An usual, if flawed, game.
Story
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Fear Effect follows three mercenaries: Hana, Glass & Deke. The trio travels to Hong Kong, in order to rescue Wee Ming, daughter of a powerful Hong-Kong Triad boss. The plan is simple: find Wee Ming, and hold her as ransom, for her father. As one might expect though, things goes horribly wrong.
The story has a very mature tone. The main characters are far from heroic, and some of the events that ends up happening, is a bit unusual for a PS1 game (though in retrospective, it's not as mature as some games that's out today, but that's beside the point). The story itself however, maybe is a bit too fast paced. Cut-scenes are pretty short, and events can come by a bit too quickly. It doesn't mean that you won't be able to follow what's going on, it just means that events comes and goes pretty quickly, perhaps lacking a little more development. That being said, the story is good. The weird events and twists do well to hold your attention, till the end of the game. It's not a groundbreaking story by any means, but it's an interesting story, that holds the player interested, until the credits.
8.0
Gameplay
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While the story is weird, the gameplay is even weirder. The game plays like Resident Evil. Yup, it's one of those games, where you control your character, like they are a huge tank, that are difficult to move around, and difficult to aim. That being said though, the game does improve on its tank controls. For one thing, you can move and shoot at the same. Not only that, but your characters can also evade (roll) and they can even sneak, allowing them to perform stealth kills.
Unfortunately however, while Resident Evil lacked some of these things, Resident Evil at least had controls that are easy to grasp. Fear Effect's controls on the other hand, take a while to learn. The first bump on the road is the inventory system. You use square and circle to cycle through the inventory. Then you use triangle to select the weapons, or items when they are needed. The inventory takes place in real time as well, so if you suddenly want to switch weapons during a fight, chances are you'll end up dying.
The second bump is precision. When you have to use key items, you often have to stand in a very specific place, in the environment, and the screen has to come up with a "use" icon highlighted, otherwise you can't do anything. Getting the icon to appear can be a bit tricky, especially when you're in the middle of a fight. You also better know what item to use; otherwise you have to cycle through the inventory all over again. This problem also extends to the combat. You can only aim when the crosshair icon appears on the upper part of the screen. Otherwise your character isn't going to hit anything. Surprisingly though, hitting your enemies isn't that huge problem, that you might think. The game is usually quick to make your character aim at the enemies. And if you're wielding dual pistols, they'll even aim at two enemies at a time. That said, it does become an issue during some set pieces.
Mastering the controls is going take a while, and until then, you will probably die… a lot. Enemies are pretty good at hitting you, and while you can evade, the tank controls makes it difficult to react when an enemy is shooting, or charging at you. Once you get a handle of them though, the game does become a lot better, though not any easier, necessarily. The game has a lot of set pieces, that has you fighting choppers and outrunning danger. In most of these moments, the game doesn't give a clear indication on what you should do. And at times, these set pieces comes right out of nowhere, catching you by surprise. The game's health system is also partially to blame for this. Your health is measured as an EKG meter (you know, the ones you see at hospitals and such). The meter goes worse, when enemies are nearby. The point being that your character becomes scared when an enemy is nearby. There are ways of improving your health though, such as stealth kills, and progressing through the game, as well as killing certain enemies. While it's a weird system, it actually helps making the game seem tenser… and difficult. The addition of your characters heartbeat, whenever there's enemies, makes it even tenser.
In true Resident Evil fashion, there are also puzzles. The puzzles range from complex, disarming bombs and activating electricity, to simpler ones, such as remembering patterns. The puzzles however can be pretty difficult, because most of them will kill you, should you fail them. This, coupled with the health system, and the set pieces, and the controls, mean you are going to die an awful lot. And when you do, you have a semi-lengthy loading time to suffer through. On the other hand, there are many individual death animations that are pretty entertaining.
The game is spread on 4 discs (and requires you to use one of the discs twice). Despite this however, the game is pretty short. Your first play through should take around 6-8 hours, depending on how many times you'll die. It goes by even faster if you know what to do, and if you have mastered the controls. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to do afterwards. There are a total of 4 endings, with one of them only being accessible if you finish the game on the hard difficulty. Otherwise, there isn't a lot to do in the game, once the credits are over.
7.5
Graphics & Sound
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If the game is so short, then why is it spread on 4 discs? It's because of the graphics. For a PS1 game, the graphics are pretty good. The game's characters and environments are all rendered in cell-shading, giving them a cartoonish vibe to it. The environments aren't too bad looking either, and at times they even look like something that's been taken directly from Blade Runner. The impressive thing about the environments though, is how lively it (can) feels. Unlike Resident Evil, thinks actually happen in the backgrounds. Unfortunately, this is achieved through looping the environments every few seconds, and it's very easy to see when a loop is ending. Despite that, the game still looks pretty good. Despite that, the game still look pretty good. The cut-scenes looks good as well, but the animation during them, are a bit weird.
The voice acting is weird. It's good for the most part, but at times it comes off as sounding very weird, lacking a few emotional inputs. The music is dark, but as it is, it's nothing special.
8.5
Overall
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Because of the mature story and its health system, Fear Effect is a surprisingly unusual game. At times, it may try too hard to be an interactive movie, and the controls may take a while to learn. But once you do, Fear Effect is a flawed, but a good game nevertheless.