F.E.A.R a title that is way over rated?

Own it on both PC & 360.

Still cannot invest enough mental focus to finish the game. Excellent looking game for it's time, excellent physics and excellent AI.

Lackluster story, boring same play style the entire game and enemies are the same with very little nuance. Environments are bland, dark and boring and you have a little girl that fails to scare you.

I think it's ok if you have your head stuck in graphics and technicalities, but as a game.. meh.

No. its one of the best FPS ever made. a masterpiece.

No game today has better combat than FEAR. literally none.

DOOM is 750 times better for combat.

I liked it back in the day but its not all its cracked up to be.

no not really. but its close.

Gameplay-wise, at release, the game was euphoric. Absolutely fantastic. However, I couldn't even tell you the story nowadays, so to me it wasn't that memorable.

What is so great about FEAR for it's combat in your opinion?

My opinion is that, going and playing the Call of Duty 4 training mission at the beginning is like playing FEAR.

Those boards are essentially the enemies, they all look the same, however they may pop in a different sequence!

The only real difference is you have no SAS operative breathing down your neck telling you what to do, and you get a way darker scenario and some strange little girl.

I begin to wonder if people even played FEAR.

FEAR had great gunplay and really nice graphics when it came out.

Still...it also had bland environments, repetitive enemies, predictable jump scares, and a really weak final act.

I never thought the game was amazing back in the day. It played great, but the rest of the game was mediocre.

I like this video on it, as i said it's an OK game, it does do some stuff well... but a lot badly too.

If anything, I don't think people mention it often enough.

Has held up very well both visually and mechanically. Very few games do slo-mo as well as FEAR. Very few shooters let the player feel so connected to what was going on in the world.

It was a brilliant game with some disappointing sequels (not that terrible, though, I had fun with them). Personally, I enjoyed the story, the whole military-industrial thing going on, like a Weyland-Yutani predecessor :D

I remember seeing the FEAR demo at my friends house on his gaming PC back in 2005 and it blew my mind.

the actual combat was fantastic. you felt like such a badass with the slow-mo, meaty gunplay and various kick moves/melee attacks. the weapons were great as well.

not overrated in my books. worth of classic status

it may not have ticked every single box as a game - the horror element was used far too sparingly - but for its time it was mechanically marvellous and a fantastic shooter. landmark even. the sequels fell of a cliff unfortunately.

but like many great titles of the past, many years later people start to emerge to re-label them as overrated. file alongside half life 2. and particularly with hl2 it's often people that didn't play it at launch. they pretend they did but they really didn't. not saying this is the case here, but worth noting

I think people who really loved FEAR haven't played a lot of FPS games to compare it to. The graphics at the time were okay but the gameplay was SO dull. Even for the time... play Half Life then go and play FEAR the difference was absolutely night and day. One a hugely enjoyable experience with fantastic gunplay, the other was, well... FEAR.

Really mundane drab environments even for a linear shooter the only game that looked more dull and boring was Quake 3 which was actually only a demo for ID's new game engine at the time. I always thought the point of playing FEAR was to see if you could stay awake long enough to get to the good bits (the supernatural stuff). I never did.

if you found the combat/gameplay in FEAR dull you were playing it wrong.

Nah it's one of the best playing FPS games of all time. You hate fun.

I am likely to agree here actually, i did not play FEAR at launch so i did miss the bus with it perhaps.

I do enjoy HL2.

Is that a fact? What should I have done to fool myself into thinking it wasn't really predictable, linear and boring? Should I have tried to play it while standing on my head? Maybe placed a mirror adjacent to the monitor so I could try and guess where the enemy would turn up even though it was the same place every time? Should I have worn multicolour goggles to pretend the graphics weren't really dull and boring?

I am waiting for your top FEAR tips so I can enjoy what I erroneously thought was mundane worthless drivel compared to countless far better FPS games I could mention.

Nope, still the best FPS ever, modern FPS games cannot compete with it.

Decent enough shooter, falls flat on its face when it comes to horror. I laughed more than I was frightened.

All you need to know is, I enjoy F.E.A.R trilogy back in the day, it's still decent FPS and the first F.E.A.R game predates Crysis.

FEAR is an awesome. Using a shotgun in a tight area in slow motion you can feel/see the impact it causes to your enemies and the wall behind it. Also the nail gun was fun to use too.

I find Crysis as even worse.

I played Warhead all the way though, was decent, the first game though...

Gameplay-wise, I still think it still holds up compared to FPSes released this gen(lol @ open world FPSes). The AI was great, but that was due to the excellent map design and gunplay that was the core of FEAR. The story and characters and "horror" however, not so much.

