F.E.A.R.

"F.E.A.R., because it sounds better that G.H.O.S.T.B.U.S.T.E.R.S."

First Encounter Assault Recon, aptly abbreviated as F.E.A.R., is Monolith's attempt to combine a first-person shooter with elements of popular horror films, notably The Ring. The little girl on the box doesn't exactly reek of originality after all. At first glance, F.E.A.R. offers some very slick visuals, an eerie atmosphere and some pretty graphic scenes. Throw in Quake-style shotgun madness, and you've got a classic bloodbath of a shooter. Or at least, that's how it worked in the past.

F.E.A.R. is a top-secret branch of the United States Army created to deal with paranormal incidents, sort of like Ghostbusters with shotguns. The characters in the game tend to treat the F.E.A.R. Team as little more than Ghostbusters with shotguns anyway, so that makes sense. The latest incident concerns a certain Paxton Fettel, a telepath with the power to control an army of super-soldiers known as the ‘Replica', and who is causing some havoc in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Players assume the role of the unnamed protagonist, the new Point Man to the F.E.A.R. Team. Taking a huge page from Half-Life, the Point Man is a mute hero. Nothing is known about our Point Man apart from the fact that he has superhuman reflexes, and that Fettel is the first incident for him to apply his abnormal abilities. Granted, if I were up against an army of telepathically-controlled super-soldiers, I'd want to have superhuman abilities too.

Moving back to Fettel, it appears that a research organisation known as the Armacham Technology Corporation has been involved with some government research concerning telepathy and projects designed to create whole armies led by a telepathic commander. Armacham seems to have made a huge stuff-up resulting in this big mess. It is up to the F.E.A.R. Team to investigate this incident, neutralise the Replica and eliminate Fettel before he does something really silly with his telepathic army.

The game begins with some simple investigations on the whereabouts of Fettel and introducing the player to the basic controls of the game. Players can do the usual walking, crouching and precision aiming as well as basic interaction with levers and doors. Additionally, to simulate the superhuman reflexes of the Point Man, players have the “Slo-Mo” ability, in the same vein as the “bullet time” mode in games such as Max Payne and Enter the Matrix. For a limited duration, players can slow down the action around them. While the player does not move any faster, the slower pace of time allows players to make crucial decisions and perform pre-emptive attacks on enemy groups; risks that would otherwise be suicidal.

F.E.A.R. necessitates the use of Slo-Mo for obvious reasons: the AI in the game is one of the most cohesive ever designed. Working together in squads of four or more, the Replica soldiers keep in constant radio communication, indicating their status, sightings of the player and their intended actions. Individual AI is superb, seen in the survival instincts of the enemies. Rather than run out into the open or do something amazingly stupid, the AI will be very cautious when engaging the player in combat. Troops will hide behind cover and issue flanking orders, suppress the player's position and throw grenades with stunning accuracy, forcing the player to be more creative and take more risks, especially in using Slo-Mo. Aside from well-trained super-soldiers, the Replica also have access to armoured body-suits, bipedal cannon-armed vehicles and even invisible assassins.

Naturally, the player has a respectable arsenal of weapons to combat these threats. F.E.A.R. combines beefed up real-life weapons with equipment heavily influenced by games like Quake. Starting with humble weapons such as pistols, assault rifles and shotguns, players can find more exotic weapons such as a particle beam rifle, auto-cannon, and even a nail-gun-like weapon that can stick Replica soldiers onto walls. Complementing this are several grenades and explosive devices, and a stash of medkits that can be used with the press of a button to quickly restore some health.

Unusual for first-person shooters is the inclusion of melee combat. The Point Man is proficient in martial arts, and apart from using his firearms as melee weapons, the Point Man is also capable of executing devastating physical attacks. By using a combination of attack and movement buttons, players can perform roundhouse, sliding and bicycle kicks.

