This game was one of the most popular games of 2005. Are they right?
You play as a new recruit into this group entitled F.E.A.R, which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon. You try to find this cannibalistic criminal by the name of Paxton Fettel, and while you're trying to find him, you're somewhat haunted by this small little girl named Alma. Your character will see a lot of confusing images frequently throughout the game, which it does well and as it gives off several spooky moments, it doesn't go for surprise scare tactics like Resident Evil games do.
The new recruit has reflexes that are "off the charts" and give the player an advantage during combat situations. You get slow motion, which refills every few seconds, but depletes pretty quickly. This has been done before countless times before this game, and it's not really unique. Your player can also do some simple combat moves such as hitting the enemy with the butt of the weapon, or bicycle kicking. Some of these moves are a bit complex to do, and sometimes require multiple key presses to get what you want to do. The recruit can also improve their maximum health and reflex time with boosters strewn throughout the game. Some are them are hidden, others are more obvious. It gives the game rewards for people who observe, but tends to penalize players who just run and gun as playing with default health and reflex times make the game much harder as you progress.
In terms of where you go around the game, most of the game takes place in night areas through warehouses, an office building, a technological base, a dilapidated apartment complex, among others. Sadly the game lacks variety in locations, and certain areas such as the office areas take way too long, and hurts pacing a bit. Also the default graphic settings make the game too dark, giving off bad vibes of games like Doom 3. You'll either need to rely heavily on your flashlight or use the brightness settings in the game to see.
F.E.A.R.'s engine boasts a pretty good particle system, and parts of the walls come off when you shoot at them, leaving dust everywhere, which looks real good. It also has some physics, but nothing as interactive as something like Half-Life 2. The enemy A.I. doesn't slouch either, it does a lot of flanking and surprise hits to flush you out, and since the levels are made for multiple paths, this gives the player, and the enemy, different ways to tackle the same areas. However, enemy variety is very slim, you will tend to fight the same enemies a lot, with little variety except in weaponry, with a major enemy that takes more hits to kill. It's a grunt-fest, and it gets tiring halfway in.
Audibly the game sounds okay. Since you tend to fight the same enemies frequently, you tend to hear the same voices of "Target sighted!" among other things. Also, this game's a bit on the offensive side, these marines tend to shoot off s-words and f-words like nobody's business. In terms of the other characters, most of them fit for the character, and even characters like Alma bring an eerie, creepy experience that adds to the atmosphere. Music is a bit on the mixed side. While some tracks work in certain areas, in other places, they do not. Like later on in the game you're supposed to move certain items to progress, and when these effects happen, they do this uplifting track that really, really sounded out of place. It's as if Monolith had this track, but had no good place to put it.
F.E.A.R. has large amounts of weaponry, looking similar to real-life weapons, and a few strange futuristic weapons like a particle beam weapon, which is the game's sniper rifle, and a three-round rocket launcher. There are also grenades, proximity mines and remote mines, which are easy to use, but remote mines can't be quickly thrown and exploded, it has its own detonator, which can complicate matters. You can also use health packs at your own leisure, which means you can save them for those aftermath situations, or use them during a firefight with reflexes on.
F.E.A.R. likes taking homages to many different films and games. For instance, Alma could look like one of the cousins of Sadako from The Ring, Paxton Fettel is reminiscent of Hannibal Lector, and if you look hard enough, you can find red staplers. These are a bit on the humorous side, and they don't detract from the game's plot or make it look like a caricature.
The single player takes about 6-7 hours to complete, and then there's multiplayer. It has your standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and Last Man Standing. Plus it has two new game modes reminiscent of Unreal Tournament: Conquer All and Capture, where you capture command points. Some of these game modes give the option to also play with slow motion on, where there's a powerup in the map and you get the opportunity to use it. In addition, F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer scoring is done in a way where the points do matter: You receive five points for a frag, lose one if you die, and lose three if you kill yourself or a teammate. It breaks up the monotony of other shooters, and is fun to play on all counts.
Does this game live up to the hype? Kind of. The plot's a little uninspiring, the enemy variety is low, and the game is too dark, but fun gameplay and a great multiplayer redeem it. It's a good game, but it's not made for low-end PCs. You're gonna need a good processor and video card to run at a decent framerate, and a few gigabytes of hard drive space to spare. F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer is available for free on the PC as "F.E.A.R. Combat", but the single player is good enough to warrant a purchase.
Pros: Exceptional particle effects and A.I., Boosters to enhance the game, great weapon variety, good multiplayer variety.
Cons: Uninspired plot, levels are a bit monotonous, game is too dark.