"An Intense and Terrifying FPS Experience"

F.E.A.R. is a very fun, and horrifying FPS game for the Xbox 360, PC, and Playstation 3, from game developer Monolith. Monolith has also created Condemned: Criminal Origins, which was a survival horror game that was released as a launch title for the Xbox 360. Originally released in 2005, F.E.A.R. won a number of awards including FPS of the year, and a year later it has been ported to the Xbox 360. F.E.A.R. is a fantastic game that introduces slow motion into the FPS genre and succeeds in flying colors. The gunplay is by far the best part of this game, however a confusing storyline, and clunky controls hold F.E.A.R. back from being perfect.

STORYLINE- 7/10
First Encounter Assault Recon (F.E.A.R.) is a secret military organization who's purpose is to deal with paranormal activities. You play as a nameless elite super soldier that possesses great powers that give him an edge over his foes. He has extremely quick reflexes allowing him to react quicker than any enemy could ever hope to accomplish. This ties into the slow motion gun play that I will explain later in the review. The story to F.E.A.R. is very good but is brought to you through telephone calls from your superior officers. This can lead to a bit of confusion if you don't pay attention to the conversations. Basically the story is about a madman who controls an army of clones through telepathy. As a member of F.E.A.R. you get called in to deal with this problem, and you encounter even worse foes along the way. The story is good but when all is said and done it leaves you with quite a few questions unanswered, and it's just not implemented well as the game goes on.

GRAPHICS- 9/10

In 2005 F.E.A.R. was one of the best looking games of the year, and today it's no different. The graphics hold up very well by today's standards. While games such as Gears of War, Call of Duty 4, and Bioshock have easily beaten F.E.A.R. in the graphics department, it still looks pretty good. The character and gun models are very detailed, and the environments have great looking textures, especially when played on an HDTV. The explosions are vibrant with color, and the blood spatter effects look great. The lighting in the game is phenomenal and really adds an eerie feeling to the environment as you make your way through dark buildings, creepy alley ways, and smelly sewers systems.

GAMEPLAY- 10/10

F.E.A.R. is by far one of the best first person shooter titles that I have ever played. Shootouts are very intense, plentiful, exciting, and incredibly awesome. What makes the fire fights so enjoyable is the slow motion gunplay that really makes F.E.A.R. stand out from all other first person shooter games, and makes it unique. In F.E.A.R. you have a little bar on the bottom of the screen that shows how much time you can enter slow motion mode in order to vanquish your enemies. During this, time slows down for you allowing you to take better aim at your enemies, and wipe them out one by one. Slow motion looks incredible in this game, and it's simply amazing to see bullets wiz by your head in slow motion as they rip through the air. F.E.A.R. has the smartest AI I've ever seen in a video game. Often times you may even think you are playing against actual human players, and not bots. The enemies take cover behind walls, flank you, call out your positions, communicate with each other, and use team work to try and take you down. To truly experience how great the AI is, I recommend playing on the hardest difficulty, however they're no pushover on any of the lower difficulties, and may surprise you with their deadly tactics. Gun battles never seem to play the same way twice, and always have a fresh feeling to them despite the fact the game is filled with these thrilling moments from beginning to end. F.E.A.R. can also be terrifying at times, and you'll often run into ghosts as you blast you're way through these dark and eerie levels.

CONTROLS- 7/10

Monolith did a great job when porting F.E.A.R. to the Xbox 360 and brought the amazing experience for Xbox owners to enjoy. F.E.A.R. was originally a PC game and the controls just don't feel like they belong on a console FPS title. They aren't really that bad, but they feel very clunky. It's hard to aim precisely at your foes since the controls feel more like they belong on the PC and not the 360. While the controls aren't as good as one would hope they would be, they aren't that bad, and don't really take anything away from this amazing experience.

LENGTH- 10/10

F.E.A.R. is a scary, and thrilling title from beginning to end. The game play always seems to play differently due to the highly intelligent AI that you have to battle against. On the easier difficulties F.E.A.R. will probably take you about 12-14 hours on your first play though. It will take longer on the highest difficulty since the enemies are much smarter, and way deadlier, but if you want to get the most out of this game, and the AI, then it's recommended that you play on the hardest difficulty to get the most excitement out of this game.

SOUND- 9/10

Monolith does a great job at creating a spooky atmosphere to accommodate F.E.A.R. At times the sound and music in the game can be very eerie and scary. Things being knocked over, creepy children laughing all around you, and loud noises accompanying ghosts help immerse you into the game world, and can be quite frightening at times.

Multiplayer- 7/10

F.E.A.R. has a very fast paced, enjoyable, and pretty basic multiplayer component to it. It has a variety of game modes to choose from including, Death Match, Team Death Match, Capture the Flag, and Elimination. Your able to play with 16 people in a game, or have teams of 8 vs. 8. Monolith did add a Slow Motion game type to all of these game modes, however it feels more like a gimmick that they just threw into the multiplayer at the last second. The slow motion multiplayer doesn't work very well, and doesn't change the core game play in any way. The main thing that hurts the multiplayer in F.E.A.R. is the lag. F.E.A.R. is a very laggy multiplayer game on the Xbox 360. Xbox Live has yet to incorporate the use of dedicated servers to eliminate lag. This means that you have to rely on the host's connection to play the game online, and most of the time people don't have good connections. This can take a lot of the fun out of the multiplayer since it becomes much harder to aim, and can lead to random disconnections from the game. Monolith has also released a number of map packs on the Xbox Live marketplace that help add replay value to F.E.A.R. Most of these maps cost around 500 Microsoft points (about 6 U.S. dollars), but some of these map packs are for free, courtesy of Monolith. The multiplayer is enjoyable, but doesn't add anything new. The lag really takes a lot of fun out of the game, and it's hard to find matches online at times, due to the small online community playing F.E.A.R.

Pro's

-Slow Motion Gunplay
-Lengthy Campaign
-Intelligent AI
-Great Graphics
-Exciting Fire Fights
-Great Sound and Audio

Con's

-Clunky Controls
-Laggy and problematic multiplayer
-Confusing Storyline
-Many Unanswered Questions
-Cliff Hanger Ending

CONCLUSION

F.E.A.R. is a very fun, scary, and exciting first person shooter. It has amazing Artificial Intelligence, graphics, game play, and enemies to fight against. While it does have some problems with the controls, storyline, and multiplayer, none of these things make too big of an impact that prevents you from enjoying the game. F.E.A.R. is a solid and innovative FPS game, and if you have 20 dollars, than do yourself a favor and experience this game for yourself. You will not be disappointed.

Written By: CyberElite85
11/30/07 1:45 am

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/07

Game Release: F.E.A.R. (US, 10/31/06)