Fear is a great game and is unlike many other FPS games in many ways.
Monolith have gone out of their way to raise areas of this genre above
and beyond anything that anyone has acheived before.
Gameplay:
One of Fears great assets is its gameplay. The controls are well laid
out and once you get used to them you should have no trouble leaning
round corners, aiming and shooting dudes. I found the aiming idea
really useful and suited my style well. Leaning is a must and unless
you get good at it you will find yourself taking a fair amount of
avoidable damage.
Fear creates a creepy atmosphere throughout and will make you jump as
all sorts of wierd stuuf happens. This is a realy interesting part of
fear and the story starts with you trying to eliminate the leader of a
mind controled army of replica soliders. The story will keep you
guessing and on your toes for the horror themed visions and whatnot.
Fear has a nice selection of weaponry, inculding the usual assualt
rifle, smg, shotgun and pistol plus some more exotic stuff like a very
cool rocket launcher, the skeleton making particle rifle and the nail
gun which sticks your enemies to the walls after their demise. On top
of this there are three types of grenades to use as well.
The AI of Fear is probably the best i've ever seen. The enemies will
chat away with each other co-ordinating way to put you down. They will
readily flank you, hide, lean round corners, make cover for themselves
and are very good at grenades to flush ou out of your position. Their
is a slight lack of enemies though and mostly you will be fighting the
same replica soliders over and over albeit with them wielding different
weapons. Despite this they are good enough for you to not really mind
so much.
Some gameplay downers were an absolute abundance of medkits. I rarely
found myself without a full supply of medkits. This makes the game
somewhat easier though i was only on normal difficultly. Also i found
the story very watered down and not really explored to its full extent.
You leave the game with many many question and not really a clear idea
of why you did all that. Many of the level objective are the same.
Mostly its a case of go here, whoops the easy way is not an option, ill
have to take the hard way. A bit more variety in purpose would have
been nice. The slowmo ability is cool but i found myself rarely using
it and often forgeting a even could use it as most firefights weren't
too hard with it anyway.
Graphics:
Fear has awesome graphics. The enviroments look great except for
sometimes that they are a little sparse. While the enviroments do look
great soon you will find yourself wondering when will the seemingly
endless offices or warehouses finish. More variety in location would
have been greatly appreciated. The enemies and your allies all look
awesome and are a joy to watch get blown to bits. All of the guns look
good and all having look great in action, especially the particle rifle
that reduces your emenies to skeletons. The grenade/explosion effects
deserve special mention and are the best ive seen. These graphics do
come at a cost however. This game is EXTREMELY demanding on your
system. To play this game smoothly you may well have to turn some of
the graphical options down. One thing that helps greatly with this is
the fact that it has a built in test run for your settings so it doesnt
take too long to find a combination of settings that will work for your
system.
Sound:
The sound is great, the music is spooky to go with the themes of the
games and really get you in the mood for a bit of a scare. The guns and
grenades sound great to. It would have been nice if the radio
communications made to you were a little louder as often they were hard
to hear.
Value:
This game is good value. It's singleplayer campaign is reasonably long
for FPS standard and now with the multlplayer released for all to
download you should never struggle to find people across the globe to
put some hurt on. Although the game has a number of difficulties i
didnt find myself want to try again on hard after finishing it the
first time on normal as the story did nothing to make me want to try
again.
Overall:
Fear is an awesome game with all areas excelling except for
storytelling. This game could have ben my favourite game if it had more
substance and variety. To me it currently stands as a some great ideas
and innovations in a shallow shell. Despite this this game is a must
try for FPS fans.
