"F.E.A.R.: The review"

After playing through all difficulty levels I decided to read some reviews on F.E.A.R.

I was much more disappointed in the reviews than the game to be blunt. Some people made the game to be a revolutionary take-over of the FPS world, while others made it sound like junk. If you havent played the game, you like FPSs, and enjoy a challenge then go buy F.E.A.R.. In the end it didnt live up to the hype, but it didnt fall too short of them. Basically combine resident evil atmosphere and half-life game play, toss in some uncanny AI (on higher difficulty levels especially) and some standard issue FPS guns and you have F.E.A.R.

Graphics 8/10
--I would give them 10/10 but even with upper end systems its rough to play on max settings, I just took them down to medium and the game looked good and ran perfect (except for when my computer decided to do its weekly de-frag while I was playing...). Unless you have a good graphics card to go along with a good bit of ram and a solid CPU I wouldnt even bother trying anything above minimum settings (tried it on my laptop, which runs most games fine, and I was shocked at the pathetic min settings). The extreme attention to detail makes the graphics card's job very hard, hundreds of random objects that fly around when you toss a 'nade or the reflection on water (which I dont think you see enough of in the game) sent my laptop into a frenzy of whirring and jerky FPS rates. While I am not a game designer/programmer, I have to say the very realistic atmosphere became a logistical nightmare in reality.

Music 6/10
--Everyone else has said it, but for completion's sake, F.E.A.R. did not have a large amount of music to rate, but what music I ended up hearing was well placed and VERY fitting to the enviroment. The one factor holding the music score down is the lack of music, I dont like constant music blaring over my games but some more music would have been nice.

Sound 8/10
--Creepy. Enviromental sounds caused a few 'jump' moments, and set the scene pretty well. The gun sounds were pretty cliche. Not a whole lot more to say. *ADDITION* thought of this when I was typing up the gameplay, the clones have the exact same voice and use the exact same phrases, yes they are clones... but it gets boring.

Cinematics 7/10
--The few glimpses of the storyline you get without exploring maps through and through come in the form of creepy flash back-esque scenes that happen periodically, even then it is difficult to grasp the story through most of the game. The lack of cinematics that give hints into the plot force the player to check voicemails (other people's voicemails... kinda rude but they are probably dead anyhow, speaking of which where are the office workers bodies in the game...) and laptops, maybe a good thing maybe not.

Plot 5/10
-- Keeping with the pattern, F.E.A.R. lacks any serious plot. What plot it has is great, but for all the hype it did not live up in this area. At no point in time did I feel even remotely connected with the character, or ANYONE in the game. Almost everything was left unsaid, even in the end. I wish I could have gotten into the plot a bit more, but I couldnt (I try to imagine a movie made based on the game, if there is enough story to fill 1.5 hours then the plot is solid, final fantasy, resident evil, and warcraft come to mind...).

Gameplay 10/10
-- If you stripped away all of its pretty graphics, creepy sound, and vague plot the game still holds its own. Nothing is really innovative other than the insane AI, but masterfully put together. Peeking around corners (something I rarely did), SloMo, crouching, and aiming are all things that other games pioneered, but are all things that made F.E.A.R. stand out in my mind. The AI is uncanny, as previously stated, but eventually predicatable. If you couldnt hear their radio transmissions it would have made things more difficult, they would call for reinforcements and I would know to rush in there are only a couple left, they would say fire in the hole and I would back up because a grenade was coming, etc. The clones take cover, flank, provide cover fire, use 'nades to flush you out, and rarely even set (obvious) traps. In the end I guess the AI makes up for the lack of variety in the enemies (and enviroments).

Overall I would say other than boring scenery, vague plot, and sparse musical interludes I would say this is one of the better FPS games I have played. Worth the buy if you can run it on at least medium settings without lagging terribly. Just keep in mind this is a FPS and not an RPG, while it has more story than most FPS games, it did not live up to the hype.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/03/06