Cold Fear

"Not the greatest horror game, but it has potential."

Introduction

After taking on the adventure games genre with Prince of Persia and the stealth games genre with the Splinter Cell series, Ubi-Soft attacks the horror games business with Cold Fear! But is this a good game? Well that's what this review's about.

Story

Many gamers said that Cold Fear was pretty much like a Resident Evil on a boat. That statement can be somewhat true, but calling this game's story a rip-off isn't really fair, nor right. You control Tom Hansen, a coast guard, and you're going aboard a Russian ship in the middle of the ocean during a storm for a very simple investigation. But unfortunately, you are going to live your worst nightmare. Your partners are mysteriously killed, and the murderers aren't all living Russian sailors. As you explore the boat a bit, you go face to face with terrifying zombie-like enemies. After going deeper in the game, you learn more and more about what really happened there: experiments with parasite creatures called "exocel", created to put dead beings back to life after a mutation, with grotesque results.

Gameplay

The controls of this game are known to be THE reason why it didn't score as high as we thought it would. Are they bad? Hm, I wouldn't use that word. It's true that they are not exactly "smooth", but I believe it was intentional. As it is stated in the Story section of this review, the game takes place on a boat in the middle of a very stormy weather, so the concept wants you to actually have an hard time aiming, stressing you out when you're in a critical situation with enemies everywhere. You have a variety of different firing weapons at your disposition, along with a Health and Stamina bar. You control your character in third person, but you have to go in first person to aim. As for your character's movements, it is true that it can be a pain sometimes to control them with the camera giving you bad angles that will get you all mixed up in the position of Tom (especially when you're freaking out because an enemy jumped you from behind). For the difficulty of this game, it's entirely based on your settings: Easy, Normal, Hard or Extreme. Hard (or Extreme) provides way more challenge, because the enemies are more vicious and their attacks have an easier time draining your Health.

Graphic/Sound

Here comes a strong point of this game. The graphics are pretty nice, along with all the cool effects linked to the weather, such as the lightning bolts, the rain, and so on. The zombies and other enemies are well made. Tom is well drawn as well, with really realistic facial expressions. As for the sounds, I don't see what we could not like about them. The enemies make scary noises that can easily reach you, making them very credible. Same can be said about the weapons' sounds.

Play time

Now this is where I was disappointed; I was expecting way more play time. It takes about 8-10 hours to beat this game: I actually have a friend who was able to finish it in a day on normal difficulty. This takes away the fun, or at least that's what it does to gamers like me and nearly all gamers I know. The replay value isn't superb either, because though the main point of this game is to explore the various areas that you visit, it's quite linear. There are a few unlockables, but nothing really innovative.

Overall

I rate this game 7/10 (I'd give 7.5 if I could). As I said in the previous section of this review, it's more a rental since you can finish it in a relatively short amount of time. Can this title be considered a rival to the biggest series of the genre (Resident Evil and Silent Hill, for examples)? I wouldn't say so... yet. It's not Ubi-Soft's greatest game, we can all agree on that. But it does have a lot of potential (like I say it in the tagline). Unless they pull a XIII on us, they could really work on a great sequel to it, or a similar title at least, with an improved gameplay. Remember, the very first Splinter Cell game was considered a child compared to the Metal Gear Solid games. Now look at Chaos Theory (the third Splinter Cell), it's pretty much Snake Eater's (the third Metal Gear Solid) greatest rival.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/05