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This sequence reflects FEAR’s success in creating a genuinely creepy game. It is a first-person shooter whose shooting is done against armored, machine-gun-toting troops making it accessible to anyone who has played a Half-Life or a Quake. However, this game sets itself apart by presenting a cinematic experience packed with brutal combat and atmospheric suspense.
Before I get to that, though, some back story is in order. I enjoyed the game’s narrative, even though there are obvious similarities with other media—specifically the Japanese horror genre—and the general premise is pretty standard FPS fare. You are a new, special recruit to the First Encounter Assault Recon roster. This acronym pushes the envelope for believability and is also a mouthful to say. I would have preferred that they simply called the game “Fear,” and had a simpler, less absurd name for the elite squad. Your special self and your team are summoned when a cloned army of super-soldiers and their leader escape the control of the generic-sounding high-tech defense contractor, Armacham. It’s your job to find these cloned psychos, listen to their demands, and reach a reasonable settlement with their misunderstood commander. Ha. Just kidding, you must kill them all, of course. As you go about this task, the plot takes some surprising turns and more information about everything including you and that creepy girl from the cover is revealed through laptops and voice-mail messages that are placed in sensible locations and at decently paced intervals. The story noticeably rushes near the end, and I felt that the characters still had untapped narrative potential. Oh, did I already mention that you were special?
| Oh when the troops, come marching in… | ATC hard at work |
F.E.A.R. System Requirements
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Not content to cast you as just another badass killer, FEAR’s protagonist possesses psychic connections that let you see visions and even experience full-blown hallucinations. This explains the disturbing unrealities I witnessed at the ladder and throughout the game that help create a pervasive sense of dread during periods of non-combat. These sequences feel more like survival horror (à la Resident Evil) than first-person shooter because of the use of horror film techniques: lights flicker, objects move on their own, and supernatural entities unexpectedly appear. You’ll come across the gruesome remains of former Armacham employees and US Special Forces and wonder if whatever was responsible still lurks close by. The eerie music of the soundtrack fosters suspense and subtly increases the tension. The horror in these segments is actually light on survival because 98% of the apparitions you glimpse can’t actually hurt you, especially in the earlier levels, and yet the game immerses you so effectively in the environment that even jaded gamers will be startled at times and enjoy the creepiness of their surroundings. Although these shooting-free sequences sometimes stretch too long, the majority are perfectly paced with escalating tension that pays off when you encounter the next group of enemy forces.
| Headshot! | No, no… don’t get up |
Of course, these areas of relative inaction would be pointless if you weren’t anticipating the next violent encounter—an area where FEAR excels. While your psychic talents enhance the horror aspect of the game, you are also endowed with heightened physical gifts that are integral to the core shooting gameplay. Extreme reflexes allow you to move and shoot faster than usual, although what effectively happens is that the world around you appears to slow down. This ability is activated manually and has a meter that is depleted the longer you leave it engaged. It is basically the same mechanic that Max Payne used, but instead of killing people to replenish the power, it steadily refills whenever deactivated. This slow motion gives you much more deliberate control in the middle of the numerous chaotic gun battles.
| Life Cycle of a grenade – Projection… | …Detonation… |
In fact, you’ll need and want to slow down time often to contend with the vicious enemies FEAR throws at you. The most frequent combat scenario pits you against a group of at least three soldiers in a small area who work together as a team to take you down. The AI is the game’s greatest advantage over its peers in the genre. Soldiers feature realistic situational awareness as they can hear you moving, see the beam of your flashlight, and take note of the carnage you wreak on their fellow clones. Their radio chatter fleshes out the feeling of cognizance because they note your position, alert others that you’re trying to flank, and desperately call for reinforcements when you’ve sufficiently whittled them down. Aside from coordinating their attacks on your position, enemies can manipulate the environment to create cover and reach you quickly. It is a thrill to think you’re safe behind cover only to have soldiers leap over railings and dive through windows to reach you. While the soldiers’ AI is impressive, FEAR could have used more variety in its enemies. Most of the time, these standard soldiers, with some variation in armor, armament, and appearance, are all you fight and your tactics for dealing with them remain fairly constant. Of the seven enemy types, I would have especially liked more encounters with the Heavy Trooper. This enemy moves slower but is mostly covered in bullet-proof armor and carries more powerful weapons. The reward for taking one down is his beastly death cry and the panicked sound of standard troops exclaiming in disbelief, “He took down the heavy!” While more variety wouldn’t have hurt, the different enemies that are present are distinct in their attack strategies and the amazing AI keeps fights from becoming boring or happening the same way twice.
