On its own, it's a decent shooter. As a sequel to F.E.A.R., it's a pretty big letdown.
After spending some quality time with it, I had come to the conclusion that F.E.A.R. delivered what it's producers promised it would:
An FPS with cinematic "action movie-like" gameplay (delivered so well as a result of the stunning visual effects, realistic AI, excellent sound, and great pacing) blended together with Asian horror elements.
Despite this, the game wasn't without its' flaws. At the top of the list included the story being difficult to follow for some and the level design as well as the repetitive nature of the enemies resulted in many gamers disliking the game. Luckily for me, I was one of the ones that wasn't bothered much at all by them.
Naturally, when I heard F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin was in production (at first titled "Project Origin" due to issues on the rights to the name "F.E.A.R." early on in the development stage) I was stoked and just couldn't wait until its release.
After two mediocre expansions from TimeGate and Sierra I was ready for a real successor to F.E.A.R. and my expectations quickly went through the roof after I watched the first ever Project Origin gameplay footage from E3 2007.
The sequel looked to be shaping up to being much better than the original at least in gameplay. Present in the E3 2k7 demo was eerie atmosphere, intense-looking gameplay, and convincing AI. The dialogue from the enemy AI in the E3 2k7 demo was a huge step up from F.E.A.R. 1 in my opinion. Now if they just built upon what was great looking here I saw no reason why the sequel to F.E.A.R. couldn't at the very least live up to it's predecessor.
Nearly two long years later and finally the release date arrives. Well what do we get... a product that was or even less than half of what the original F.E.A.R. was.
I must say I wasn't shockingly disappointed in the end since I had been keeping tabs on this games' development cycle but I was still pretty letdown. I don't know what happened but somewhere in the middle of F.E.A.R. 2's development cycle, something went wrong and it went from looking great to looking gradually worse as the release date neared.
The gameplay was my biggest gripe with this game so I'll start with that. To describe it, it's heavily watered down compared to the original. That feeling of being in an "action movie" and you being an "action hero who kicked everyone's *** with style" that can be experienced in the original is virtually non-existent in the sequel.
In a sequel to a game that many praised for it's realistic and fun-to-play-around-with AI, we battle AI that is slow to react, less aggressive, communicates far less, and has far less interesting dialogue. Like this is the way to solve the "repetitive enemies" complaint some mentioned about the first game.
The over-the-top effects from the first game helped it offer that "WOW..." feeling when you played it. Here you will see little sparks, dust, and other particles flying all over the place when you shoot or blow up a room, making for a far less stunning visual experience. They put this in a sequel to a game that was loved because it made you feel like you were in a action movie...
F.E.A.R. 1 delivered on it's promise to make you feel like some bad*** who killed his enemies with style by making your enemies go flying when you roundhouse kicked them in the face or blasted them with the shotgun at point-blank range. An awesome fist-pounding sound created by the shotgun and seeing your enemy go flying away (sometimes doing cart wheels in the air) while in slow motion... how does that not make you feel satisfied and awesome? In F.E.A.R. 2, you have weapons that feel less satisfying to use due to weaker gun sounds and less recoil/kick, I felt like I was using toy guns. The lame rag-doll physics being coupled in to this means that when you fire a shotgun or roundhouse kicked at point-blank range the enemies will just collapse fairly slowly to the ground right in front of you and leave you feeling much less than some "awesome action hero". The new HUD features useless additions that serve no purpose but to crowd up the screen, which may ruin the immersion for some.
Grenades no longer explode on contact and instead explode only after a five second fuse. More grenade types were a welcome addition but who didn't love peaking around corners and tossing grenades directly at enemy soldiers and instantly witness their body parts go flying everywhere and hear them scream in agony? In slowmo, enemies glow so as to make it even easier for the player to best the already watered down AI... There was no need for this, enemies could be seen just fine with the glowing components already noticeable on enemy models, an example would be those goofy bright blue glowing goggles on the ATC goons. The new blood effects did deliver as being more over-the-top though with updated gore effects and... there simply being more blood, although it was a bit annoying to see in F.E.A.R. 2 that blood just came out of the center of the enemy rather than where your bullets actually hit them like in the first. Still, having enemies explode into bits when you fired point-blank with the shotgun did offer some satisfaction but unfortunately those sequences were too few.
