Most of you will remember 2005's thriller first person shooter F.E.A.R.. The game convinced people with it's scary story, unique gameplay and a little girl called Alma. Every year a new expansion pack has been released and although their quality held up to the original game, the fans wanted more! Now almost 4 years later the sequel is going to hit store shelves this febuary, but is it worth the wait?
A demo has recently been released on the XBL Marketplace, PC and Playstation Network, these are my impressions:
You find yourself controlling Sergeant Michael Becket, member of the Delta Force First Encounter Assault Recon, or short FEAR. You are sent out to investigate some supernatural events happening all around the city, when suddenly an atomic detonation takes down your chopper and seperates you from your teammates. And if that wouldn't be bad enough already, you wake up in a vision generated by Alma, the little girl with the ability to ripp the flesh off the human bones. What you basicaly do now is following her, and trying to locate your squad in the process. The stoy is nothing too special, but it is an efective way to push you through the game, and making you care about the background.
What made the first FEAR such a great succes was of course the atmosphere, and the second part is nothing short of amazing in this regard. The overall tone is dark and gritty, with blood splattered all over the enviroments, but the realy scary moments come with the encounters with Alma. It will happen quite often that you will run through a corridor, minding your own buiessnes and then suddenly see Alma right in your face or her ripping appart a soldier or two, it will litteraly scare the shit out of you.
I would recommend the PC version, if you want the full experience, because the console versions feel slightly distached from just this bit of scarieness that makes FEAR 2 a unique experience.
The gameplay is a mix of old and new, unfortunately not always for the good. As in the first game you have the abitliy to slow down time a couple of seconds to finish off enemys in a true bloodfest or just watch them getting blown away by a grenade. The problem with that is that you will rely much more on that ability than on regular shooting. When you happen to have an emty slow-mo meter aiming is inaccurat and unresponsive. The same goes for the melee attacks. They are highly effective when executed in slow motion, but as soon as it ends, they are practicly worthless. You health is managed via a classic life bar, with regenerates half of it when you're almost dead. If you want to heal yourslef, you have to pick up injections from downed enemys or med kits. These however have to be used manualy by a quick button press, instead of just running through them. This can be a real pain in the ass when you face 3 or more enemys and simply don't have the time to take cover and take a medkit. You can also pick up body armor, which strangely enough just has to be ran over to activate it, instead of picking it up and then again using it. With that said it's pretty much the best protetion in the game, since your normal life bar drains far too quickly.
The Dmo features a small amount of standard weapons. You get a submachine gun, a shotgun, a standart assault rifle, a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher. You also get your hands on a laser, but there's no point of using it, because when you recieve it there are no more enemy soldiers to fight, at least not on foot. At this point you will gain acess to a Mech. Think of the titan walkers from Battlefield 2142 and you get the idea. Those huge exosuits mow down anything that stands between them and the next waypoint, and this is by far the most rewarding part of the whole Demo.
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One part where FEAR 2 exceeds however are it's graphics. The game looks absolutely gorgeous, with especialy good looking particle effects and realistic lighting. Character models also look convincing, and the a bit over the top blood and gore system looks just as incredible. What suprised me is that FEAR 2 perfomes realy well even on older PCs. You can max out all the settings, although with turned down resolution, and still get a healthy 25 frames per seconds out of it.
One downfall though is the game's lack of interactivity. In FEAR 1 you could destory the whole enviroment and even shoot through thin materials. Unfortunatley, this feature is absent here.
Everyone with a fable for video games with a B-movie plot and an unlimited scare factor should defenetly check out F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. All the others should at least give it a rent over the weekend, and then buy it if they want to come back for more when it comes out on Febuary 10th.
