year ago, F.E.A.R.’s creepy atmosphere and intensely visceral firefights made it an interesting and entertaining new take on first-person shooting. Today, the added content in this expansion is still fun – but it’s more of a lunch with an old friend than a sizzling date with a hottie you just met.

Though Extraction Point was made by a different developer than the original game, it retains every single good element that was present there. The creepy in-game hallucinatory scenes are still in full effect, and even better this time around. In many of them you have a very real chance of dying, which adds a great deal of tension over the mostly safe scenes in the original. The gunplay is as awesome as ever, and the few new weapons all have their place in combat. Most importantly, though, Extraction Point never leaves you feeling  like you’re trudging through the same environment over and over – the endlessly repeated hallways, office buildings, and broken-down industrial districts of the first adventure are nowhere to be found.

Even though marginal improvement is present throughout the game, the vast amounts of recycled content make this expansion feel like more of the same. Remember those faceless clone soldiers that filled the first game? Get ready to fight another couple hundred of them using the same tactics, the same sounds, and the same weapons! Those stains of blood that cover the floors and walls seem a bit familiar, by chance? That would be because they’re the same decals that were used so extensively a year ago.

It seems that Sierra and Timegate Studios decided to tighten up the F.E.A.R. formula without introducing much new to the mix, and that’s not a bad thing. But neither is it unreasonable to expect something new and cool for your $30, rather than some of the old puzzle pieces rearranged into a slightly better shape.