thought I knew about creepy games. I thought that I could stay cool through the worst that Hell could throw at me – hey, I did it in Doom 3, after all. I thought nothing could intimidate me after staring down the Strider onslaught in City 17. I thought I was a stone-cold badass with the headshot and strafing skills to laugh in the face of death and come out the other side of any dark tunnel covered in the blood of my enemies and grinning.
Then I played F.E.A.R.
Like no other game I’ve played, F.E.A.R. grabbed me by the throat, punched me in the gut, and made me pay attention and become my onscreen character. The intensity of the firefights, the constant mocking psychic whispers of my quarry, and the frequent spooky head trips that Monolith has so skillfully woven together make an experience that demands to be played. Even if the story is somewhat poorly paced through much of the game and doesn’t make the most sense, it’s got enough hooks to keep you going until the brilliant climax. But the paranormal conspiracy plotline isn’t F.E.A.R.’s greatest weapon – not by a long shot.
You would think that having a limited number of enemy types and a small weapon selection would handicap the combat, but you’d be wrong. For one, the bad guys are hands down the smartest AI-controlled opponents I’ve ever faced. They flank, they throw grenades, they lay down suppressing fire – basically, they do all the things that newbs don’t in Battlefield. And they’re accurate with their nasty weapons, which are the exact same guns that you have access to. Having it out with these enemies in F.E.A.R.’s cover-laden environments is a rush far beyond what most action titles deliver, thanks to the fantastic engine the game runs on.
Getting into a firefight in F.E.A.R. is much more than the standard "put a couple shotgun rounds into some dudes" method of FPS action. When you fire a weapon, it’s noisy, smoky, and blows a big ol’ hole in whatever you hit. Debris showers from damaged walls, smoke clogs your vision, and the screams of the wounded and dying echo through your stunned ears. It’s intense almost to the point of sensory overload. And it all gets that much cooler when you activate the Slo-Mo power, with the red-shifted odd specularity of all the lighting and slowed-down distorted sounds of battle changing the whole ordeal.
The overall experience that is F.E.A.R. is fantastic, but that’s not to say it’s without its issues. In fact, the entire middle third of the game is poorly paced and repetitive. Level design is incredibly linear yet somehow confusing, and getting through certain parts of the game is needlessly frustrating and arbitrary. It’s also incredibly disappointing that you never gain access to any more powers than the Slo-Mo that you start with. That’s easily forgotten when you’re in the throes of any of F.E.A.R.’s innumerable "Oh s---!" moments or crazy-awesome action sequences, though. If you have access to the kind of beastly machine this title needs, nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of playing it through.