"A fantastic FPS with Guns, Blood and Horror"

Introduction
Attempting to do something fresh and different than the typical FPS, Monolith has been hard at work with their latest release, F.E.A.R, which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon. At heart, F.E.A.R is a FPS with some twists, but it's so good at what it does so it's hard not to love the game.

The situation is critical. A Top Secret operation has gone horribly wrong. A man named Paxton Fettel, able to communicate with other soldiers telepathically, has gone crazy, and is now rampaging the buildings and surroundings of a small unnamed city. It's up to you, a very special soldier, to deal with the situation. Things go horribly wrong from the beginning of, but by the setup you should expect it. What you won't be prepared for is the action and horror that is about to take place.

Gameplay
There are two things that makes F.E.A.R so unique. First, it's the fantastic action. It's unlike any other FPS yet, the action is incredibly intense, rough, violent and most of all, fun. This is what alone grants F.E.A.R such high score, because it nails the Shooter Aspect of the FPS title.

The guns feel right. They sound right. They look right. They kill right. Going crazy with the guns available in F.E.A.R is a true feast for the eyes, as they brutally slaughter anything in the way. You are only allowed to carry three guns at the same time, so you have to choose carefully what guns to bring. Luckily, there are no bad choices. In most other games, the earlier guns becomes obsolete and isn't usable for anything, but in this case, all the weapons works great. There's no clear choice in what guns to use, and most of the time, you'll be able to swap the weapons during the levels by finding new or taking the ones the enemies drop. Some guns is more tempting than others, and it's easy to find some favorites after a while. The Shotgun offers the best visual experience of them all, as it has a nasty habit of shooting off bodyparts, heads or splitting people in two, but in common trend, it's only really usable in close range, and with many of the enemies you don't want that. The various machineguns feels okay, but slightly unprecise, making them better for ambushes when you have the time to aim carefully. There are more advanced weaponry, a very powerful boltgun that rapidly fires large metal bolts. It has the amusing effect of nailing people to the wall in various hilarious and gruesome positions, often leaving them hanging two feet up from the ground with three bolts sticking out of their heads. Another gun simply burns all the flesh and organs of people, frying them down to the skeleton. As said, the guns are varied, fun and good. There are no bad choices, which is an amazing feat considering the amount of different weapons available. And even if you run out of Ammo, you're not completely helpless, as you have some quite nasty melee attacks, including slapping with your equipped gun, or jumpkicking. With a good hit, this can actually cause instant death to the normal soldiers, so it's definitely worth it if you are able to sneak upon any.

Then there's the Slow Motion. Just like Max Payne, You have the ability to slow down everything apart from your targetting, giving you a huge advantage over your enemies. In many situations, it's almost a must because of the A.I(More on that). But not only is it a very handy ability, It really highlights the capabilities of the engine, as you'll see blood splatter, sparks fly, dust and debris shatter over the whole place. You'll see bullettraces, shockwaves and all sorts of special effects. The Slow Motion will drain as you're using it, and recharge slowly when not. You can upgrade the duration of the slow motion by picking up Reflex Boosters(and Health with Health Boosters) scattered around the level, and in the later levels this is very handy.

The A.I is outstanding. It's hands down the best A.I in any FPS game yet, and you'll often find yourself outsmarted by the enemy soldiers, as they will constantly react to the current situation and your actions. As someone once said, every action has a reaction, and that's certainly true for F.E.A.R. The Soldiers moves constantly in a unpredictable fashion, they wont simply just come around the corner for you to pick them off. If they see you first, you're in for a bunch of trouble and things will get a whole lot worse before they get better. They will attempt to flank you from each possible side, they will take shortcuts, using the environments to either reach or hide from you. They will retreat, pick another route, use grenades, split up, give orders, and if you get too close, they will engage in close combat. Throw a grenade at them, and they will shout out "Grenade!" and run for cover and then wait for you to advance. They are patient, brutal and intelligent. They won't simply rush you since that's one of the most common problems with A.I. They will use corners, furniture and walls as covers, jump out of windows, crawl under obstacles and generally act like normal players, but often even smarter. Some of the later enemies are really hard to take down, the Watchers. They showcase an absolutely brilliant A.I, and they climb the environment like an invisible Spiderman. The level where they first appear shows how impressive they are, and how they use darkness and confusion to their advantage.

