Story:
I am not going to spoil your fun by revealing any plot information. I suppose that by now you all know the story behind the game as Sierra did a great job with all the commercials and commotion created around the game, but I am going to lay it out anyway.

An unidentified paramilitary force infiltrates a multi-billion dollar aerospace compound, taking hostages but issuing no demands. A Special Forces team is sent in by the government to contain the situation, but contact is severed as an eerie signal interrupts radio communications. When the interference subsides moments later, the team has been obliterated. Live footage of the massacre shows an inexplicable wave of destruction tearing the soldiers apart before they can even react.

There are several twists and surprises prepared along the way. For those of you who are wondering... yes it's a very creepy game and it's done without having to turn the light off or to force you to gently maximize the gamma settings, because you are tired to change your shorts every half an hour. Spirits do live in the light and there's a constant feeling of uncertainty and unsafety where ever you are.

The resemblance with movies like The Ring or The Grudge isn't an issue. I thought I was going to be disturbed by this obvious plagiarism, but for some strange reason I still get the creeps from little girls with a serious hair problem. I thought I was prepared. You may think so too. You are wrong.

Gameplay:
This is a First Person Shooter, there's no doubt about it. Everything is here: pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, nail guns (this is a must have apparently) and weird weapons that tear the flesh down to the bone... just the usual.

But the main thing that distinguishes this title from other shooter isn't the slow-motion effect or some other feature, it's the sensations of bullet impact on enemies. You can feel the bullet hitting the target. You can feel the damage it's doing. You know before the smoke clears up that your foe is dead.

This brings us to enemies. The A.I. is the Achilles heel for any game. Well, in F.E.A.R. it's fantastic. They are smart and they want you dead. They'll use any means necessary: crawling, jumping through windows and generally assessing the situation before moving against you. If you think that three adversaries in any other game are no match for you, you will soon realize that is very difficult to take three heavily armed men without the element of surprise. And there are the others... You'll know when you'll see them!

There is a lot of scripted action involved but it's very well integrated and you won't notice it too often. Even if Monolith said the soldiers won't use scripted actions, you will learn that if there are some obvious covers in the room, the A.I will use it. The same thing applies for big windows. It isn't always necessary to jump through them, but they'll do it anyway.

Another thing that disturbed me is the incapacity of game developers of entrusting me with a decent weapon. Every single FPS shooter on this planet starts with a silly weapon. Am I not worthy enough for a machine gun? Do I have to prove myself by staying alive through my first mission using just a minor gun?

Another issue may be the linearity of the levels. Even if it's a rather short game, you can't help noticing that the level design isn't too bright. It lacks richness. Everything is dull and uninteresting, with very few unique objects. I am not referring to boxes and garbage, I mean the little things which are missing. The whole game looks more like a technology demo or an experiment to see if future games based on this recipe will sell. Luckily, the battles compensate the lack of details.

This isn't a bug free game. You will find sometimes that dead people have this weird twitch in hand or feet, probably a glitch in the physics engine. Some objects don't have the proper mass variable set, so they tend to fly in room more than they have to.

Video:
This one will put your system through hell. It has all the means necessary to drain every drop of power from the computer. It's like even the modem is working to render something. An average machine won't be able to run the game properly without some serious drawbacks. Most likely you will need a 1GB of RAM to play it fluently because this is the feature you need most. The next important component is the video card. You have to be the proud owner of a top Nvidia card, like a 6600 or an ATI, at least X700 Pro.

Even so, there are a ton of options to tweak, from texture size to bilinear filtering. It even has a DirectX 8 shader model which may come in handy for weaker configuration owners.

Overall the game looks amazing, but it isn't the technical revolution that we were expecting. It looks good, but we have seen better.

Audio:
This game has been designed with at least a 5.1 system in mind. The voice acting is above most games these days, but the true pleasure comes from the ambient sounds (if you can say that ghosts scratching metal and electro-magnetic static are ambiental). This is the strongest feature. The guns sound very well, with a heavy punch feeling every time you use them. The music is dynamic and contributes to the general creepiness. This will be remembered and will see further comparisons in the future.

Multiplayer:
Everything you would expect from a multiplayer is there: Deathmatch, Team Deatchmatch and Capture the Flag. The feature that makes FEAR Multplayer worth while is the Slo-Mo option, which presents itself as a power-up. Once activated, the entire team can use its effects, while the opponent team is usually slowed down to extinction. Clearly, single player is the strong one between the two and the main focus of the developers.

Author's conclusion :
The first impression is this is a very sturdy game, well assembled and with a lot of "weight". It has all the wining features and will probably get to be the Game of the Year in the FPS genre. It's scary, mean and will haunt you even if you finish it. You will look behind more than you'd like long after finishing the game and movies with little girls won't be the same. Conclusion: buy it, play it and spread the news. This one is a landmark in gaming history.


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