One of the most stylish shooters around, and also one of the most tense.
-- The New Oxford American Dictionary
Modern first person shooters have done a really good job of raising the in game tension level compared to their predecessors. It could be the fact that shooters often incorporate stealth tactics, or it could simply be that the first-person perspective puts the character right in the action, making the experience more personal. Whatever the reason is, FEAR has done an exceptional job of providing a strong candidate for most nerve-wracking shooter ever.
The story begins when a man named Paxton Fettel escapes from a maximum security facility, and is convinced by the apparition of a little girl to go on a killing spree. To make matters worse, Fettel is a psychic who had been trained to control genetically engineered soldiers, and now it seems he has quite a number of them at his disposal. Plus he's a cannibal. Your job as the new point man of FEAR, a fictional branch of the United States military specializing in the paranormal, is to lead your group into the facility and eliminate Fettel.
THE PHYSICAL
A key element in the success of FEAR's presentation is the amount of interaction you have with the environment. During the course of a gun fight you can destroy an entire room. Glass can be broken and objects ranging from stationery to shelving can be knocked over. Bullets may damage the walls or floor, and the damage looks quite convincing until you get right up to it, at which point it loses a bit of its depth. Even after you've cleared a room of enemies, objects may still be in motion and, depending on how big the battle was, smoke will hang in the air.
In order to help you blow stuff up you are given a varied arsenal of weapons, including handguns, assault rifles, and grenades. There's even an experimental weapon that takes down most enemies in one shot, leaving nothing but a charred skeleton. The shotgun feels extremely powerful, and unloading it into an enemy soldier at close range will literally blow them to pieces. Grenades also convey a sense of power as their detonation can be seen in the form of a shock wave capable of rending limbs.
This weaponry will prove useful against your foes, who are pretty clever. They frequently take cover, will use grenades to flush you out of position, and often employ squad tactics. However, your character is gifted with extremely good reflexes, which is presented as the ability to slow down time. Not only does this give you an advantage in combat, but it also gives the game a lot of style. It's hard to get tired of taking down an enemy with bullets visibly passing by you while debris and smoke fill the air, all the while hoping your reflex gauge doesn't run out before you've secured the area.
THE PARANORMAL
Instead of trying to startle the player, FEAR instead opts to creep them out. This usually happens by way of what can only be described as hallucinations. Often times these hallucinations involve the apparition of a young girl. Other times the slow motion will kick in by itself as you navigate long, eerie corridors that may or may not be dripping with blood.
Lighting plays a huge part in setting the game's tone. Sometimes shade will be used to keep you on edge, while other times the lighting will be diffuse and washed out, giving an otherworldly look to your surroundings. There are even a couple instances when your flashlight will cease to work, only to have the lights flicker on, revealing an image you probably didn't want to see. The audio also serves the horror side of the game. Your radio will crackle ominously, and ghastly whispering will often be heard. Plus, the ambient music really builds up the tension, which this game has in spades to begin with.
THE AWKWARD
While the game manages to keep you enthralled by way of its combat and eeriness, there are certain qualities that detract from the experience. For instance, the same physics that makes it possible for objects to be flung across the room during a firefight will cause them to shake unrealistically when you get too close to them. Since objects will move by themselves during the course of the game, this tends to set the player on edge. While that might be seen as a credit to the development team, I'm sure their goal wasn't to increase the tension through jittery physics.
The swimming controls are frustratingly sensitive, but this doesn't impact the game very much since there are so few swimming sequences. The close quarters combat is also awkward, but like swimming there are very few chances to incorporate it. Plus, I still don't understand how sliding into the shins of a well armoured, genetically engineered soldier can send them flying across the room. In addition there's the ever present qualm of the FPS flashlight. Why is it that a secret branch of the US military, outfitted with some of the best equipment the world has, hasn't figured out how to make a flashlight last more than a minute, yet they've developed technology to recharge that same flashlight in mere seconds?
Common quibbles with the genre aside, there are several points to the story which go unexplained. You can be injured during hallucinations, yet no one else can see them, so are they real? Also, most scenarios involve trying to kill a target or rescue civilians, and although the story is leaked to the player slowly through way of voice mail and laptops that you come across during the game, the full story could be told verbally in a couple of minutes. Add to that the fact that the fate of one character is ambiguous means players looking for a strong story should look elsewhere, although they probably steer clear of shooters to begin with.
THE END
Even though FEAR is a bit rough in some places its overall presentation and feel are more than enough to balance things out. The combat is chaotic and stylish, and between fights the horror sequences keep you tense and glued to the screen. Horror movies never scared me, but this game actually gave me chills.