| …Satisfaction |
Part of the soldiers’ effectiveness comes from their deadly weapons. Fortunately, to combat these minions, FEAR lets you share their arsenal. It spans a good range and include pistols (elevated by the ability to duel wield), machine guns, a shotgun, some scoped weapons, and a couple heavier options. Impressively, each instrument of destruction is effective and what three the player chooses to carry at any given time will end up being a matter of personal preference. However, some weapons are more likely to appeal to you than others. One of these is the best designed shotgun since Half-Life. Its power is evident when fired as the blast booms with bass. The force of the shot causes a bubble of distortion around the barrel and the visceral feeling is completed by chunks of debris flying out of the environment and arms flying off your enemies. Another extremely well designed weapon is the Penetrator, which is essentially a high caliber automatic rifle that sounds like a amplified nail gun and has the additional fun factor of nailing opponents to whatever they’re unfortunate enough to be standing in front of. These two are highlights of a weapon lineup that avoids any dead weight.
| Tough men and steel boxes | Drop the kids off at the pool |
FEAR includes other violent options including three types of grenades. Continuing a recent FPS trend, it allows you to use any of them while you still have your main weapon equipped with the exception of the remote mines which (Surprise!) require the use of a remote. Another excellent feature that all modern shooters should have is melee attacks, which FEAR takes to the next level. I get frustrated in games that don’t allow me to bash my enemies in the face when clips run dry, so I was pleased that this game has more than just the butt-of-the-rifle melee option. Because your character is a highly trained military commando, it makes sense that he can throw punches, perform flying kicks, and Pelé the crap out of people with vicious slide tackles. That last move is especially effective, but it is odd that super-clone-soldiers are killed by it and not crippled or maybe just mildly annoyed. These martial arts are a useful supplement, but most players will find that they often don’t want to get close enough to use them.
| Melee like Peleé |
Also aiding your sense of self-preservation is body armor that reduces the amount of damage you take from enemy attacks and your health regenerates up to a certain threshold (25 points on the moderate difficulty level.) You may also carry ten medkits that can be instantly accessed in the heat of battle. This system strikes a balance between fully regenerating health and the need to back track in a level to pick up health that you didn’t need when you first found it. To be honest, the environments were a little too conveniently stocked with medkits, armor, and weaponry. I know the cloned troops have set up shop, but if they were serious about defending a place then storing extra supplies in open unguarded areas would probably not be the best plan.
Other issues hamper FEAR’s settings. Each area—warehouse, ghetto, office complex, hi-tech facility—is generic fare for action games. While I never tired of the corporate headquarters, other more sterile environments started to grate. Many objects would repeat countless times. There were numerous identical hammers in different places and I desperately wanted to collect and use them like throwing axes. I still dream sometimes about being able to do that. You can’t even pick up the hammer, or any of the trinkets that are scattered about to make things look lived-in. This lack of interactivity is exacerbated by the “Look at me, I am a button, come and push me and see what I do!” texture that you’ll soon learn to recognize.
| So, avoid the burrito platter, then… | Let’s Roll! |
The staleness of the levels is unfortunate considering the general superiority of the game’s graphics. While not the best with interior design, the engine beautifully creates scenes of graphic destruction.
