"A Great New FPS"

F.E.A.R. Review

Introduction

When Monolith Productions debuted their new sci-fi horror first person shooter game, F.E.A.R.(First Encounter Assault Recon), the public's reaction was mixed. Some gamers thought that the game was just a rip-off of Doom 3, but a majority of the gaming community was excited and impressed, and so F.E.A.R. was nominated for Best Action Game at E3 2004.

The game returned to E3 the following year, and was embraced by gamers and press alike, being nominated for Best of Show and Best PC Game at E3 '05, and bringing home the award for Best Action Game.

Now that the game has finally hit the shelves, it has been accepted as one of the best first person shooter games we've seen so far. Nearly every aspect of the game exceeds expectations, and brings a new flavor to the first person shooter genre.

Gameplay: 9/10

The gameplay in F.E.A.R. will be familiar to most first person shooter veterans, but adds some new elements to the mix in order to churn out an impressive gaming experience.

One of the new abilities that the player has in this game is “bullet time,” which allows you to slow down the passage of time for a limited amount of time, giving you an advantage over your enemies. This can be extremely useful in certain situations, because it will give you more time to plan your actions, and allows you to aim better. It is incorporated flawlessly into the game, and is probably the most effective weapon in your arsenal.

Your character is also capable of pulling off some impressive melee attacks by pressing the right mouse button in conjunction with either jump or crouch. Although this is not nearly as effective as the slow motion ability, it can be used to score some easy kills if you are able to pull it off without taking too much damage.

The basic set of movements is pretty much the same as other first person shooters, but you are now able to peek around corners using the Q and E keys. This helps you to take down your enemies while minimizing damage, but doesn't really seem to be that useful, as there aren't many opportunities to use it in the game.

You can only carry three different weapons at a time in F.E.A.R., so you will often be forced to choose which ones you want to take with you, and which to leave behind. You are also able to stock up to ten medkits in your inventory, so that you can heal yourself at any time by pressing the Z key.

One of the most amazing parts of F.E.A.R. is the A.I.(artificial intelligence). The A.I. in F.E.A.R. is quite possibly the best out of any game that has ever been released. The enemies in the game will try to sneak up on you, flank you, flush you out using grenades, and do other things that you generally don't see in a video game. You will hear the soldiers communicating, and see them working together to outsmart you. F.E.A.R. will definitely make you rethink your tactics when dealing with the baddies.

Story: 10/10

In F.E.A.R., you are a member of the First Encounter Assault Recon squad: an elite team of soldiers dedicated to combating paranormal threats. Your mission is to take down a military commander named Paxton Fettel, who has taken control over an army of clones. As the game progresses, you will find out that nothing is what it seems, and you are in for a lot more than you bargained for.

The story of the game is presented through interaction with various characters that you will encounter throughout the course of the game, and the backstory is narrated through radio communications with your team's coordinator. Scattered throughout the game you will find a number of telephones, which will allow you to listen to various messages revealing even more information about the story.

F.E.A.R. brings horror elements into the story, which creates an extremely atmospheric mood throughout the game. Like Doom 3, this game uses an element of sporadic encounters, where things will unexpectedly come out of nowhere, which causes you to jump. Although this strategy of shocking you using cheap scares is used quite a bit throughout the game, it is not the only tactic this game uses to scare you. Unlike Doom 3, this game focuses on creating a sense of dread, and gets under your skin. As the game progresses, you will often get the feeling that something isn't right. Often you will see things happen for no apparent reason, such as objects falling off of a shelf by themselves, or doors slamming shut in your face. This helps to create the feeling that you are not alone, and that some greater force is acting on the world around you. You will also encounter a little girl named Alma, who often appears out of nowhere. She seems to have the ability to slaughter soldiers using only her mind, and serves to creep you out by appearing when you least expect it, yet always seems to be gone when you go after her.

The story should keep you on end through most of the game. You should find yourself intrigued by some of the horror sequences, and motivated to discover the secrets beyond the story.

Graphics: 10/10

F.E.A.R. is powered by the proprietary graphics engine, Jupiter EX, which allows the game to push high-end computers to their limits to generate extraordinary visuals, while still allowing older computers to run the game with lowered fidelity. The game was also designed with next-generation hardware in mind, so the game will still be able to compete with some of the games coming out later this year, and into 2006.

If you have a top of the line computer, you will be able to enjoy stunning visuals that surpass nearly every other first person shooter on the market today. Most of the visual effects are scaleable, so you should be able to enjoy the game on a low end PC, albeit with reduced quality. The game makes use of some of the more advanced capabilities of DirectX 9, which means that every surface in the game has its own unique shader. These shaders control the texture of a surface, as well as various other properties such as specularity, luminosity, reflectivity, and transparency, among others. The engine uses the per-pixel lighting functions of DirectX 9 to control all of the lighting and shadows in the game, which contributes a great deal to creating the moody atmosphere of the game.

It has become common for games to use normal maps to create extremely detailed models without using a lot of polygons, and F.E.A.R. is no different. Nearly every surface in the game has a normal map, which controls how light interacts with the surface to create the illusion of depth. This allows for increased detail without a drop in framerate.