One might wonder what on earth a player would need martial arts for in a first-person shooter. Unlike most other FPS games, F.E.A.R. predominately takes place in close-quarter indoor environments. The Point Man must explore extensive office buildings, apartments and research labs, characterised by small, crowded rooms and complex corridors. With combat rarely taking place more than fifteen metres away, it is easy to see how intense firefights can become, and with the Slo-Mo ability players need to throw in everything they can think of to overcome tenacious enemy AI.

Unlike Half-Life, F.E.A.R. does not feature a fluid single player story; rather it divides its levels into ‘missions'. Unfortunately, this tends to break up the impetus of plot developments, and the missions aren't really missions as much as they are excuses to load another section of bland corridors to chase Fettel through. This is sadly echoed by the repeating objectives of “Eliminate Fettel”, which is clearly unattainable. The background to the game's events is discovered by the Point Man listening to voice mail messages in numerous employee offices and laptops, which offer fragments of internal dissent, disaster control and hints to the nature of the science-project-gone-wrong. Added to this is the enigmatic Fettel, who frequently appears out of nowhere claiming that he “knows who you are” and how “he was there”; offering more puzzles for the player as they hunt him down.

What makes F.E.A.R. unique is its use of “horror” scenes. Initially, these start off as eerie coincidences, such as flickering lights. These soon escalate to unknown radio interference, sounds of a child's laughter, rats scurrying away from a corridor and whole squads of Special Forces being immolated from an unknown source. Fettel and other characters appear and disappear into ash, and the game constantly meddles with the player's mind. At the top of these mind tricks are whole hallucination scenes. Walking through certain sections of a level triggers off strange, alternate settings, usually some sort of medical laboratory. Players “float” through these scenes, often with horrific elements such as blood-stained walls or even a pool of blood as the ceiling. Occasionally players are attacked by ghosts in these hallucinations, which they can counter by firing their weapons into these images. However, the hallucinations disappear as quickly as they come, giving the impression that the player has been firing into thin air. It's very hard to play the game without being tripped out.

Unfortunately, there isn't much depth to the game. For everything the game plays on, it fails on some fundamentals of first-person shooters. By far the most disappointing element is that lack of an engaging environment. While the game features an eerie soundtrack and everything that a horror film should have, the level design is uninspiring, featuring bland corridors, messy rooms and more bland corridors. Most of the game takes place in a single office building, and fighting the same soldiers and chasing the same guy through the same corridors gets boring pretty quickly. The gore, decal and ragdoll effects offer some pretty gruesome opportunities to “decorate” the walls, but once you see one blood-stained room, you've seen them all.

The weapons, mentioned above, don't provide much variety, and often act as cookie-cutters. Due to the indoor environments and devastating power of weaponry, players can easily go through the game using one or two weapons, notably the shotgun, with ammo easily replenished by enemy drops. The constantly recharging Slo-Mo ability makes combat a bit too easy once players get the hang of tapping into it.

Speaking of combat, the fact that the Point Man goes solo in every mission is quite disappointing. Despite being assisted by an elite assault team and backed up by Special Forces, the game always finds some reason to separate the player, be it by some explosion creating an impassable barrier, a helicopter being shot down or some supernatural force annihilating the entire strike team. Not only that, while the plot develops intriguingly, the player's character doesn't change at all. Despite having hallucinations of screaming hospitals, bloody walls, little girls and ghosts, none of the NPCs in the game seem to notice. I mean, if my point man was spinning around shooting at imaginary objects, I would be quite worried; but the F.E.A.R. Team are apparently used to this kind of thing.

The multiplayer aspect of the game is fair, but nothing special. Players can pick from several game modes, but the imbalance in weapons makes multiplayer games very generic and reminiscent of the early Quake games. While it is nice to see ragdoll and gore effects in multiplayer, it just isn't fun.

Most importantly, the game is very short. A decent gamer can go through the game in just over 20 hours. While the horror scenes and storyline are particularly notable, F.E.A.R. tends to re-use the same shock and horror techniques throughout the game. Spooky as they are, and innovative as the gameplay is, F.E.A.R. doesn't come off as much more than a one-stop horror flick.

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Replay: 4/10
Overall: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/30/06