I would compare it to the Doom 3 engine—not in terms of screenshot quality, but in the way that it suits the game perfectly. It is also as cutting edge as they come and will gladly take any resources you give it above the recommended system requirements.
While in Call of Duty 2 you have to lob a smoke grenade to kick up an impenetrable cloud, this happens spontaneously in FEAR as grenades detonate and firearms discharge creating a haze of dust and debris. Spurts of blood splatter on walls and mist into the air. The models for your enemies and allies are detailed with high-resolution textures and good bump mapping.
The characters sometimes look a bit plastic, much closer to Doom 3’s than Half-Life 2’s, but are still excellent looking. Shining on all of this and creating realistic shadows are dynamic lights that add the life-like layer to the world that used to be missing from games. All of this looks even better in slow motion where the effects get to take front stage. When it is activated, everything blurs slightly, and bullet trails become visible. Distortion bubbles in the air caused by explosions are also easier to see and admire. The cumulative effect is that you feel like an action star amid the storm of bullets, fiery explosions, dusty haze and bloodied bodies.
| Product Placement : 5, Immersion : -1 | A man divided against himself cannot stand |
That is what the single player game ultimately comes down to: the quest to live a movie. In this regard, the developer, Monolith, scored a head shot. It took me about twelve hours to reach the game’s satisfying conclusion which was worthy of an actual Japanese horror film.
To get there I passed through 11 “intervals” that each had their own title like the levels in Half-Life 2. Also similar to that game is that you never leave the first-person perspective. This adds to the immersion and cinematic factor of the game as you let yourself become the character in long spans of play. What also helps is a development that I hope will become standard in more games—the presence of a body.
The range of melee moves may have initially necessitated this, but it is one of the best aspects of the game’s presentation. When you look down you can see your own body and to climb ladders you must press the use key, after which your character grabs onto the ladder with his hands. It’s a small, amazing step. There are multiple instances in the game where you stand up or are propelled and you see how your body is reacting and working, instead of having your view just float around disembodied—a key factor in achieving the suspension of disbelief.
The excellent single player campaign is accompanied by a solid multiplayer package that offers the expected variations on the standard Deathmatch and Capture-the-Flag modes. While you can play matches without any slow motion, FEAR’s gameplay differentiates itself best when the ability is implemented. It works by way of a power-up that one person can hold at a time.
Once it charges the player can activate it, granting them and their teammates faster movement and shooting while everyone else’s action slows to the pace of a snail (albeit a well-armed one). The meter runs down, it charges back up, and when the possessing player is killed the power-up is up for grabs.
The maps mine the single player game for inspiration and I admired the way that each room on a map seemed to have at least three points of entry, preventing a linear circle chase. Melee makes multiplayer… interesting. Holstering your weapon equips your north and south paws and gives you faster movement speed. Thus, in the cramped corridors of an office building, it can be frustrating to have someone run around a corner, throw a punch, and instantly kill you before you have taken a single shot.
It can be even more frustrating when half the players in a game are doing this. That said, it feels very good to kill these players, and what they’re doing is by no means cheating.
The Penetrator enforces the rules – OBEY THE SIGN!
To be blunt, FEAR is the best first person shooter to come out on the PC this year. It uses a story unique to the genre to create an immersive atmosphere of dread with perhaps the most visceral combat experience ever brought to the PC.
When Soldier of Fortune 2 came out, I remember thinking that it was just great that you could blow off your enemy’s legs and disembowel him, but also thinking that it seemed too flippant. FEAR manages to take that level of gore and put it in the right climate: an over-the-top action movie.
It features the beautiful bullet ballets popularized by Max Payne and pushes squad AI past the Half-Life standard. The level of first-person immersion that it for the most part creates is what makes the odd clipping glitch or being able to kick a dead body ten yards that much more painful. Thankfully, you’ll be too busy having a blast with psychic visions and waves of deadly clones to notice these infrequent oddities or the drab environments.
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