True, the A.I isn't perfect, but that's a little too much to expect yet. However, F.E.A.R is the best A.I to date, hands down, period. All other FPS so far seems primitive compared to F.E.A.R, even Half Life 2. The only upcoming game that could possibly compete with it would be STALKER, but it's so far off at the moment that F.E.A.R takes the crown as the game with best A.I.

With the heavy A.I, it's good that the game is very userfriendly when it comes to saving and loading. It uses checkpoint based and quickpoint saving, both which will be used very commonly. And thankfully, the saving is quick and good, reloading a quicksave is painless and very fast.

Then there's the other part of F.E.A.R...the other meaning of the word. In serious competition with the System Shock series, F.E.A.R is definitely one of the scariest game to this date. Personally, I found F.E.A.R to far succeed System Shock, but each to his own. Borrowing from movies like The Shining and The Ring, F.E.A.R really manages to be scary, at least on the first time through. It should be mentioned that the shock value is reduced quite alot during the second/third playthrough, but that's just like all other horror movies. However, even then F.E.A.R manages to creep you out. The scares still linger on. And even when the fear and horror is thinned out, the action will be just as fun, keeping the game as good as the first time. But, enough about that, we're talking about the first time playing the game.

One of the reasons why F.E.A.R succeeds compared to even most horrormovies these days, is that it knows that the scariest things are the ones you cannot see, but feel and imagine. Most horrrormovie starts out like this, but ends up in a computer animated monsterparty at the end. Not F.E.A.R. It keeps the scares simple, but never, ever cheap. There's no monster out of the closet like Doom 3, new weapons and dark places does not mean that there will be anything to scare you. It messes with your head and your perception of how things work. You'll expect things to pop up and nothing will happen, and you'll expect nothing to happen and things will go bump in the night. It manages to stay fresh throughout the game, and has some scenes and moments that are quite unsettling. Without spoiling much, the little girl called Alma is the center of all the disturbances, and she'll appear when you least expect it, and to great effects for most of the times. Some call it a complete ripoff of The Ring, but I disagree. If anything, the visions of Alma is much more like the twins in The Shining. Much more subtle, much more spontaneous. She'll appear and disappear, and sometimes you'll see her and just get downright scared.

But even more than Alma, it's your own fears that is the star of the show here. The game is like a playground for all your fear, a twisted amusement park where you are forced to fight your fears. You can't look away from the screen because then you'll either get nowhere, or get killed. It forces you to look. It forces you to look even when nothing happens, and your mind will play tricks on you. Will that window shatter when you go past it? You know it might, you know it will, and you go past it and nothing happens. Relieved you round a corner and another shock slaps you in the face. Later on you face similar situations, and safe and sure about how things will be, you end up jumping when something suddenly breaks the trend of how things should be.

The F.E.A.R works. It works so great. It deserves the name, it deserves to be called the scariest game ever, because it is. And not just because what the game shows, but how it plays with you and allows your own fears to make the situation far worse than it could be.

The Multiplayer is also another fun and very hectic component of the game. It's fast and easy to get into, there's no advanced gameplay modes that ruins for the fun. There's Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch with Slowmotion, which is quite an experience. If there's anything to complain about the Multiplayer, it's that the levels are far from memorable. They pick elements from the singleplayer maps, but without the ambience and atmosphere, they become quite uninteresting. The gameplay itself is good, but it does almost become too fast to be enjoyable like the singleplayer. You spawn, run, fire, kill or get shot, die and respawn, and it usually happens within 10-20 seconds. It's almost a little too quick, and it becomes tiresome after a while. It also looses some of the visual enjoyment since you'll be too busy killing or dying without really getting anywhere. Apart from the Slow Motion Team Deathmatch, it's pretty standard fare, although the melee kicking and slapping is quite amusing. Some of the spectator moments are hilarious, and it's often more fun to watch other's than fighting yourself.

And the environments in the Multiplayer is also one of the only negative things about the Singleplayer. While not as bad as certain other FPS lately, F.E.A.R do suffer a bit from buildings and locations looking quite similar. But it's not a gamebreaker, and the levels do feel slightly different from eachother, and some of them are great looking and unique. Overall that's the biggest weakness of the game, and that says alot.