To avoid repetition in the lights of the first game, a couple of sequences where you pilot a giant robot are thrown in at a couple points of the game. To some it felt out of place but many welcomed it's new addition. I was somewhere in the middle.
The new enemy types such as the Abomination and Remnants were interesting additions but are no more interesting to fight than soldiers do to the slow action and movements of the game's AI. The Abomination creature showed potential to be a fast and lethal enemy in the E3 2007 gameplay video. In the final game the Abomination is in comparison, dumbed down and easy to kill. The new cover system which allows you to topple over tables, cabinets, or vending machines over for cover is a neat idea and would've been useful if the player's body size actually fit the object. Most of your body is still pretty exposed making tipping over objects for cover fairly useless. The absence of lean is also a downgrade and it's questionable as to why they took it out. Apparently it was taken out because of a glitch in F.E.A.R. 1 where players were able to lean around corners and shoot while the players they shot at couldn't see them until they got right around the corner. Would've been nice if they could have just fixed this instead of taking it out and if they couldn't, at least just include lean in singleplayer and not multiplayer to fix this problem. Things like lean and quicksave (thats right no quicksave, instead we get checkpoint saves) are essential features to a PC FPS singleplayer experience nowadays.
Was I expecting the same gameplay experience that was offered in the original? No, that is not what a sequel should offer. But they are not supposed to offer a dumbed down version of that experience either. Instead make the AI more aggressive, up the visual effects to maintain a level of cinematic intensity, make the rag-doll physics more over-the-top so it's more hilarious and satisfying to kill enemies, add some RPG elements to create the action hero you want to be (similar to what was added in No One Lives Forever 2), etc. Varied environments was all this sequel appeared to have tried to improve upon.
To grade the gameplay as a shooter instead of a F.E.A.R. sequel though, it's overall not bad and actually pretty solid for an FPS with smooth gunplay mechanics. All in all, those who haven't played the original or those who loved F.E.A.R. 1 for something other than it's gameplay may not be so disappointed given they wouldn't really have too high expectations for it like I did.
I suppose seeing that very little characters from the original F.E.A.R. appear in F.E.A.R. 2 may make this seem more like a spin-off than a sequel to some but due to the issue on the rights to use the name "F.E.A.R." in the early and middle part of the games development cycle it seems understandable. Anyway, you play as Sgt. Michael Beckett who is part of a Delta Squad sent in to the city of Auburn to find out more about Armacham and to find out how to contain the situation that progressively began to spiral out of control in the first game's plot.
By the end of F.E.A.R. 2 you realize things only get worse and even more screwed up. Speaking of the ending, it was very unexpected and just shows how nuts the team at Monolith have become. I'm just gonna leave it at that because I fear I may spoil the story for you readers who haven't played the game if I say more. Plus I'm sure those of you who have played it know what the ending is like.
What I did find disappointing in F.E.A.R. 2's story though was how much little suspense and eerie feeling it had when compared to the first. I suppose this is understandable though given what was revealed in the previous game. Think something along the lines of Alien to Aliens... from less action and more horror to more action and less horror. This in turn leads to a far less effective horror element in my opinion, or at least in the case of F.E.A.R. 2. F.E.A.R. 1 overall relied on effective use of well-crafted sound, atmosphere, and creepy imagery, as well as "fear of the unknown" to send chills down the player's spine. In F.E.A.R. 2 the horror is not really created by such. While their is some creepy music and atmosphere here and there it's far less of what the original offered, again mostly due to there being more action and little to no suspense offered in the plot. I also thought they overused the colors quite a bit in F.E.A.R. 2's environments. Sure they were more varied, but the overused amount of colors in the levels pretty much destroys an eerie atmosphere. A prime example would be the hospital level, it was bursting with too many colors. The hospital level looked much better and more eerie in the E3 2007 gameplay demo.
