Sunday 23 Sep 2007

Anyone that has watched The Ring would know how scary it would be if one had to encounter such a scary looking lady in a virtual world. First Person gaming has always been about the action, which this game has stacks of, and in this case we have a game that oozes with the “scary” factor.

You are a rookie who joins the First Encounter Assault Recon (F.E.A.R.) unit. This unit is qualified in confronting paranormal encounters and ridding the world of its horror. The horror it presents is more on the psychological side of things, not as bad as Silent Hill might be, but good enough for you to get shivers down your spine when you see a person walking past the corridor door ahead and when rushing there that person has vanished…yeah, that kind of scary. F.E.A.R. kind of makes one think that this game plays in New Zealand, there is no first person rugby in it, but it is just so “grey!” You encounter corridor after corridor and although this can get a bit repetitive the gunplay makes up for it.

Guns galore

First of all the Xbox 360 version now has a dual gun machine pistol which is a nice extra but it is a bit sad that the PC’s expansion extraction did not make it. You handle this shooter as you would handle any other, with the left analog being used for strafing and the right for direction. The right trigger pulls your gun’s trigger and the left is for throwing grenades, mines and anything else that is explosive. There is more than enough variety in the gun types department, from machine guns to shotguns to lazer guns to grenade launchers and many others. One extra bit that this game has is “bullet-time” (or slow motion) which is just plain exceptional! Once you start shooting away in slow-mo you realise just how good this game actually is, graphically, as each and every bullet, drop of blood, shattered glass and everything else (like chairs, papers and computers) are flying around in bullet-time.

Now the thing that F.E.A.R. has done right in this next-gen era that the other developers have been having a hard time with thus far is the AI (artificial intelligence). These baddies are tough and smart on top of that. I would throw a grenade at a group who would in return run away and on top of that flank me. They seem to work in groups and actually communicate with each other, watching each others’ backs.

Multiplayer wins out

The online multiplayer aspect of this game is awesome, better than the single player campaign to be honest. However, with games such as Gears of War out there it is often difficult to find a game to play with others these days and with Halo 3 around the corner you might be the only one online.

So where did this game go wrong? Nowhere really, it’s just not any better than anything else out there and is an average decent shooter. Nothing less, nothing more.

If you’re looking for a masterclass in frenetic blasting, majestic bullet-time and some fiendishly tough AI baddies to face off against, F.E.A.R. is unparalleled. However, is it worth paying full price for a game that sees it’s PC counterpart getting a bit extra? I fear not…

Pros: The bullet-time is amazing; incredible AI that needs to be seen to be believed.
Cons: Just your average shooter; the tone set for the game is very dull and repetitive.

Rating:
Contributor:	Dawid

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