Graphics
The graphics are great. The models are nicely detailed and animated, and even more, they are not the static dolls from earlier games. Limbs and body parts can be shot off, causing some hilarious scenes where the enemy soldiers falls to the ground with guns blazing and the chopped off body parts flying in different directions with blood squirting out. It's a visual experience unlike anything else in a FPS. The fact that everything looks fantastic, from textures to lightning, wraps everything up in a graphical package that's just impressive. The Environment is affected by the action, kill a soldier and blood will be painted on the walls, debris will by flying over the screen, dust, sparks, smoke, bodyparts and all sorts of objects will be covering the screen. Each gunfight looks like it was taken out of a John Woo movie like Face/Off. It just looks amazing.

The horror elements also manage to scare, and especially Alma, which never fails to scare whenever she pops up. Her presence is much more powerful than ten thousand soldiers together, and it's so impressive how that little girl, despite being animated, can look so scary. It's scary because you feel like you are watched by her. She is standing in the darkness, constantly watching you, sometimes toying with your mind, sometimes creating special graphical effects that resembles that of Poltergeist activity, and it all looks just right. There are times when you simply feel her nearby, but you don't want to look in fear of she being there. And when you look, you'll see nothing. And then there are times when you don't expect her and look around until you suddenly see her.

The lightning helps too, and lights will flicker and sway, rendering everything in a dramatic light and atmosphere. You have a flashlight that you can use as much as you want, and that only requires a short reloadtime.

And finally, there was one scene near the end that impressed me so much, that it is a shame to not be able to talk about it. It was definitely one of the most visually impressive ingame sequences I have ever seen in any game, and it's hard not to feel both afraid and impressed as you gaze upon the visual terror. Unbelievable. A Testament to the fantastic capabilities of the game engine, and to the designers.

Sound
One of the prime reasons why F.E.A.R is so scary, is because the sound is dead on. Even more than the graphics, the sounds manages to keep you tense every second of the game. Without the sound, the game quickly looses the scarefactor. Just walking around listening to the ambience can easily creep you out, things can happen offscreen with the sounds only giving you clues about what's happening. The game knows how to both do in your face events and subtle hints and atmospheric situations, it masters them perfectly.

Guns sounds right. This is one of the most important parts of a FPS. You should feel and hear how powerful the guns are. That's where Doom 3 failed, but where F.E.A.R succeeds. Crank up the bass and enjoy the weapons. Especially the more exotic weapons, like the one who burns the flesh of the enemies sounds awesome, but even the pistols and machineguns sounds right.

The Voiceacting is also very impressive, and especially the enemy soldiers, which will constantly shout orders. While you can turn on subtitles, the best part is to just listen to how they react to the situations that occur. Take down a few soldiers, and they'll call for backup and rearrange their strategy, and inform the other's if you're trying to flank them or where you are.

In short, just as much as F.E.A.R is a visual experience, it's also an Aureal that has to be heard.

Conclusion
F.E.A.R is definitely one of the best FPS for years. It's easily my personal new favorite, along with Monolith's older classic No One Lives Forever 2. No game has combined horror and action the way that F.E.A.R does. Doom 3 didn't even come close in any of the parts, you'll have to go back to System Shock for a game as scary, but even that can't compete with the sheer adrenalinerush of F.E.A.R.

Because, as much as this game is scary, it's also fantastic fun to play. The gunfights are the best in any game yet. The A.I is the most impressive to date. You will want to replay this game in order to enjoy the fights over and over, because just like other addictive game, the gunfights are so different and fun everytime, that there's no set way to deal with any situation. Going crazy in slow motion when bullets strafe you while you split an enemy soldier in two parts and picking up his gun while it's in the air offers an experience that has to be seen. And just as you are done blasting the soldiers and taking a breather, your heart will take another hit from Alma who reduces your heroic being to a scared little kid.

Apart from only slight issues, some repetitive and slightly similar-looking levels, and the tried but true multiplayer that never really offers any memorable levels, there aren't much to complain about.

Extra points are rewarded for the Directors Cut version, which contains a few videos where the makers of the game discuss the game while playing it(Entertaining), and the best part, a live action movie with Alma which makes the game feel even more creepy. If you're buying F.E.A.R, make sure you grab this version. There's no differences in the actual gameplay, but the included extramaterials is well worth seeing. And once again, seeing Alma as a real person added a certain layer to the game.

If you're only buying one FPS in 2005, make it F.E.A.R and prepare for one awesome experience unlike anything else.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/31/05