It's a solid 3 out of 5. Slow mo makes even the hardest difficulty so trivial.

F.E.A.R. is anything but overrated like mentioned before no FPS has topped it's combat nothing.

It was alright. I got really tired of seeing the same hallways, offices, and identical looking enemies over and over. I enjoyed the sequels more.

Main criticism towards the original would be repetitive environments. Almost the entire game takes place in a single area with mostly the same enemies. In this regard Fear is poor compared to something like Halflife 2 which constantly shifts.

However, it's actual combat encounters are still arguably the best in the business to the point that it largely overcomes it's repetitiveness.

Story-telling for it's genre is fairly decent as well. Nothing original at all, just told fairly well.

Fear 2 is a bad game, didn't bother with the others. But the original I will happily play every X years.

It sure is, for me it's the most disappointing sequel in gaming history and it bothers me to this day that F.E.A.R. really never got a proper sequel that could live up or be better then the first game.

Yeah, no. I played FEAR at launch, and still replay it once every couple years. The horror isn't great (very few games do horror well) but it's aged wonderfully in both graphics and gameplay. The gunplay is still among the best in gaming history.

Story was poop, villains were cliché, filled with lame jump scares. Aside from that, it had amazing graphics and gameplay. I'd say it's a bit underrated, I just see hardcore PC gamers praise it. It should be more known.

its underrated series for me i love fear series own it on xbox 360 too bad fear 4 not coming after all

@superfluousreal: Disagree. I thought the story was actually better than most FPS, and games in general. The gunplay was and still is fantastic. The environments did get a bit repetitive, and more enemy variety would've been nice, but those agile ninja type guys you encounter near the end of the game were amazing with the way they could climb into the roof and move around the environment.

Yes. Instead of moving forward it acts more as a console focused reboot and in doing so, puts a gun to it's own temple.

Same with Crysis 2, really.

quite literally

@Macutchi said:

@uninspiredcup said:

@warmblur said:

@uninspiredcup said:

Main criticism towards the original would be repetitive environments. Almost the entire game takes place in a single area with mostly the same enemies. In this regard Fear is poor compared to something like Halflife 2 which constantly shifts.

However, it's actual combat encounters are still arguably the best in the business to the point that it largely overcomes it's repetitiveness.

Story-telling for it's genre is fairly decent as well. Nothing original at all, just told fairly well.

Fear 2 is a bad game, didn't bother with the others. But the original I will happily play every X years.

It sure is, for me it's the most disappointing sequel in gaming history and it bothers me to this day that F.E.A.R. really never got a proper sequel that could live up or be better then the first game.

Yes. Instead of moving forward it acts more as a console focused reboot and in doing so, puts a gun to it's own temple.

Same with Crysis 2, really.

quite literally

Yep, I've said it before Crysis and the F.E.A.R. had the same fate and history in alot of ways the first games and expansion packs were awesome but once the series went multiplatform the games got dumbed down and it ruined the sequels. It's one of the most frustrating things to ever happen in PC gaming these franchise had so much potential but they just turned into generic bargain bin games I blame consoles and COD4 for this shit.

Nope. And I would appreciate if Monolith goes back to these kind of games. I would even take a remake/remaster of the first FEAR.

Lol tell that to Ghost4ever. (Or his nickname Sniper)

It was good for the time the atmosphere kept me going for a while but can't help feel it would be slightly dated. A full remake with up to date controls would be good to see.

FEAR's shooting absolutely sucks. It has some of the weakest feeling gunplay in an FPS period.

Calling it a great game is one thing, because there is more to it than the shooting. But calling it one of the best FPS is just laughable.

Go play: Battlefield V, Insurgency Sandstorm, Wolfenstein The New Order, Killing Floor 2, Rising Storm 2 and compare those games' shooting to FEAR.

LOL wolfenstein. FEAR is so much better than that trash.

Uh-huh. Wolfenstein The New Order shooting > FEAR shooting

Prove me wrong.

slo mo shooting with shotgun never get old.

in wolfenstein guns sound like water.

@uninspiredcup: I know FEAR, I've played it several times. It can have spectacular looking fire fights. And I'm not claiming FEAR didn't do anything right...

But the shooting itself just isn't fun though :/

play with a keyboard and mouse, liberal use of slow mo, grenades and melee attacks, run around like a maniac and you should have a great time

dull environments and visuals (especially if you play it now) is a valid criticism but the actual combat model is sublime

Only in the sense people think so highly of it but shit on the second one, which I liked better.

I remember you needed a powerhouse of a PC to play it at full potential.

Can you shoot lamp?

It had absolutely glorious gunplay at the time, fantastic atmosphere, and amazing enemy AI.