F.E.A.R.

"F.E.A.R. was O.V.E.R.H.Y.P.E.D."

Alright, I know I am going to get a bunch of screaming fan boys wanting me dead for writing this review, but I am going to submit it anyway. The fact is that FEAR was over hyped. This was supposed to be the scariest game of all time, the best multi-player of all time, and the best graphics of all time. It might have the best graphics of all time, but it is certainly not scary, and it doesn't have fun multi-player. FEAR is a shell of a game. It doesn't have very much content in it, so it gets boring fast. It also has a LOT of problems that prevent multi-player from being fun. If the developers were given six months to a year more time, FEAR probably would have become one of the best shooters ever.

Story - 10/10

You are a guy who is part of a team that fights "paranormal threats to the nation's security" named FEAR. FEAR is short for First Encounter Assault Recon. You are a nobody - you have no name, no past, no face, no nothing. No one knows anything about you or where you came from, except that you have super-human reflexes. There's this guy named running around who has telepathic control over an army of clones. His name is Paxton Fettle. Your primary objective throughout the whole game is to kill this guy. Sounds simple right? Actually, the developers put a lot of thought into the story. As you go through the game, you learn more and more about what is going on with Fettle, and more about yourself. If I said anymore, I would ruin the great story that this game has to offer.

The story progresses much like Half-Life 2's story. To understand what is going on, you have to listen to telephone calls, listen to what people say, and pay attention to weird things that happen, as well as some cut scenes. "The story isn't obvious like it was in Halo 2". This is great, because it gives you satisfaction once you figure out for yourself the solutions to the mysteries that take place. Even though the Single Player game play for this game isn't spectacular, the amazing story will keep you motivated to finish the game to see what happens.

Congratulations Monolith, you did one thing right!

Single Player - 7/10

FEAR basically has two types of game play to it - shooting spree, then exploring. You first start the level off with 5 minutes of shooting, then you get 5 minutes of exploring... you repeat until level is over. The same pattern goes on throughout the whole game. It is very predictable, because there is nothing new that comes up or any change in pace to add interest.

The AI is good, but not amazing like some people describe it to be. The AI can do a few things. Most of the time they just walk from cover to cover, shooting at you when they get the chance. They don't hide themselves fully behind the cover - usually an arm, leg, or their head is sticking out. So you can shoot them and they will not retaliate. They throw grenades (very inaccurately I might add) if you stay in the same spot for too long. Sometimes they yell out things like "He's trying to flank", or "Sniper!" even though I am not trying to flank them or I am only 20 feet away from them. They jump over stuff and knock things over to use as cover, except this usually gets them killed, since these actions take a long time, and are not something that gives them much of an advantage. There are a few major problems with the AI - they can sometimes shoot through walls, and once they see you, they know where you are at all times. This gets really annoying. Don't try flanking them if they have spotted you, they will just turn around as soon as you see their backs and start shooting. Another problem is that they only spawn unless you walk into a certain spot. In a few cases, I was able to not trigger them by avoiding a certain spot on the map. They can also see you in pitch black, which takes away from any possible stealth aspect.

FEAR takes a big hit from repetitiveness. You'll find that I will use the word "repetitive" a lot in this review. There are only five different types of enemies to kill, and most of them only appear a few times in the whole game. You get to fight basic clone soldiers, "Heavy Armour" clones, Flying Robots, Assassins, and Mechs (big robots). I counted a total of 5 Assassins, 4 Mechs, 8 Flying Robots, and about 20 Heavy Armour Clones in the whole game. There are about 1000 basic clones in the game. So savour the fun of killing the non-clone bad guys, because there aren't many of them. Why did Monolith create these enemies if they only put a few of them into the game?

The environments are very repetitive as well. There are four environments in the game, all of which are very similar and claustrophobic. You get to play in abandoned houses, an office building, a warehouse, and a high-tech research facility. Level design isn't varied at all. It feels like I am playing in cut-'n'-paste rooms the whole game. You ONLY get to fight in close range, so if you like sniping, you are going to be disappointed with FEAR.

The weapons aren't very different from each other. All of the six light weapons are the same (the shotgun being the exception), but of course they have different skins, and have different rates of fire. The heavy weapons are almost identical as well. There is a Railgun, a Cannon which is basically a Railgun with splash damage, and a Rocket Launcher which is basically a Cannon with slow moving projectiles. There are three kinds of grenades, but they are all used in the same way and are equally effective, so there is no point to having three different kinds.

