Easily one of the best FPS of all time!
Alright onto the game... FEAR is unlike any First Person Shooter i've ever played, and is downright scary when you play the game with the lights off, and the sound turned up. when i played this game i made sure i didn't play it until it was night out and im glad i did. FEAR doesn't rely on the stupid way of scarying people, by having things jump out at you like Doom 3 does, FEAR gets into your head, and really can creep you out at times.
The single player is very good, and takes about 8.5 - 12 hours to beat depending on if you explore everything. My first time through the whole game, i beat it in 8.5 hours on moderate difficulty and i barely explored anything. Im playing the whole game through again on extreme difficulty and i can tell that im deffinately moving though the game faster and can probably beat the game in about 6-7 hours.
The Story is good, but a little hard to follow at times, it took me a while to understand everything after beating it. While playing the game you get little hints and clues as to whats going on, and you go into this state that lets you explore Alma's world, which you can move through more the closer you get to the end.
The A.I. in this game is the best i've ever seen! I mean there are times when i just didn't expect the A.I. to do certain things they did. Also since im on my second time playing this game i can tell you that the A.I. do things differently depending on the currently situtation. Like for example the first time i played through this certain part of the game the A.I. didn't setup up mines, but being the second time i've played through they've definately setup mines, and this isn't because im playing on extreme difficulty either.
I must say that for most of the game you are playing the same people just in different places, but i guess thats how its suppose to be since you are fighting against an army of clones.
The sound of FEAR also adds to the creepiness, they don't have actual sound tracks, but music and sounds that are connected to your current situation, and status. Also all the background sounds are amazing, such as the bullet casings, falling on the floor, and the sounds of guns, exposions, kicking people, and much much more.
The gameplay of FEAR is a little hard to get used to at fist, and i reccomend that you change the controls to your liking before going into a combat scenario. Using the slow mo feature is something that i used waaay to much my first time through, and after a while, killing people can become to easy. I hold myself back from using the slow mo unless there are lots of guys, otherwise i don't use it at all, and i can say that after doing this made fighting the enemies more fun.
I haven't had the chance to play the multiplayer yet because the single player is just sooo good. i plan to soon though, but i can tell you that from my experience playing the multiplayer demo with all my friends at school has been a blast and we do it almist every night. We are getting tired of playing on the same level so im just waiting for my friends to get the full game.
There are two versions you can get FEAR in and they are the regular edition which has the game on 5 cd's, and the Directors Edition which is well worth it, because with the Directors Edition you get the whole game on 1 DVD. Plus there are many Bonus Features on the DVD such as; the making of FEAR, Director's Commentary, FEAR Prequel ( which is an actual 6 minute movie that is about Alma), and theres also the P.A.N.I.C.S. episode 1.
All in all i enjoyed this game a lot, and looking forward to playing FEAR 2 if there will be one which i hope there is, because Monolith did a great job with this game!