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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