F.E.A.R.

"Nothing to F.E.A.R."

Fear is the name of the game in Day 1 Studios' F.E.A.R. Why else would Day 1 choose this word as an acronym? The acronym spells out, absurdly, First Encounter Assault Recon. And like the constituent words making up the title's acronym, this game is plain silly. Too many random things happen to attempt to give the game a paranormal touch. Too many times a shadow walks past you, but investigation reveals it to be nothing. Too many times the lights blink on and off. Too many times an object falls in your path, yet, mysteriously, there's nobody in the vicinity. F.E.A.R ends up far more generic than its title and front cover art suggest. While some light shines through, it is quickly dampened by the game's dark clouds.

The Good:
+ Great enemy A.I.
+ Some moments are scary

The Bad:
— When it's not frightening it's boring
— An absurdly silly story
— Not a whole lot of variety

The Cliche:
~ A frightening little girl with special powers—woopty-doo

Welcome to another game whose main character doesn't provide an ounce of conversation. Maybe developers don't realize this gives the gamer the impression the hero of the game is a complete dummy. Why is he mute? Is he a psychopath? Is he stupid? When I'm hanging around somebody who so habitually fails to say something, I can't help but wonder, if he's not stupid, is he planning on following me home to murder me in my sleep. But in F.E.A.R, he does have good reason not to speak. Nobody has any intelligent line of dialogue. Why do they continually send this new guy alone to do an incredibly difficult mission? Even after they said he'd have back up. Not once do you fight alongside any allies. It lends a game some credibility when the developers put thought into their script and story, even a story dealing with the paranormal.

You're chasing after some psychopath with paranormal powers and a thirst for blood. He frustratingly flees crime scenes with ease. He shows off how powerful he is, yet the police force continues to send woefully undermanned teams to take him down. Haven't they noticed that a girl with the ability to melt skin and organs off a person's bones accompanies him? Don't they realize these villains have the ability to materialize in and out of thin air at will? But they usually use this power to creep you out rather than doing anything useful. The little girl likes to do that thing where she stands there staring at you until you get close enough and she vanishes. Scared yet?

Outside of the story, the game actually has potential. For one, the enemy A.I. is superb. Where Bungie revolutionized enemy A.I. in Halo, Day 1 shows off what the current set of consoles can do. Enemies take cover, use suppressing fire, and, just as you think you can sneak behind them and take them by surprise, they leave their cover and leave you in a vulnerable position. They're aggressive at the right time and defensive at the right time. Unlike games on the previous generation of consoles, you can't predict their behavior and beat them. They don't do things you want them to do, like behave stupidly so you can get the easy kill. No, they make gun fights difficult, fun, and intense.

But maybe you remember that this game is called “fear.” It's not entirely about the gunfights. Sure, those are fun, but they're not scary. Unfortunately, that means gunfights are few and far between. You'll get into an intense firefight for a brief period and then walk around for ten minutes or so. The walking around part is supposed to be scary. And sometimes it is. You always get the feeling that there's something paranormal about you. Things make noises. There's silence. You walk into an object that makes a loud, sudden noise. That little girl who acts as a portable oven appears out of nowhere to scare you. Sometimes it is scary. But mostly, it isn't. You see a box fall to the floor, but nobody's there. A body falls randomly down a chute in front of you, but a dead body itself provides no threat. Nothing happens. What's so scary about that? The “scary” atmosphere becomes stagnated because the game provides no pay off. When you realize nothing will happen it doesn't scare you. Instead, you'll be growing increasingly bored with the game.

Besides the enemy AI, there is no redeeming factor for the game. Nothing else keeps you hooked. The ability to slow time by speeding up the main character's reflexes is not only unoriginal, but not all that fun to use. Max Payne uses it to a much better degree by diving forwards, backwards, or sideways. This reflex ability, however, is necessary to win the difficult gun fights. Also, the weapons are uninteresting. F.E.A.R doesn't overwhelm you with a slew of different weapons, but the few there are are generic. There's no variety, like with Halo's famous eight weapons. You can have only three weapons at a time, but you'll probably find your favorites pretty quickly, and for most weapons the game provides plenty of ammo. On weapon does stand apart from the rest—the armor penetrating rifle. This rifle shoots bolts that can pin corpses to walls, floors, or any other object in the room. One of the game's guilty pleasures is admiring your art work of bodies sticking to whatever in whatever strange position. My favorite is catching an enemy leaping over a railing and sticking him to a wall upside down.

As I said, the game's few bright spots glisten only briefly before the clouds smother them. While I've heard the game lasts about ten to fifteen hours, I had no interest to play through it all. I wish I could give an estimation of how long I did spend with it, but frankly, every hour I played felt like two. The repetition of sounds, images, frights, the same enemy units over and over, and the continuing refusal to provide any form of payoff grew tedious. Why does a game that wants to thrill you or wow you with story fail to include any story after the initial cut scene? At least that, if it was good, would have been something. But all you will get out of F.E.A.R, with its nonsense acronym, is an overwhelming desire to play something better. And you should. You deserve it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/08

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