F.E.A.R. offers plenty of chilling moments as well as thrilling moments on your mission to thwart a paranormal threat.
Contains: Frequent Strong Bloody Violence, Psychological Horror and Gore
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FEAR is a horror-themed First Person shooter, which follows paranormal occurrences caused by a powerful and dangerous little girl named Alma.
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STORY - 5/5
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You are quickly established as Point Man of F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon), a secret special ops group of the U.S. government specialized in dealing with paranormal threats. Your mission - to eliminate a cannibal named Paxton Fettel, who has telepathically taken control of a battalion of clone supersoldiers. On your route to tracking down Fettel, the point man will be constantly threatened by a small girl who is a mentally unstable paranormal threat will telepathic abilities.
The story edges along nicely, and you'll continually run over what's happening with curiosity, as to why this little girl named Alma is an obstacle at every turn you make, and as to what she has to do with Fettel. While there isn't any cutscenes, plot developments are frequently displayed through to messages left on answer machines, and intel left on various laptops.
Thoroughly engaging, and coming to an end with a neat twist, and chilling climax, FEAR should keep your senses rationalizing.
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CHARACTERS - 3/5
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As the story progresses you'll be getting to know voices and names over phone mails, and hearing what they have to say about the current situation, and their feelings towards other characters. But the main character, and one that is constantly threatening and creepy, is Alma. The power she has is frightening, and you'll be witnessing the destruction she's capable of dealing out in many scenes. She doesn't seem to want to attack you, but haunt you. The hud on the screen will flicker, and a creepy and generally recognisable tune will send chills down your spine, to let you be aware of her presence. She will mostly just be a quick glance somewhere in the shadows, and then move from view, but even these are spine-tingling, and you'll almost be petrified to the spot when she goes just that tad distance more, by creating hallucinations. These brief nightmares are genuinely scary, as things will sometimes jump at the screen, and are always full of bloody imagery to give them an eerie look.
Paxton Fettel will occasionally make short appearances, and give you his words of threat to the situation at hand, and his feeling of being linked to Alma, and what he's achieving from the whole ordeal.
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GAMEPLAY - 3/5
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While the gameplay is let down because of horrible visuals, there is still some gory fun to be had. A prominent gameplay element is reflex time, which slows down the world around you, giving you time to assess the situation, and then deal with it, and with that I mean - taking down enemies with style.
Its not unlimited though, so several short bursts will often have to do. It will slowly recharge after time, and the reflex meter can be increased by finding reflex injectors. These are carefully hidden in each level, so only through thorough exploration of each environment will crown you with bigger advantages in combat. Since you'll always be alone in shootouts, reflex time is needed, and with a range of weapons to use, will make all the difference in proceeding forward.
You can carry 3 weapons at a time, and you will often be using familiar weapons from other games of the genre, such as - Assault Rifles, Submachine Guns and Shotguns. But there are a few unique firearms lying around, such as The Particle Cannon. Basically it fires off a devastating bolt of raw plasma energy, and when it makes contact with a human foe, will burn the flesh off, and leave skeletal remains. As you'd expect, FEAR is very bloody, combat shotguns will dismember limbs when you shoot at the correct spot, and even explode your assailants and splatter them on the walls surrounding you. These moments are really entertaining, and when combined with Reflex time, you can create all sorts of bloodbaths at the press of a button.
But the gameplay isn't just all action, there will be many times when you'll be tormented by Alma, and her deadly visions are thrust upon you in nightmarish hallucinations. These scary scenes will bring upon strange environments filled with spooky imagery, and theres nothing you can do except watch the horror unfold and try to stay alive. You have a flashlight throughout the whole game, but it isn't unlimited, you'll have to let it recharge for a very short interval when its meter drops to empty, and this means you'll be quickly covered in a blanket of complete darkness.