The lighting capabilities take center stage here, and shadows are used extensively to create a dark and foreboding setting. Every area in the game is lit by a number of dynamic lights, which cast real-time shadows throughout the scene. The engine supports soft shadows, which creates more realistic looking shadows, but requires a lot more processing power. Volumetric lighting is also used on faster computers to improve realism by showing the light rays as they collide with tiny particles in the air. This also requires a high-end PC, so most gamers will probably not get to experience these effects.

The engine seems to excel at rendering particles and other special effects, as well. While playing the game, you will notice sparks flying everywhere, glass shattering realistically, smoke from your gun clouding your vision, and chunks from the walls and breaking off and littering the floor along with bullet casings. While playing in slow motion, you will notice the scene sharpening, bullets creating trails as they rip through the air, and grenades distorting the area around them as they explode.

Of course, the most important factor in computer graphics is not necessarily the rendering engine displaying the graphics, but rather the art behind the graphics being rendered. Monolith certainly did a good job of creating convincing and detailed art for the game. Each of the characters are made using a detailed mesh, with the more subtle features being rendered by the normal map texture. All of the shaders used to control the properties of the various surfaces in the game are very well done, and add to the realism of the world. However, the skin on the characters can look like plastic at times, and some strange things happen at lower resolutions, such as the pupils disappearing from character's eyes.

The game has been described as a “system hog,” and even the top-of-the-line computers struggle with it. The maximum resolution that the game can squeeze out on current technology is 1024x768, which may be disappointing if you are used to running games at much higher resolutions, but the game still looks great on the lower resolutions as well. If your system is above the recommended specs, you are in for a real treat, but a PC running at the minimum specs should be able to spit out an enjoyable gaming experience as well.

Audio: 9/10

F.E.A.R makes great use of audio to help add to the atmosphere of the game. Most of the sound effects are highly plausible, and make the game more realistic.

The game makes use of EAX audio technology, which allows for complete control over the audio in a 3D space, and adds an additional layer of immersion when combined with surround sound speakers. An example of how this is used in the game is when you are required to turn a valve which causes water to flow through some pipes. You can hear the water flowing through the pipes, but as you leave the room containing the pipes, the sound fades. Another way the audio technology is put to use is with the slow motion effects, which lowers the pitch of the sound effects dramatically, creating some humorous moments as your enemies curse at a ridiculously reduced pace, and in a baritonesque octave.

The music and ambient sounds really help to contribute to the semblance of the environments that you will explore in the game. They can build tension and suspense, or just plain freak you out at times. However, the music can get a bit repetitive and annoying, and sometimes feels out of place. Nevertheless, F.E.A.R. does a great job of incorporating its audio power into the game.

Multiplayer: 8/10

F.E.A.R. has a respectable multiplayer game mode, but it does not bring many new aspects to the table. The focus of the game is on the single player campaign, but multiplayer should keep you busy for a while after you've completed single player.

The multiplayer gametypes are nothing new: deathmatch, team deathmatch,
and capture the flag. However, the slow motion and melee abilities help to breathe life into what would otherwise be a dead multiplayer game.

In a multiplayer match, there is a “slow motion trigger” placed somewhere on the map. The player or team to first pick it up is given the ability to use slow motion, which will slow down the game for everyone, thus giving the player or team who activated it an advantage. When the person carrying the device is killed, it becomes available for someone else to pick up.

The game comes with a decent pallet of multiplayer maps that borrow from the single player game, and Monolith has said that they are planning to release some development tools for the game, which will allow users to create their own content for the game.

The multiplayer aspect of F.E.A.R. is quite enjoyable in and of itself, but if you are looking for a groundbreaking new multiplayer mode, look elsewhere.

Replayability: 8/10

Although F.E.A.R. does have some features that may entice you to play through the game multiple times, it isn't the best game in terms of replayability.

The game features scaleable difficulty settings, so you can crank up the difficulty and try your hand at ludicrously overpowered enemies, but the game can get frustrating at the higher difficulties.

If you ran through the game like a fat man chasing an ice cream truck, and did not stop to listen to all of the phone messages or get all of the laptop information, you may want to go back through it and experience the subtler nuances of the game's story.

Otherwise, there aren't really that many reasons to replay the game. Perhaps it would be a good idea to keep it on the shelf so that in five or ten years, you can dust it off and enjoy it on future technology that can run it with all of the features maxed out.

Extras: 9/10

The limited collectors edition of the game comes with a bonus content DVD containing a documentary on the making of the game, directors commentary for various levels of the game, a live action vignette revealing some of the backstory to the game, and the prelude to the F.E.A.R. machinima from Rooster Teeth Productions(the group who made the Halo machinima, Red vs. Blue).

Conclusion

F.E.A.R. is a must-have game for any first person shooter fan. It combines intense action with beautiful graphics and sound to create an awesome gaming experience.

You should download the demo to see if you like it before buying.

Overall Score
9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/05