F.E.A.R. Review

This post is being contributed by my good friend Dave Lapsley. You'll see more of his writing once The Review Blog is up and running. Today, he brings us a review of the PC game F.E.A.R. Pictures have been lifted from Gamespy.

Those who know me may recognize that I have, on occasion, spent the occasional decade playing video games.

As the years have rolled by, I've noticed that even my video games are not immune to the category of “things I just can't get around to doing as much”; You know that category.. it's the same category where “gym”, “impressing women” and “making the family proud” are grouped as well. Nevertheless, every once in a while, a game will come along and there will be something about it that makes me stop what I'm doing and play it -constantly- until it's finished – replacing my otherwise wild party lifestyle with a good 20–40 hours of sheer lonely, nerdy, geeky, affection-of-a-woman-less glee.

Today, that game is called F.E.A.R. It's pretty new. A few weeks old max. And, lo, through the coincidence of my stupidity blowing up my last computer, I found myself with a bright and shiny haul-ass computer that could handle such a game as F.E.A.R.

Let's start off with the Title. “Fear” - that sounds like a good title so far. But that's as far as 'good' goes. Because, you see, “fear” is an acronym in this case – which is where the whole "cool name" angle gets dumped into shit river. “Fear” stands for “First Encounter Assault Recon”. A celebration of retarded game titles, Fear was clearly assigned words that had any hint of being anything militant related – just to complete the spelling of “fear”. It reminds me when you were in grade 5 and you wanted everyone to call you “The Scorpion” until 5 minutes later you noticed that was a stupid idea (maybe that was just me). Only in this case, all of the workers in the “Noticed it was a Stupid Idea” department were off dry-humping Sears catalogues. I'm sure the titling process went something like this:

“Sammy, get Jones in Marketing to come up with what “Fear” should stand for – Michael in the IT department said “fear” was popular among the web-savvy types, and now we need a reason for it to sound cool – tell him to come up with something or he's fired.” Okay, okay, enough about the title: let's boot this sucker up...

Here we go:

First person shooter -nothing you haven't played before -(we'll get to that later) but it LOOKS A-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s. A muscle hog yes, but the environment is SO real and rich, you'll want to upgrade after 30 seconds. Unparalleled so far. Certainly on a level all it's own. The game makes such realistic use of shadows caused by varying light sources, A.I. and firefights, it easily is the saving grace of the game. It's one of those games where you really have to see it to understand, you simply have not seen combative game play with a CPU like this - not at this stage. However, note I used the phrase "saving grace" back there - because believe me, the game would otherwise be sunk without this stuff.

The game is a crazy blend of HalfLife and The Suffering (a lame game for the PS2 created for the sole purpose of looking creepy). All of the "Half Life" qualities -like the ones I mentioned- are fantastic - all of the "creepy"/The Suffering/Ghost story parts of the game are creepy the first time you see them and then just get repetitive and boring when they do even bother to show up. And when they do show up, there's not much you can do except stare at the screen until the sequence is over. Which brings us to the main body of the game...

...There's not much of one. Oh sure, the game has the occasional pre-level text explanation and you can listen to abandoned voice mail messages in the office buildings to further the "story"... but I'll make it easier for you: Don't Die. That's it. This game is HANDED to you. There are no puzzles to solve, no application of anything you've heard or read before the level, hardly any chance of getting "lost", you don't need to listen to anything or know of any primary objectives that the game insists you have to "complete". Just walk through the level, kill everything, and that's it. You did it.

You won't give a rat's ass about characters or story because what you're being told has ZERO, and I mean ZERO impact on how you approach the game or what the game does to you. Nothing. They would've saved TONS of rendering and programming time if the start of each level just flashed a screen saying: "Okay, try not dying here! Go!" Even during the game, I mentioned to my house mate: "Y'know it's a good thing they did the "Good Parts" extremely well, because the rest of the game is so repetitive and boring."

I doubt there was any other way to do this, but the "Good Stuff" of the game requires a computer that would give Bill Gates a stiffy. I have a respectable P4 3.2Ghz a gig of RAM and 256Mbs Nvidia video .. and I can only put the setting on "Medium"... Dashing my hopes to see "High" settings - or the elitist: "Maximum" settings which made my computer just laugh at my small girth. So in order to get the most out of the game, you're gonna need to have one SWEET system capable of nothing short of running a small country. In the background.

So let's recap:

Reasons to play it and stay a virgin:

- Sincerely unequaled lighting, shadows and overall atmosphere and appearance. It's almost worth the entire game just so you can see what future games will be like.

- The firefights you get into and some of the shots you'll make, especially with the "heightened senses/slowed motion" type feature, will make you wish, and I mean countless times, that you had a video camera recording some of the kills you make.

- The A.I. is absolutely crazy. - Baddies respond to everything – they bark back and forth reporting what you're doing, dive behind cars and other things to shield themselves – some of them, though I only saw this happen once, fake their own death, wait until you happen by and.. suddenly: Up!, Bang. You're dead.

Reasons to not play it and hump the crack in the couch instead:

- Stupid Title. - You're not cool. You're not in the military. Cigarettes behind your ears look stupid. Quit making video game titles.

- Muscle Hog is right. Unless you're currently banging the CEO of Dell, you probably won't be able to run the game to its fullest extent.

- Pointless, and I mean pointless story. By the last few levels of the game I was just going "yeah, yeah, yeah" at phone messages, "creepy" moments and any attempt to make the story sound deep and full of thought. Madly clicking the button wishing the "skip sequence" option would be there like it was in the game's 400 Meg demo.

- And with the exception of map layouts and the odd enemy armour, all the levels are, for lack of a better word, exactly the same: Corners, windows you can break, bad guys looking for you and ladders.. there's your level. again.

- Sadly, you can't be nearly as interactive with the environment as you can be in Half Life 2. Occasionally, the game suffers from the old: "Oh, there's a tiny cardboard box touching the door frame - which means I'll have to find another way in." I hate that. 12 years ago, with Wolfenstein 3D: okay, fine. But not today. If I'm carrying molecular altering cannons and rocket launchers and there's a 2 pound piece of sheet metal leaning against the fridge, I should damn well be able to open the fridge if I want, let alone blow it to bitties.

With all of it's drawbacks - and reading that drawback list, it SOUNDS pretty bad - I can honestly say that - even just for playing through the game once - it's totally worth it. The environments and everything involved in that aspect (almost) entirely make up for that fairly daunting list of bad stuff. Granted, that list eliminates a lot of replay value and could even possibly bore some people, but wow.

Bottom line, and I'm sure the people at Sierra hate being compared to Half Life 2, but basically I'd describe F.E.A.R. like this: Take Half Life 2 and take away 80% of it's story and lift out a little bit of interactivity and variety as well - but take all of that stuff and cram it into realism and Artificial Intelligence instead, and you'll have F.E.A.R.

With the hype of this game, there will likely be a sequel - but they sure have lots of stuff to fix before then. Here's hoping they don't call it S.P.O.O.K.Y.F.U.N.