Another problem is that nothing new comes up in the game to add variety. FEAR is a one trick pony. You do the exact same thing the whole game - kill everything to get to a certain place. There is no variation in the objectives you get to do. There are no vehicles to drive, or different characters to play. You do meet allies, but you never get to fight with them.

Another selling point of this game is the Slow mo, or bullet time. It basically slows everything down, and makes the game super easy. Its pretty much the same as in Max Payne, except it was very poorly implemented - it gives you too much of an advantage. When used, you are able to run around out in the open without getting shot. By slowing down time, the enemy's accuracy somehow decreases to almost zero. Not only that, but Slow mo recharges by itself! Now anyone can beat the game on the hardest difficulty just by using Slow mo, killing the enemies without resistance, hiding and waiting for it to recharge, and repeat. Once you get the rhythm down, you start to realise even more just how repetitive this game is.

Like I said before, after about 5 minutes of shooting, you go into exploration game play mode. This is where you learn most about the story, as well as some other useless crap (answering machine messages about social gatherings and why two people don't get along, etc). You basically run around poorly lit rooms, trying to find the next wave of bad guys. Sometimes weird things happen, like this little girl that pops up and tries to scare you (Alma), or you might see Paxton Fettle walking around. For some reason, the developers thought that little girls are scary to most people - wrong. I am a big fan of horror movies and games like Doom 3, so I want to being scarred. I tried to be scarred when playing this game, but it failed to scare me at all. This is a big disappointment, because one of the selling points of this game is that it is supposed to be scary. As you are exploring, you might stumble across Steroid Injectors (jeez, Monolith is teaching kids that drugs are good). The blue ones increase your maximum health, and the green ones increase how long you can use your Slow mo. This is a great addition to the game, it rewards you for exploring the levels (unlike in Doom 3 where you are rewarded with a monster closet), and adds a reason why you should come back and play this game again after you beat it.

However, the Single Player is very short. I beat the game in 8 hours. Yes, it is good enough to replay maybe once, but you have to take into consideration that you won't as much fun playing this game over again because the exploration parts become very boring, and you will remember the parts that surprise you (parts that were supposed to scare you, but didn't). On your third replay, you won't get any enjoyment out of it whatsoever.

Multi-player - 1/10

In my opinion, multi-player is the most important part of any shooter, since you will be playing it for a much longer time than Single Player (if it is good). I hate to admit it, but this game's multi-player is terrible. This is where FEAR falls apart. There are just too many problems with multi-player for it to be enjoyable after 3-4 hours of playing. If you are buying this game for the multi-player, don't. You are wasting your money. FEAR has worst multi-player I've played this year. It is literally torture. There are so many problems with multi-player, I will number them to make this review more organised.

1) The first problem is the unbalanced weapons. You have a choise of picking one of the six light weapons to start with. This would be a good system, if all weapons were balanced. But, the weapons are not balanced, so this system fails. It is a very foolish choise to start with the Dual Pistols or the Sniper Rifle, when you can pick a weapon that does the exact same damage but with a much higher rate of fire (the Assault Rifle). It gets very boring using the Assault Rifle all the time, and only killing people who are using Assault Rifles. Also, the three cannons are far too strong. The winner of every game is decided by who uses the cannons the most often.

2) You have so little health, so whoever shoots first wins. This makes it easy for people who are new, because they can get some kills against even the best players if they happen to spawn behind them, or see them first. If you had more starting health, the better player would be able to turn around and kill them. The way it is now, you are already on the floor as soon as you hear their first shot go off. Don't bother trying to turn around, it is futile. Your average lifespan in a game with ten players will be about 10-15 seconds, no kidding.

3) The crosshairs on the weapons are huge. There is no way you can get a headshot, unless you just get lucky and one of the bullets go to the head. To add skill to the game, the crosshairs should be smaller. Also, there is no recoil on the weapons, so you can spray all you want, and your weapon will not lose accuracy. This makes spraying easier. Yes, you CAN go into aim mode to get good accuracy, but there are so many disadvantages to doing this, that you are better off just spraying like everyone else, unless you are fighting at extremely long range (which is very rare in this game). Because you start with so much ammo, you can hold down the trigger for the whole match if you want. This makes aiming less important because you don't have to worry about ammo. Because of these problems, you can't improve your skills at this game by a whole lot, since it is already so easy to start with.

