2. Half Life 2 is still so far best First Person Shooting game ever to me with good story line (it makes sense to me and you know what you are doing and why you are doing this.) and outstanding graphic. In FEAR, all I do is shooting and killing the enemies. The little girl and ghosts are supposed to be scary but they are NOT AT ALL. I could only play this game for at most two hours a day because it bores me after killing again and again.

Looks awesome at medium resolution

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have a really lousy (GeForce 6600GT 128MB) graphic card.
but at the medium resolution,which the game hardware detection
adviced me to run, it doesn't slow down below 75 fps,and it looks just awesome.You don't have to buy a top notch graphic card to play this game.
I'm wandering,though how this game will look on video cards like
6800GT or 6800 Ultra.Wish i could afford one of these.
I gave this game 4 stars,because the environment is not as good as in Half Life 2.Endless maze of coridoors.
But all the weapons,shooting and fighting simply the best i've ever seen.

Definitely one of the best FPSs ever.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

FEAR is simply one of the best first-person shooters I've ever played. It combines a creepy (and at times jolting) atmosphere with incredible gun fights with great particle effects and amazing graphics. I almost completely agree with everything that the review at http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/fear/review.html says, so I'll refer you to that review rather than rewrite it. My only difference is that I really liked the story even though some things go unexplained (hopely on purpose for a sequel).

now I just need a video card....

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

FEAR single player is pretty darned cool - definately worth the price of admission. Multiplayer seems to run pretty well with DSL (i.e. not as demanding as Quake 4). IMHO FEAR multiplayer is not as quite as good as my favorites (Quake 3 and CoD). Not bad mind you, just not outstanding. Thus the 4/5 overall rating.
FEAR comes with a niffty utility to scope out your video card ... it laughed at mine (256Mb Radeon X600) and configured everything for lowest settings. I've stopped playing about 1/2 way though the single player - want to save the rest of the game for a better video card.

Short, but sweet....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm not the hardcore gamer but when I saw this I had to play it. Overall, the game is different and sometimes not in a good way. You can read everyone's reviews and basically get an overall idea of what it's about so I won't repeat it. The only complaint I have is that the game was pretty easy to beat, not really that challenging and the ending was not as good as it could have been. I was expecting a better "revelation"! On the other hand, the multiplayer mode is a lot of fun, respawning is quick and the action is better than the story mode. I highly recommend trying it! Overall, a good, not great game, but worth checking out.

FEAR...if you got the muscle to run it

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

FEAR is your standard FPS type game with a few options thrown in..although not quite revolutionary in terms of it's own bag of tricks, it still manages to improve a few gaming innovations we've seen in the past. I did enjoy the game, beating it in two days which is a big letdown.

To run FEAR you need to have a muscle PC. If you have a 128mb video card, you'll have to think about getting a more powerful videocard, somewhere around the 256mb to 512mb GEforce cards. This is a must. On top of this, you'll need some extra memory to run this smoothly, a 2gb memory should do it, and at least a 3.0ghz processor. Now...just to warn you, these recommended upgrades I mentioned will only run the game to at least medium texture quality with shaders. No doubt the game shows some potential in the graphics department. Lighting is well done..thanks to the Direct 3D Shaders capability. I still think the Unreal Engine is still the best graphics engine out there, followed by a close second from Half-Life's Source-engine. One major gripe about FEAR's graphics engine is it's complete lack of curves. Shapes lack curves. Most of what you'll see are sharp corners with no smoothing. Objects and corridors are boxey and completely linear making the environment seem amateurish compared to Unreal or Half-Life's dynamic and smooth graphics.

FEAR attempts to create a suspense-horror FPS type of environment. It tries but fails to capture the horror-effect found in two classic games i.e. System Shock 2 and Clive Barker's Undying. A few scary moments do come up like the image of a child standing by the corner in a dark corridor but these are effects that we've seen and have grown accustomed to after watching The Ring and The Grudge. Nothing new. The game starts out with a scary suspense roll but eventually grows stale and predictable as you get deeper in the game.

Gameplay is a mix. Again, nothing revolutionary but like improvements from effects we've seen from other games. One effect is the bullet-time effect ala Max Payne and Matrix. It does it with some fantastic display of graphics that actually shows a slowdown in real-time, an improvement to a revolutionary idea from Max Payne. But still, this grows stale as the game progresses.

My biggest gripe is the length of the game. It's short. A novice can easily cut his way through the game in four days; for an expert, this is a one day affair.

So it is a good game? I would say YES. But you need to have a powerful PC to get this running with decent framerates. Is it worth the $49.99? Yes but don't expect much in the way of story development and game time. Eye-candy is worth the money you pay plus the few minutes of scare-factor. My advice...wait for the price to go down.

Outstanding game -- big time hardware requirements

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I just finished this game last week. This game is one of the best fps games I've played. I don't want to compare it to HL2 because they are equally great and a bit different. The storyline in FEAR is outstanding. Rarely does a fps game make the hair on the back of my neck stand up and give me chills, but this one did.

I gave the game 4 stars overall because it can't be played in it's full glory on most computers. I played the game on an Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB RAM, and a Radeon 9800 PRO 128 MB video card. I kept having to tone down the resolution and detail. I was able to get through the game at 800x600 with low detail, but still had some lock-ups. I would like to see it on a Radeon x850.

Overall, great game. Definately not for kids. Worth the hardware headaches.

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