F.E.A.R. and loathing in Albany. (F.E.A.R. (PC))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	F.E.A.R. (PC)
Date:	13/12/05 (284 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Atmospheric. Decent game engine. Good gameplay (especially in Armachem HQ).

Disadvantages: Some plot threads get lost during game. Game engine could be better.

First person shooters are a difficult genre to get right. There are two main components that make up a game such as F.E.A.R. and they are the story and the game engine. A lot of people focus on the game engine, but I don't think it's as important as the story. The story is the one thing that keeps you coming back for more. If you've no interest in the story, then you're not going to really enjoy the game, no matter how good the game engine is (anyone who says otherwise shouldn't be allowed to play games).

Doom 3 was a prime example of a good game engine coupled with a standard story and ten year old gameplay and thus, disappointing. Half-life 2 was also disappointing with the fact that the story was particularly weak and had no depth, though the Source game engine was magnificent. Quake 4 was better, but still had that retro feel about it, despite some varied gameplay. It's not just graphical quality (or even the now ubiquitous physics model) that makes an engine. It's hard to describe, but from my perspective, it has to 'feel' right. Luckily, F.E.A.R. does a good job of covering the bases.

F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon to give it the full, and not-at-all-forced, title) has you as the newly promoted point man for a specialised military team that deals with paranormal encounters. You're searching for Paxton Fettle, a man who has a psychic link to a battalion of genetically engineered soldiers. For some unknown reason, he's gone on the rampage with the soldiers and everyone who's gotten in his way has ended up dying a gruesome death.

The special ops team that you're assigned to is mysteriously killed when some sort of energy wave hits them. Before they have time to react or defend themselves, the flesh is stripped from their bones leaving a bloody mess. You're called upon by your superiors to venture further into the compound to see what's going on. Not only do you still have to find and eliminate Paxton Fettle, but locate your fellow F.E.A.R. member who has gone missing...

First Person Shooters on the PC are a continually evolving bunch of games. It's hard to find a game that will have something totally unique to offer a gamer over and above a new game engine. Sure, the games engine is decent enough, but it's not hugely better or worse than other 'named' engines out there such as Half-Life 2's Source engine or the CryTek engine. F.E.A.R. does manage to stand out though by a combination of nice touches to the gameplay as well as a semi-decent engine.

Unusually, F.E.A.R. does not have a huge weapons selection and you can't carry everything at once, either. You must continually make choices about which three weapons you want to carry. Should you pick the Particle Accelerator to inflict damage from afar or take your chances with the rocket launcher instead? Will you back that up with a couple of pistols or a sub-machine gun? This is actually a good thing. Each of the weapons presented does have definite advantages and disadvantages. The particle weapon is a definite long-range sniper weapon, but fairly useless up close, where the opposite is true for the shotgun. There are plenty of weapons scattered about the place so should you wish to change your selection, there are opportunities to do so.

What F.E.A.R. also offers is a small set of hand-to-hand combat moves, in case you're in the middle of reloading when enemies come upon you and a "bullet time" mode that slows down game time for a bit enabling you to get out of tricky situations. I didn't use these features a lot, but they were handy to have in reserve a few times during the game and were quite effective.

While the game is hugely atmospheric and scary, thanks to some very well done set pieces, I did have an issue with the in-game plot development. The actual plot itself is done well and the atmosphere built around that is fantastic, but there were plot threads that I don't remember leading anywhere. During the game, the main character (i.e. you) has flashbacks or visions that show what happened before you arrived and these can easily startle you.

Going back to the confusing plot threads, as part of the game, you have to investigate the headquarters of a major technology manufacturer called Armachem (it's all very "Die Hard" and plays well) and your searches around their offices reveal something about a toxic contamination of the water supply (which eventually leads you to an area called Albany), but I'm not sure what that eventually had to do with the final outcome of the game (which, if you hadn't guessed by the brief story overview and the situations in the game thus far, is paranormal).

I can't remember if I was told how this all tied in or if it simply was never pulled together or indeed if I missed finding some information, but having completed the game, I can't figure it out (unless it was just a method to go from the office to the water treatment works). The same applies to the plot threads that indicate that your background is unknown. This latter thread was also confusing, but was quite unnecessary to the enjoyment of the game and could have been left out totally.

There are instances in the game where you come across laptops and unanswered phones with voicemail and you can access these to gain information and help figure out what's going on. It's a nice touch, but it doesn't actually tell you much more than you'd figure out yourself anyway.

The enemy A.I. comes is also worth mentioning. It's not real A.I. as you might expect, but the enemy at least appears to be smarter than your usual FPS foe. They use cover, blindly shoot around corners, hoping to hit you, team up and probably most noticeably, if you fire off a couple of shots and leg it back to a vantage point, they won't follow you, instead waiting for you to come to them. This helps make the game a bit more challenging and forces you to use different tactics to other FPS games.

I've briefly mentioned the game engine before, but it's not perfect. Rather, it has one large flaw in that light sources are indestructible. It would have been nice if the player could have shot out the light sources to be able to stay hidden or even up a fire fight when you're bathed in light. That's only a minor gripe in a very good game engine, though.

It's the gameplay that counts and overall, F.E.A.R. is a good game. The game engine coupled with the atmospherics, some of the extra touches (weapon selection, searching laptops, combat and bullet time etc) and the overall story does provide a good package. Played at a fairly tough difficulty level and you'll get a goodly amount of game time out of the game – up to 20 to 24 hours for the single player game alone, depending on how good you are at this kind of game.

F.E.A.R. is definitely a game for older gamers with gore levels set pretty high, plenty of language that your mother wouldn't use and the fact that it will scare the bejesus out of you if you play it in the dark. If you think of it as a cross between Half-Life (game) and The Ring (film) and you're probably not far wrong in terms of atmosphere and gameplay.

There is an online multiplayer aspect to F.E.A.R. but as yet I haven't played this.

F.E.A.R. Minimum Specifications:

Windows® XP, x64 or 2000 (with latest service packs installed)
DirectX 9.0c (included on DVD)
1.7 GHz CPU
512 MB of RAM or more
64 MB GeForce 4 Ti or Radeon® 9000 video card
16-bit DirectX® 9.0 compatible sound card (with support for EAX 2.0)
Broadband or network connection for multiplayer games

I played the game using (where different from above):
Athlon 2500+ CPU
1GB memory
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis 256MB graphics card
Soundblaster 7.1 soundcard

Summary: First Person Shooter for PC with paranormal shenanigans.