Fear Effect featured Motion FX for the first time ever; although you can see when the FMV loops, the backgrounds feel very much alive. A third-person adventure; the anime-style characters are well animated, but, in combat sometimes you are fighting several virtually identical enemies. Plus, picking up items can be tricky because of the camera angles; it's no surprise to see the game opt for tank-like controls - the characters do come complete with an 180-Degree Quick Turn, a highly effective evasive roll, and a Crouch Walk which allows the player to sneak up on an enemy for a Silent Kill. Also, as our playable characters are weapons experts, they are thus capable of firing double guns at different targets.

The game has its fair share of puzzles - these go beyond the find-keys-for-doors type, and though their solutions are close-by, one or two require thought as these come without clues. Whilst there are few trial-and-error elements to the game, beating bosses comes down to picking up on their patterns of attack. Fear Effect is a tricky title - numerous instances of instant death or not, an option for an immediate retry would have helped, since those little loading times do add up. At least the instant death scenes are something to see, and thankfully the FMV sequences can be skipped. Also, there's the matter of ammo conservation and cycling through the inventory mid-battle. A pain is not being able to save changes in the settings to the Options.

The setting of the game is Hong Kong, and the way the story works out sees each of the game's four discs being in a different locale, which is nice. If you understand Cantonese, some of the sections, such as passing through this kitchen, are funny. The twists in the story are as captivating as they are bloody, speaking of which, the blood and nudity (nothing explicit) has gotten this game a BBFC 15+ certificate. Fear Effect is an enjoyable cinematic experience and there are multiple endings, but I've not felt strongly enough yet to want to replay the game on the Hard difficulty setting for the "Best" ending.