F.E.A.R. Hands-On: The PS3 Gets Scary

Sierra and Monolith's superb first-person action horror game F.E.A.R. has already made an impact on the PC and the Xbox 360, so it seems only natural that the franchise head over to the PlayStation 3. The PS3 version is slated to ship later this month, and we had a chance to check out a near-finished version of the game at Sierra's Gamers' Day.

F.E.A.R. is a game about many things, including a freaky little girl with the ability to tear apart soldiers with her mind, awesome gunfights against brutally smart enemies, and lots of dark and creepy environments to explore. If you've played the PC or Xbox 360 versions, then there's not a lot of new stuff to be found here, as the campaign and multiplayer are pretty much exactly the same. If you haven't played the previous versions of F.E.A.R., though, you're in for an intense rollercoaster of a ride. You'll play as the Point Man, the scout for the military's First Encounter Assault Recon team, tasked with investigating the paranormal and the weird. You're like Mulder or Scully, only with a lot more firepower, as well as the ability to kick in superfast reflexes that are the equivalent of bullet time in The Matrix.

What the PS3 version will bring in terms of exclusive content is a new mission from the perspective of one of the Delta Force commandos in the game. This is a bit longer than the exclusive holiday mission found in the Xbox 360 version, and it gives you the chance to explore what life is like as one of the canon-fodder guys in the game. The PS3 version will also ship with three exclusive multiplayer levels, plus there's an exclusive new weapon in the form of a rapid-fire shotgun. The game will run at a maximum of 720p, with a frame rate of 30 frames per second.

For fun we played a multiplayer match against some of the testers. F.E.A.R. supports up to 16 players in a match, though some maps will support a smaller number of players. The action remains as cutthroat as ever. You can kill opponents with assault rifles, shotguns, grenades, nail guns, and even a particle beam weapon that sears the flesh off of bones. Meanwhile, one player can grab a special power-up that lets them move at superfast speeds, though the downside is that it only works in short bursts and it reveals your location to everyone else, making you a big, fat target. F.E.A.R. looks like a solid port of a great PC and Xbox 360 game, and PS3 players can experience the fear themselves soon.