The inclusion of monsters may also lead many to believe that F.E.A.R. 2' s horror follows in the wake of Doom 3, Dead Space, and such with the grotesque and monsters, something that F.E.A.R. intentionally avoided.
Also while I may be in the minority about this, I did find the lack of the little girl version of Alma to be disappointing. Not grotesque-looking like her older more revealing self, but definitely more creepy in my opinion.
F.E.A.R. 2's story unfolds as you go along much like it did in the first but disposes of the first game's methods of using phone messages in doing this and replaces it with journal intelligence that you get to keep throughout the game for you to refer back to if there is something your not clear on. The story in F.E.A.R. 2 was easier to follow than F.E.A.R. 1's though and the new characters for the most part weren't boring and I did develop some feelings for them, whether it be a like or dislike feeling at least it I felt something for them.
Graphics-wise, the game does look pretty good. Models and environments easily looks more detailed compared to the original. It all looks good until you notice the alot of the visual effects have been significantly watered down and that there are shadows for some objects and not for others in singleplayer (virtually none at all in multiplayer). This in turn keeps the world in F.E.A.R. 2 from being anymore convincing than the world in F.E.A.R. 1.
I give Monolith credit in No One Lives Forever 2 and Condemned 2 for taking what was loved in their predecessors and changing, adding new, and eliminating unnecessary features to try and offer the same core experience but in a way to make it feel fresh and most importantly, better. Whether what was changed was a good thing or not is all up to your opinion but that is what developers should do with sequels so they aren't criticized for being carbon copies of their predecessors. But honestly... how can anyone agree that some things changed in F.E.A.R. 2 were for the better? How does less aggressive AI, dumbed down physics, and less stunning visual effects live up to F.E.A.R. 1 in being an intense cinematic FPS where the player is suppose to feel like an action hero?
Technical issues plagued this product on PC upon release and would've strayed many PC gamers away from purchasing it had they known about it.
This included:
- no dedicated servers for multiplayer
- no anti-cheat software for multiplayer
- no lean
- no quicksave
- no support for extra mouse buttons
- no option to turn film grain off
- no proper support for standard 4:3 and 16:10 widescreen, leaving players with awful letterboxing across the top and bottoms of the screen if they are not playing with 16:9 display.
- no software-development kit to be released like for Monolith's previous PC titles.
Some of these technical features were fixed in later patches by adding options to disable things such as the letterboxing and film grain. Actual gameplay issues were also fixed such as making the game more challenging on extreme difficulty. It indeed, was but only because the damage you took from enemies was increased and the AI shots became more accurate, nothing about the AI's aggressiveness was amped up. Other gameplay issues fixed included getting rid of that irritating glow effect on enemies while in slowmo. Well actually, I'm not sure about the latter issue because I haven't played it in a while, but regardless I give Monolith some credit for this.
PC Multiplayer fans however, will be heavily disappointed with F.E.A.R. 2 and Monolith for not having dedicated servers or anti-cheat software. I'm not even a big multiplayer fan but I share the disappointment many share about this product because it has an inferior MP component than a 4 year old game like F.E.A.R.. The multiplayer experience itself wasn't very fun either as it felt slower paced, less intense, and less distinctive than the original. You'll get more of a good multiplayer experience in Call of Duty 4 than you will in F.E.A.R. 2.
I don't know what happened and I don't know if it was entirely Monolith's fault (maybe its really just Warner Bros. or both), but future Monolith games certainly won't be instant buys from me. Definitely no buys from many PC gamers who once trusted Monolith to deliver PC games with top notch support for them. Overall, this game may be Monolith's first PC title to be remembered by many PC gamers more negatively than it will be positively unfortunately.
Monolith is currently working on an unannounced project and while I am interested in seeing what they are working on I now look to their future products with far less expectations now. I dream of seeing a sequel to one of Monolith's classic franchises such as No One Lives Forever, but not if it will get ruined like F.E.A.R. did.
I really wanted to look back on this game and say I thoroughly enjoyed it like I did the first, but there are so many watered down features here I just couldn't. I hold no high hopes for the next game in the series.