"A game like no other, F.E.A.R. delivers a near flawless hybrid of horror and intense action."

When I first saw this game, I was immediately intrigued. What I knew about it was shrouded in mystery, but what I did hear about it were good things. No, I finally bought, played, and was amazed by the shear velocity of everything in the game. Now, I feel inclined to share my fair opinion of this great game.

GRAPHICS 9.5/10

First off, I just can't believe the other scores people have been giving the graphics section of this game-scores were sometimes lower then they deserve, and the justifications for the sub-par score seem silly. Let me assure you: The graphics of F.E.A.R. are godly.

Seriously, these graphics rank right up there with the big boys like Half-Life2 and Doom3. They are that good. The gun in your hand, the opponents coming to kill you, the background graphics of your environment, the horrific terrors that attempt to stop your mission, EVERYTHING looks gorgeous and smooth. I mean, if food was graphics, F.E.A.R. would be serving the 5-star food. As you might know, this game uses a lot horror elements in this game. Well they are defiantly assisted by the amazing use of lights and shadows to keep you guessing at what is around the next corner. Lights will flicker on and off, dark alley ways will look menacing, siren and strobe likes will confuse you, blood and corpses will look creepy, and smoke and fog will add confusing and intense elements in the game.

All in all, the graphics engine(which also uses the Havok engine) are nice, clear, and perfect game. But this game doesn't get a full 10 for one reason: for the better part of the game, during the middle of it, you are in the same environment for hours, and you keep looking at the SAME office, hallways, chairs, desk setups, hell, it's may be beautiful graphics, but if I have to stare at the same environment for a few hours, it will get a little annoying.

Bottom line- The graphics are spectacular in everything they do, but some environment designs are overly repetitive.

MUSIC/SOUND- 10/10

Wow o wow. From the horrific and creepy soundtrack(that admittedly doesn't place as much as it should) to the VA to even the SFX, the sound of F.E.A.R. has got it going on.(not Stacy's mom)

Let's start off. Throughout the whole game, there will be parts with a guy (I won't say who for spoilers sake) who you are tracking who will constantly menace and taunt you and your feeble efforts with his psychic abilities. The voice work is creepy for all of the creepy people, and helpful and ok for your allies and good guys, so it fits right in. The background music track will change in different levels, and the music sets the pace for the creepy atmosphere of the game. And throughout a good part of the game, there will be some instances where something spooky will happen, and it will be followed by a sharp, ear-splitting sound, which will help to creep you out.

Bottom line-Basically, no complaints here The SFX are good, the VA is good, and the creepy music is good. There are a few blank spots where the track doesn't play, but it usually does and is good.

STORY-7.5/10

Now here comes an interesting thing to rate: the story behinds F.E.A.R. is generally interesting, but unfortunately hard to follow and a little vague.

The game starts out with your superiors putting you on the force despite you being a relatively new guy, but you have showed impressive reflexes and field results, so you're in. The force you are on is the F.E.A.R., First Encounter Assault Recon, with the objective to search, investigate, and kill paranormal activity. You as the nameless hero are then sent in to help track and stop a, well, madman, as he has invaded a facility and is killing people. But he's not alone: a huge force of elite clone soldiers are ready to stop your attempts. But beyond that, you don't know much else...and you basically won't for, well, a long time.

That's where this part suffers: the pacing and clear understanding of the overall story isn't great. After the opening part I described, the rest of the story is basically made clear to you from phone messages around random office buildings, laptops, and a few snippets of info from your superiors and your psychic taunter. Now this is cool in all, learning the story by hearing about lab accidents and stuff over recordings, but unless you write down everything you hear or have a really good memory, you won't really remember what was all said. Even then, everything said is vague and hard to understand how everything fits together. At the very end, things finally make some sense, but you might have to sit down and remember all the things you heard during the game to make sense of it all.

But once you do, you are treated with a pretty cool story and plot, as well as a great plot twist; it's just the time you will spend getting to that part will be mostly confusing. Also, while the story is cool, you might notice a lot of the aspects of the game's story are taken from other sources: the little creepy girl on the front of the box is very much like Samara from the Ring, and there are many other themes taken from other sources. And finally, a last complaint, the games play length is decent...It could have been a tad longer, and it seems it ends abruptly. Perhaps that is because they are going to release F.E.A.R.2, which will pick up where F.E.A.R. left off.

Bottom line-Although a great story with an awesome plot twist, it's not paced as well as it could have been.

Controls-N/A

Like most PC FPS games, the controls are completely customizable, even if you don't like the ones the game have prepared for you. But there are a lot of helpful controls, such as tilting to aim, and you have a number of martial art moves, like slide kicks, scissor kicks, and roundhouses. And these moves are very effective.

GAMEPLAY-9/10

Now, arguably the most important part of a game, the game play is stellar in this title.

First of all, one of things that people have been raving about with this game is the A.I. Un-FRIGGIN-believable. The A.I. is, without a doubt, one of the best, if not the best to be found in any game ever. Hell, I would say it is the best. This is one of the few games where it feels like all of your opponents are really truly human, humans that are trained in elite combat skills, skills to take you down. And they can, will, and often do.

