F.E.A.R. doesn’t have the literary power to support a decent story. During the first few missions, gameplay is interspersed with excellent cutscenes which add depth and meaning to the shooting sequences. By the 5th Interval, the shooting drags without the support of any cohesive narrative. There are telephones and laptops which provide poor audio quality messages from various random people – but you rarely meet up with your teammates. When rendezvous’ do occur, they are usually very brief and pale in comparison to the real-time story segments in Half-Life 2. The other 95% of structure is delivered via tiny boxes of text at various intervals. For a good few hours, your mission text boxes provide these pitiful instructions (paraphrased):
“You must chase after Fettel and eliminate him.”
“We have lost the Fettel’s signal, keep looking”.
“We know where Fettel is, go there and eliminate him.”
“Fettel left before you arrived, keep chasing.”
“Fettel can’t be found, do this instead.”
“We think we found Fettel again, head in that direction.”
Those are shortened versions of a number of mission guides you will receive over the course of several hours. The experience quickly becomes very anti-climatic, and drags without forming a dynamic story. The opposite of a metaphorical "page-turner", if you will. The desire to set things right wanes as you push headlong into the story, and nothing exciting happens. Even at the conclusion of that particular area, you still haven’t thrown down with this Fettel guy, and are instead shipped off to an entirely different facility. F.E.A.R. is definitely lacking in story structure, and plot revelations are few and far beween.
Quick, duck and cover!
Surely with a name like F.E.A.R., one must expect some scary surprises along the way? You would be right to demand some terror, and again the terror shines during the first quarter of the game. Shadowy figures disappearing, bloody skeletons appearing and crazy dream-like sequences are presented extremely well – but after the 50th creepy music spike and corner-of-the-eye figure, it loses much of the impact. In the interim, between reading vague mission objectives and seeing walking shadows, the gameplay consists of running through corridor after corridor, office after office, sewer after sewer – shooting the same type of enemy. They are even referred to as Replica soldiers, essentially meaning they are clones. Well, there are a very select few “bosses” scattered throughout the game, but they aren’t all that impressive and don’t lend credence to the notion that a whole lot of thought went in to enemy design.
At this point, it may seem that F.E.A.R. is really quite dull. Dull is certainly not the word to use, but it is repetitive. However, repetitive in this case may be just what you are looking for, given the outstanding combat engine.
A possible scenario: You approach a large room, cluttered with boxes and tables, and a balcony looks down upon the mess from the second level. It’s dark, so your flashlight is turned on. Upon closer inspection, the room is occupied by several enemy soldiers. If only you could sneak….too late! They see your flashlight, and the hunt is on. The first strategy is to lob a grenade straight into the enemy midst, and take out as many baddies as possible. The soldiers on the second level are shooting down, so you’ll then need to pull out your rifle and take cover behind an overturned cabinet, taking potshots to eliminate them. Some of the ground soldiers are moving in, so extract the fully automatic machine pistol, lean around the corner and smoke them before it becomes close quarters. However, two enemies made it through the barrage of fire, and they are approaching rapidly from around the corner. Out comes the combat shotgun, and on comes the bullet time. Your reflexes speed up as everyone else slows down, and the first enemy you take head-on with the shotgun is launched into the air in slow-motion, with bullets whizzing past and blood spraying everywhere. On a good day his entire body will be annihilated from the blast. In one quick movement, as the first defeated opponent is still in mid-air, the shotgun goes away and you deliver a deadly flying kick to the soldier standing behind this carnage. Bullet-time reflexes expire, and the room becomes eerily silent.
Manipulate time itself to make the kill.
To summarise, the combat is superb. After every firefight, a few seconds are needed to catch one’s breath and reflect on the transpired events. The structure of the environment even gives the impression that each enemy encounter has been individually designed, with a purpose given to the number of opponents and variety of cover. More evidence to support this theory is that there are a number of segments during which pretty much nothing happens; you are stuck wandering the corridors, slowly but surely making your way to the next “battle” sequence.
Everything is destructible, and as a brutal firefight is underway the walls chip away, barrels explode and soldiers scream in pain. The sound effects resulting from the carnage are incredible – a 5.1 surround sound system is highly recommended. The music also fits the game’s atmosphere, being creepy and subtle. This works well for the most part, but eventually becomes a non-issue after the scary moments cease to have much of an impact.
The graphics are excellent – what is present, and what you can see. This means two things: while the environments are nice to look at, you’ll find yourself seeing the exact same offices and corridors over and over again – and much of the time the graphical detail isn’t noticeable, because Monolith has insisted on shrouding the entire game in darkness. That’s right - being a scary game and set in an industrial wasteland, it has to be at night time, and most of the lights need to malfunction. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if a decent source of light is available on your person. You do carry a flashlight, but for some stupid, stupid reason F.E.A.R. has implemented the good old dead battery system. The light lasts for about 45 seconds, and then takes 20 seconds to recharge. What’s the point? Why not just let the light be always available? The battery recharging time doesn’t build suspense, it merely forces you to sit there for a spell in total darkness waiting for the little bar to fill up again. For an elite tech-team of futuristic warriors, they sure don’t know where to shop for batteries. How irritating. I blame Halo.
Is someone bending girders?
As mentioned earlier, the 360 version is pretty much identical, despite being controlled with a gaming pad rather than a keyboard and mouse. My personal preference is the pad, and the 360 controller handles the complex moves and combat options rather well. My only gripe is with the activation command - press and hold the X button when the hand icon appears to activate a door or climb a ladder. This is rather fiddly, as the hand icon only appears while directly facing or viewing the interactive object. It takes some getting used to, but doesn't really affect the experience as a whole.
The only big addition to the 360 version is Instant Action mode. When it comes down to specifics, it isn't anything new except a way to add "points" to the game. IA mode uses various locations from around the single player campaign, shortens them and adds a timer. The goal is to advance through the stage as fast as possible, kill as many people as possible and, above all, survive. It's a nice way to artificially add longevity, despite the fact limited effort went into adding extra content.
Any gamer claiming to enjoy first-person shooters should definitely give F.E.A.R. a try. Some may be put off by the lack of a decent story and repetitive combat, but the overall quality warrants at least one playthrough. What’s interesting about F.E.A.R. (and I don’t get to say this often about genre interests) is that those previously unattracted to FPS games might do well to give this one a bash. Its unique combat may attract those previously bored with the tired old run-and-gun franchises like Medal of Honour and Halo. F.E.A.R. gives something unique to the genre that may be expected by veterans, yet previously unimagined by newcomers – a rather refreshing mix of appeal for the differing gamer segments. It certainly is an interesting game to say the least, and the probable sequel (beyond the upcoming expansion F.E.A.R: Extraction Point) will definitely be a title to watch.
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