Bringing
an occult edge to the usually dry combat ops genre, Sierra's F.E.A.R.
offers players a unique supernatural twist on FPS games. The game places
you as a member of an elite force assigned to track and destroy
otherworldly phenomenon. In addition to standard weapons and ammunition,
you have the ability to slow down time and use other psychic powers to
help you through your missions. The gameplay itself is fairly average for
the genre though some clever horror sequences are used to keep you
off-guard. F.E.A.R. looks decent enough on the PS3, though this version
does tend to look a little flat. A few multiplayer deathmatches are a cool
addition and make F.E.A.R. a fairly decent shooter with some interesting
ideas.
As an elite member of F.E.A.R. (First
Encounter Assualt Recon), you are a specially trained soldier who's been
enlisted in the battle against evil, supernatural forces. Your mission
begins with the appearance of a serial killer, who's been spreading his
darkness through the city. As you get closer to his location, strange
things begin to occur, things which cannot be explained. When you finally
arrive and find him, some truly awful sights await you and you suddenly
find yourself transported back to your team-mates suddenly. As you begin
to make your way into the other areas of the game, things become even more
sinister and dark, as an evil presence becomes stronger and stronger.
While the first few missions in the game offer little that differs from
standard FPS titles, F.E.A.R. becomes more intense as you go deeper into
its missions. You begin fighting what appear to be standard soldiers, but
things become strange at points, as you're suddenly possessed by strange
visions, and zombies and shadows appear seemingly out of nowhere to keep
you off-balance. This approach allows you to gradually immerse yourself
into the action and allows you to learn the game's quirks and nuances as
you go along without having to suffer through endless tutorial levels.
The
levels themselves are fairly straightforward at first as well, but become
increasingly strange as you defeat levels. As you go into the deeper
levels, things that were only hinted at earlier manifest themselves, and
you find yourself battling zombies and other ghosts. While you do
occasionally have some support with other recon forces, they usually fall
quickly to the evil forces, leaving you to fend for yourself in the
increasingly dark corridors and hallways. You'll find a lot of clues in
each level, which take the form of phone messages which become
increasingly ominous and dangerous as you go deeper. Something is
definitely not right in the warehouses you are covering, and as the
visions become more pronounced, the visions you see offer an increasing
intensity and become more disturbing. F.E.A.R.'s storyline is fairly
unique in that it mixes elements of stealth, combat tactics and horror
effectively to create one of the more original an interesting games on the
market. From a gameplay standpoint, the game offers a decent array of
weapons ranging from shot-guns and pistols to grenades and other items. As
you progress through the levels, you'll also find health and med packs,
plus additional power-ups that allow you to increase your stamina and
reflexes.
Knowing how and when to use your stamina
ability makes a key difference in the strategy of the game. Since the
enemy AI is quite smart and allows your foes to strafe and attack you much
more intelligently, you'll need to pay attention to them much closer.
They're very hard to take out once they've spotted you and since they
attack in numbers, it makes it much harder to survive their assault. As
you play through the game's later stages, you face much stronger
opposition that makes it much harder for you to escape a battle unscathed.
The game mechanics are easy to understand and quite intuitive and most
players should have little trouble with F.E.A.R.'s controls. Firing and
shooting uses the shift buttons, while you can activate the slow-motion
using the shift buttons as well. Movement requires use of the standard
d-pad or the analog stick. The game's HUD is very easy to use and doesn't
interfere with the action. You can crouch or jump easily and use different
positions to navigate through the levels. Most of the actions, such as
pressing a button or opening a door are context-sensitive, assigned to the
square button. This makes playing F.E.A.R. relatively easy for FPS
veterans and should allow most players to jump into the action with little
learning curve.
Adding
to the speed and length of your reflexes is quite important, since the
higher your ranking, the more time you can use in the game's slow-motion
mode. Here, you can slow down time for a brief period, which allows you to
dodge enemy fire and makes taking down foes much easier. Learning to use
this ability effectively is a key strategy in winning the game. One of the
cooler aspects of F.E.A.R. is that you can sneak up behind enemies and
attack them without warning. These stealth moves are very important
because they reduce the risk of damage your character will take, since it
only takes a single hit to take down an unaware enemy. More importantly,
downing an enemy without alerting nearby foes allows you to sneak by
without having them call in reinforcements, which makes your job much
easier. When you're in the slow-motion mode, it makes your more effective,
but it also allows you to see the game's powerful physics engine in
action. You can see shots reflecting though the air Matrix-style and watch
as the bodies of your fallen foes bounce around thanks to the game's
rag-doll physics.
While the single player experience is
solid, most players will probably want to check out the game's multiplayer
modes which offer the standard team, deathmatch and capture the flag
modes. F.E.A.R. is relatively easy to set up and its game matching is
fairly solid - the game plays with little lag and offers a decent
selection of weapons to choose from. You can choose to play either a
standard mode, which plays like most other shooters, or can select to turn
on the slow-motion mode which makes things a lot more interesting and
strategic. This is not the main part of the game, F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer
modes are a solid addition to the game play. F.E.A.R. came out almost a
year ago on other platforms and while the game looks decent enough, it
hardly taxes or exploits the PS3's processing power. Most of the levels
look decent, if a little flat but the enemy models lack detail and don't
animate as smoothly or fluidly as they would in other games. The game's
presentation is decent as well, with some interesting cut-scenes and
several rather disturbing sections that add to the atmosphere. There's
little doubt that this is a violent and bloody game, so those players who
are sensitive to this have been warned. F.E.A.R. has some excellent
cinematics that help to immerse you in its storyline and these are
integrated seamlessly into the main body of the game to make for a decent
experience. Unfortunately, the overall look and feel doesn't match the
levels seen in PS3 titles like Resistance: Fall of Man. This lack of
polished visuals indicates what is probably a rushed port that lacks the
finishing touches and visual quality that really makes the experience
stand out from the pack.
Unfortunately,
there are a few additional technical issues that make this less than it
could have been. First, the game doesn't load quickly and makes you spend
an inordinate time waiting for the status bar to fill. Even worse, the
game has a tendency to freeze and crash during these screens as well,
which means you have to reset and begin anew. While F.E.A.R. doesn't
exactly set the PS3 on fire with its graphics engine, and looks slightly
worse than the PC & Xbox 360 edition released last year. However, it
still looks decent enough. From a gameplay standpoint, it does offer a
fairly engrossing and interesting storyline, which helps to immerse you in
the storyline. The use of special weapons, motion slowdown and some really
cool weapons adds some variety to the gameplay, but it isn't enough to
really recommend it to gamers. Despite its occasional flashes of
inspiration, F.E.A.R. on the PlayStation 3 is a sub-par port of this title
that leaves you feeling a bit disappointed in the end.
Grade: C+