Let's put it this way: gone are the days of 007, Halo, and whatnot games where your opponents stand out in the front of the room, presenting easy targets, and who perform stupid actions like run right towards you while you are machine-gunning them. Hell, in most FPS games, you can just run out in front of a handful of enemies, cap them with whatever gun you all holding, and be on your merry way. Try that in F.E.A.R., and you will just end up with a corpse riddled with bullets. Your enemies are SMART. They can detect you coming if you make to much noise or motion, and as soon as they do, they enter their trained combat positions, and waste no time firering upon you. They will immediately seek cover, and they begin making plans to flank you, help with suppressive fire, and toss grenades. And they are very good at all of these things, especially the grenade throwing and flanking. But once they reach cover, you better too. In fact, you will quickly learn to be strategic in using stealth, flanking, and covering skills. But here's where your opponents really seem human. There have been plenty of FPS game where your opponents seek cover, but most of them have a "timer" system: They will stay behind the cover, peek out and fire, re-cover, wait 5 seconds, peek out again, repeat. But not here: I would wait behind cover, peeking out myself and wait for the enemy to come out first or change position. But they don't; they wait like me...they KNOW I'm waiting for them, and they aren't dumb enough to fall for your tricks. In fact, it's usually me who makes the first move, and then they will try to capitalize on your action. And while you are waiting, your enemies will quietly and quickly send unit's to flank and kill you, and unless you are fully prepared, they have a very good chance of doing so.

And the elite squad you are facing won't be afraid to plot against you, and even verbally taunt you. You will hear: "Grenade out!", "Flank him!", "He's trying to flank!", "Get down!", "Where is he?", "What's should I do?", "Shut the **** up!", or "Go go go!" Or when they see you: "****!", "Die mother****er!", and "Oh ****!", just to name a few. So in short, the greatest thing about this game is by far the fact that it feels like you are facing real, smart, humans, instead of boring, run-of-the-day drones that make excellent cannon fodder. Now the only complaint about this is through the whole game, you will be facing the same type of enemy. Seriously, I think there were like a total of like 8-10 variety of foes to face of them, and only 50% of those 8-10 will you actually see more than like 5 times. So you will be finding yourself facing the same enemies over, and over again. I would be way more annoyed by this if it wasn't for the fact of the amazing A.I., but it's still a little annoying.

If you are looking for puzzles in a shooter, though, then you have come to the wrong place. There are next to none puzzles in this game, so it might disappoint some if they were expecting it, but it didn't really bother me. The gunplay in the game is smooth, and firefights as you can imagine are intense as can be.

But now just as good as the amazing A.I. is the fear element in this game. If it wasn't made obvious by the title, this game can get scary. And it does. A lot. Really, really well. Through the course of this game, I must have suffered at least a dozen mini heart attacks, I kid you not. Things will jump out at you, make you feel tense, and you will be so paranoid that you may just glance around behind your comfy computer chair to make sure you are alone. It does that good of a job. I can't imagine someone not getting jumpy or spooked at least once in this game. It's that good.

The last thing I want to say was that I was disappointed that there were no real boss battles in this game. There are some that could be classified as mini-bosses, but they aren't too hard to kill. I was hoping to at least face one huge or grotesque opponent, but I guess not. Also, environments are kinda linear, but somehow confusing at the same time. And, I might add, you are only aloud to hold 3 guns at a time. While I've heard plenty of reasons of why this isn't that bad or that big of a deal, it still can be annoying...I don't want to have to choose between the multi-rocket launcher, the particle gun, the penetrator, the machine gun AND the dual pistols! I want them all! It isn't that big of a deal, but it can be annoying in some parts of the game.

Bottom line- The A.I. is the most impressive to date in a game, it's damn creepy as hell, and gunplay and such is as smooth as silk. The lack of boss battles and a variety of enemies to face is a bit of a letdown, though.

MULTIPLAYER-8/10

Multiplayer is a pretty entertaining event for F.E.A.R. It has your basic wans, and has some really good maps.

Online is free, and will encourage you to have a Punkbuster to go with it(fear not, it's free also and comes when you try to play online). The online has you basic modes-Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, slow mode(where you can use your reflex-powers) etc. I can't remeber the exact amount of maps, but I know it's over 10+. The maps are pretty large and vary in location and design. There are plenty of sniper spots, combat areas, and other strategic points to be found in each map. Every weapon in the game is included, and you can pick which weapon you want to start with(Multi-rocket launcher, Particle weapon and repearting cannon can only be obatined in-map) and you can cahnge to a new weapon if you want each time to respawn. The melee attacks are also included.

BOTTOMLINE- It works, it's fun, and it's free. Good stuff.

REPLAY, BUY OR RENT?4.5/5

With amazing A.I., spooky elements, and at least playable online mode, this game can keep you play with it for a long time, and I would defiantly recommend a buy. If you are looking for something more to do then replay the game afterwards, you might want a rent, though.

FINAL BOTTOMLINE-9/10(not an average)

While this game didn't get a perfect score, I HIGHLY recommend it. F.E.A.R. is a fast, terrifying, and challenging game that excels in scares, skills, and visuals and presentations. Do what you must to play this game; just don't miss out on this amazing experience.

+Once understood, interesting story
+Best A.I. opponents ever
+Gorgeous graphics
+Great sound
+Great fear factor
+Fun multiplayer, is free
+a flat out fun, action packed time
-story is not well paced/confusing
-repetitive environments/enemies in some spots

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/24/06, Updated 12/18/06