Some of my all-time favourite games!
Showing 1-10 of 31 items
The origin of 'F.E.A.R.' is the combination of two excellent things (John Woo-style gunplay and J-Horror) with Monolith's talent for creating immensely satisfying shooters. The result is one of my Top Ten Games of All Time, without a doubt. Truly something special.
'Extraction Point' is what I'd consider an unfairly-maligned expansion. It retains many elements of the original 'F.E.A.R.' that I love (the frenetic combat, the style, the atmosphere and horror) and bolts it onto a simple-yet-excellent premise: you're in a City with an incredibly powerful supernatural force, so you need to find Helicopter Extraction and get out of there! Inevitably, you will encounter this supernatural force while shooting your way through the Replica Battalion trying to kill you while escaping themselves. The result is an absolute blast.
'F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin' is a satisfying game of meaty guns, nice visual and audio design and an interesting story. While it doesn't quite come together like the first game (the melee combat - while present and effective as before - doesn't flow as well between bouts of shooting this time around), it remains a lot of fun (the Mech Suits are a delight) with plenty of scares and a truly memorable ending.
'F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn' has you playing as a Replica Soldier who begins receiving strange visions of Paxton Fettel (a key character in 'F.E.A.R.') and feels compelled to act on them. This one features an extended Mech Suit sequence in a building under construction at the very start - and all the exploding brilliance that implies therein. While less scary than the core game, horror doesn't seem to be the focus for 'Reborn'. A bloody good time overall, if inessential to the story of 'F.E.A.R. 2' proper.
My Game of the Year for 2016. Instantly memorable characters and settings. Superb, varied gameplay. And to top it all off, the usual Blizzard polish and long-term value-for-money. This game kept 'Hitman' from being my Game of the Year. That's how good 'Overwatch' was, and is, to me.
