Fear Effect

The Playstation features one of the biggest, and arguably most diverse, libraries of any game console. As someone who didn't really have a Playstation until after that generation had ended, I enjoy going back to experience what the console had to offer on occasion Sometimes, I find games that still stand the test of time, such as the fantastic Parasite Eve. Other times, I suffer through games that are far too dated to be enjoyed today, like the interesting but unbearable Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Up next on my trip through the hallowed halls of the Playstation catalog was Fear Effect, a game I really didn't know much about, other than its eye-catching look and embarrassingly dated marketing. Which category did it end up in? Well, you've obviously already seen my rating at this point, but let's talk about why I felt that way.

Fear Effect features three playable characters, mercenaries who often work together on jobs named Hana, Glas, and Deke. Their mission this time? Recover a missing girl named Wee Ming Lam, daughter to the leader of the most powerful Hong Kong triad in the world. She ran away from her sequestered life after learning some horrible truth about her future and has vanished into the cyberpunk-ish protectorate of Shan Xi. Hana receives a tip about where the girl may be found from an old acquaintance named Jin and goes to meet him, along with Glas. From there, anything and everything goes wrong for the trio, quickly changing their goal from getting paid to just getting out alive. They must track down the girl while dealing with Lam's men, other mercenaries, and even supernatural creatures. Along the way, they find themselves pulled deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Wee Ming's true nature and destiny.

The plot is mostly aimless and amounts to almost nothing in the end. Events happen at an often breakneck pace, never taking the time to explain anything and instead just dumping the barest amount of information onto you before moving to the next scene. The final act of the game, where all is supposed to be revealed, gives only the most flimsy of explanations for everything that has happened before simply petering out. Even the "good" ending, which can only be gotten by completing the game on Hard, adds no information and instead just serves to wave away any of the consequences because yay, happy ending! None of the characters grow or change and you end up in pretty much the same place you started. The campy tone of the writing makes it even more meaningless; after all, if they aren't going to take anything seriously, why should you? It's a completely boring, empty plot that gives no reason to keep playing and doesn't even offer an enjoyable level of cheese to make fun of.

There is only one (somewhat) redeeming factor of the story: the presentation. Developer Kronos Digital Entertainment started out by outsourcing animation and CG effects for games, not actually making them. They used these talents years later to create the visual style for Fear Effect, utilizing a cel-shaded style that was unlike anything else in games at the time. Even today, it stands out in a striking way from other Playstation games--although the pre-rendered stuff fares much better than the in-game visuals and the character designs are rather grotesquely proportioned. There’s also some slick, mostly seamless transitions between cutscenes and action that just weren’t being done in many games at this time. I also want to give a small amount of credit to the voicework in the game. While the writing is atrocious, the voice performances are entirely passable, especially when compared to other games of the era. As a whole, the presentation doesn't smooth over the jagged edges of the story, but it at least makes the cutscenes...tolerable?

Gameplay in Fear Effect most resembles the Resident Evil style of games, albeit with a bit more linearity. You wander around the environments looking for items you need and dealing with various enemies, either with guns or stealthily by crouch-walking up behind them and for an instant melee kill. Occasionally, you are tasked to solve a puzzle or fight a boss, which are essentially puzzles too, to progress. One difference here is that you play as three different characters, switching automatically between them several times in each area. Each of them plays entirely the same, but they all have their own inventories and progress through the environments from different angles, although they sometimes overlap and must help the others by opening a door or triggering an event.

While the gameplay resembles the Resident Evil series, this game plays worse in almost every way imaginable. Capcom, for the most part, seemed to understand the limitations of their engine and designed encounters around the fixed camera angles and tank controls in order to minimize frustration. Fear Effect, on the other hand, is filled with confusing perspectives and cheap deaths due to your inability to move properly, either from blindly walking off a ledge to your death or trapping yourself in a group of enemies. I like tank controls and am an avid supporter of them--when they are considered and designed for. That isn't the case here. Managing your inventory is far worse as well, as you must do it in-game and with a context-sensitive system that often led to me equipping the wrong gun. I could go on and on, but there are three main flaws with the gameplay that led me to frustration time and time again.

First, and most egregious, is the game's "auto" targeting system. Unlike Resident Evil, where the auto-aim seems to work persistently, Fear Effect's auto-aim is wildly inconsistent. While it flashes a target icon on screen when you are "locked on" to something, getting it to actually appear can be entirely baffling at times. Sometimes there are multiple enemies and the game chooses to target any of them except the one you actually want. Sometimes it seems to be a case of perspective, with the camera angle making it hard to tell how far you need to turn to point at the enemy. Sometimes there is some invisible edge to the geometry that you just can't shoot through, despite it appearing that there is nothing there. I can't count the number of bullets I wasted--in a game with limited ammo, mind you--as the game struggled to stay fixated on my target. Some of the later extended combat sequences nearly drove me MAD due to this constant issue.

Second is the ridiculous trial-and-error nature of the game. Everything in this game wants to kill you, forcing you through a return to the title screen and a long load to get back into the action. Save points are quite frequent, but it doesn't make death any less annoying, especially due to their oftentimes cheap nature. As I mentioned above, you can walk off a ledge to your death at several points, demanding a finer control of your character than the locked camera angles and tank controls provide. You are also incredibly fragile and have no way to regen health through items, yet are thrown into lengthy combat encounters and boss fights that often demand memorization of where enemies will appear and how best to deal with them. Worst of all are a few sections that demand shooting precision (ha!) as accidentally hitting the wrong target instantly kills you. Without save states, I most certainly would have never finished this game.

Finally, the puzzles are completely terrible. The game likes to drop you into these puzzles with absolutely no explanation and very few hints (for the most part) and expects you to figure it out. The best of these are decently smart, requiring you to backtrack and find a clue or pay attention to a pattern. The worst require strange, inconsistent leaps in logic that always left me scratching my head and in one case, arbitrarily changes its rules in one part of the puzzle. There were only two in the whole game that I actually enjoyed figuring out. While I applaud the developer for trying to create puzzles with a bit more depth, the design and flow of almost every one was tedious or outright baffling.

By today's standards of gameplay and story, Fear Effect is an absolute mess. It has no fun or intriguing narrative to pull you forward, features atrocious controls that you have to fight at every turn, and likes putting you in instant death situations far too often for its own good. Even its neat ideas, such as a smart solve for shooter dissonance with your health meter representing your fear and being too panicked is what leads taking a fatal hit, can't make it any more tolerable today. I cannot recommend it on any point for anyone in 2018, save for maybe those who grew up with it and can overlook its many flaws with a healthy dose of nostalgia.