4) Another problem is that you can carry around First Aid Kits. So, if you happen to have 10 First Aid Kits on you, the chances of you dying are very slim, since you have 500 health in First Aid Kits (each one heals 50). There is no time delay between using them, so they can never get your health down faster than you can heal it.

5) Slow mo is even worse Multiplayer. It is a noob's dream. Whoever gets the Slow mo Injector is pretty much a god, because Slow mo makes everyone move so slowly that you are better off standing still if you don't have it (except for the guy with the Slow mo, he moves at normal speed). So guy with the Slowmo gets to shoot at a bunch of stationary targets the whole game (half of the game actually, since half the time you are hiding while you charge up). Slow mo is even worse in Capture The Flag. Yes, it gets worse. The Slow mo guy grabs the enemy flag, then activates slow mo, so no one can catch up to him and kill him to get their flag back. They do this the whole game, and win with little effort. You CAN kill the Slow mo guy, but the odds of that are very slim, because he will probably have a lot of First Aid Kits, and he only uses Slowmo when he encounters someone.

6) The respawning places in FEAR are terrible. There are only about 8-9 places you can spawn in the map, all of which give plenty of cover to campers. Unless you can tolerate being spawn killed at least 5 times in a row, don't get this game. I estimate at least twenty percent of all my deaths in this game are from spawn killers. You can also place proximity bombs on the spawn locations, which gets you many free kills.

7) Now about the technical issues. Firstly, the lag in multiplayer is terrible. It only takes 5 bullets to kill someone with the Assault Rifle with no lag, but with lag, I usually have to pump 10-12 bullets into them to kill them. This is called phantom bullets - the bullets appear to hit them, but they don't register with the server since the client is chronologically behind the server. This happens in every game, but much more so in FEAR, because of the inefficient net code. I live in North America, and have a 600 kb/s internet connection. So you can't argue that my internet connection is too slow. Secondly, the cheating situation with this game is very bad. There is NO anti-cheat for this game at all, so you are free to hack all you want. It is safe to say that half of everyone who plays this game cheats, or has cheated before. There are so many cheats for this game, its not even funny. FEAR is very poorly supported by the publishers and developers, so don't expect many patches for this game.

8) There are only two game types to play - Deathmatch and CTF. The game gets stale because of a lack of game types to play. The only game play option you have is to add Slow mo. PLEASE don't add Slow mo. It is more fun to hit your head against the wall for an hour than play with Slow mo. You probably won't be playing CTF much, since you only get 2 maps (one of which was in the demo). So unless you REALLY like playing Deathmatch, you are going to hate playing FEAR.

Audio/Visual - 9/10

The graphics and sound quality are the best. There simply isn't a better looking and sounding game out there. The graphics look almost lifelike. I can't wait to see what FEAR 2 turns out to look like. The music was used exceptionally well to add to the atmosphere to the game, and the voice acting is excellent.

However, the reason this category only gets 9/10 is because this game is very poorly optimized. Don't say that my computer is bad. I am using a 7800GTX graphics card with an AMD 4000 Processor, and 1 GB of RAM. Whenever I walk into a new area in the game, it stutters for about 4-5 seconds. This is not acceptable. I still get stuttering even if I lower the resolution to 640x480. This is not acceptable. This game is obviously very poorly optimized if I can't run it well with a high end computer. From what I have read on numerous online discussion forums, most people cannot even install this game. If you buy this game, you will probably end up having to buy a new graphics card, even if your PC meets the system requirements.

Overall - 6/10

Should you buy FEAR? That depends. If you are wanting to get this game for multi-player, don't. If you are wanting to get this game for single player, first play the Single Player Demo. If you think you can play the exact same thing as in the demo for 8 to 10 hours over and over without getting bored, go ahead, buy the game if you can afford to spend $5 an hour on video games and the money for a video card upgrade. It costs $50 to buy this game, and it will last you 10 hours, so it costs $5 an hour to play. A new video card can cost anywhere between $150 and $600, depending on how good the card is. FEAR would be a perfect rent, but sadly, there is nowhere to rent PC games.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/05