Your health bar is numbered, and so when damage is taken, you can restore it with medikit packs found in various rooms in the level, or hidden away in store cupboards etc. The levels are designed rather repetitively, and consist of mainly office type rooms, and blank corridors, with only the carpet of blood that will vary, but its the combat and psychological horror thats worth playing in FEAR.
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GRAPHICS - 1/5
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Unfortunately, the graphics are last gen, and you can tell that there was no upgrade to the visuals from the 2005 PC version, which was simply just ported to the PS3 with no updated features. Its a real shame, because these dull and bland visuals overall effect the standard of the gameplay, and force lots of negative aspects upon the fun factor.
Reflex time is represented by stylized visual effects, such as bullets in flight that cause air distortion or interact with the game's particle effects, but none of these effects are particularly impressive.
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CONTROLS - 3/5
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The controls are decent in FEAR, they will take some adjustments to get a grip on, but after a couple of hours you'll easily be able to take on just about anything in any situation with barely any wrong errors.
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SOUND - 3/5
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The music is a huge contribution to the game's scare factor, it nails every horror segment, and gives a real eerie feeling on whether or not you feel capable of moving on.
While the music has rarely any mishaps, the sound effects do irregularly, usually in combat, but more frequently when Reflex time is activated. The bullets can sometimes be out of sync with the whole scenario, and so when blasting away with the shotgun, you may hear the slight inaccurate sound when you fire. Not a big deal, but it is definitely noticeable.
Some of the voices, usually when you are receiving objective updates, are too quiet, no matter how high you turn up the volume. When gathering data from a laptop, I even had to turn the other sound options to '0' just to try hear what I was being told. So overall, the sound department isn't well balanced, but the creepy music is certainly an important piece that needed to hit the right notes on cue with the psychological threat, which it did.
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ATMOSPHERE - 5/5
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The atmosphere throughout FEAR is nothing less than a haunting nightmare that you just can't wake up from. It is seriously borderline scary, and horrifically tense from beginning to end. One minute you could be narrowly escaping the bullets of 10 armed supersoldiers, and enjoying the exciting action-like atmosphere, and then your next turn could well be a chilling one. The hallucinations that Alma creates is where the atmosphere jolts awake, and you'll be claustrophobically trapped in creepy shadows, and chilling, whispering voices. Things will also mysteriously move in the surrounding room, things that can ultimately make you jump, or make you fear to move ahead. And the lights are rarely on in the levels to comfort you, so a small flashlight beam will just have to do for the duration of the game, which, obviously, is a good thing.
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ENEMY AI - 5/5
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The enemies in FEAR are ones that are certainly smart. They take cover effectively, move obstacles accordingly to your position to create new forms of cover, and even turn your position against you. Other moves include: crawling under shelves which have been knocked down, vaulting through window frames, and opening doors. There are occasionally alternate routes in the levels, and so if your not keeping track of enemies positions, then they will manoeuvre around and catch you off guard. Their flanking skills are quite remarkable, but they also communicate with fellow team mates, and talk about where your position is, mention needing a clip to reload, and also warn each other about the type of weapon your using. These neat little actions all add up to tense shootouts, and outsmarting computer intelligence.
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LENGTH - 2/5
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The campaign isn't very long, and will take you roughly 7 hours, but that length of time should hopefully entertain you with sense of insecurity in horror sections, and provide some fun in combat opportunities.
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REPLAY VALUE - 2/5
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There's nothing in the single player worthy of a second attempt, unless you really enjoyed it, or want a tougher challenge by setting the difficulty higher. However, FEAR is a game which is definitely something worth considering for a single playthrough, as it will rack your brains with mystery, and keep your heart beating with adrenaline for a scare or two.
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OVERALL SUMMARY - 8/10
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Good Points: Mysteriously engaging story, Creepy audio and atmosphere, Psychological horror scenes are really tense and scary, Lots of bloody imagery, Satisfying combat, Clever enemy intelligence.
Bad Points: Out-dated graphics, Bland and repetitive environments, Reflex time has sound and visual faults.