Posted on: September 27, 2022

balkaster
Verified ownerGames: 228 Reviews: 21
Appears great at first, but then...
FEAR has a wonderfully slow-build creepy feel that ultimately does not pay off. After about an hour, the vague, distorted cutscenes of murderous ghosts, humans being skeltonized by red mist, people disintegrating into ash, rooms being set afire by a little girl, and cannibalism wear thin. The ongoing goal is to eliminate a supersoldier cannibal who commands a vast army of "replicas" (which are never quite explained but which appear to be conventional troops against which you are constantly told you have a physical advantage but don't in actual gameplay other than the ability to VERY BRIEFLY slow the passage of time, which is of little value) but as time goes on and you run into him repeatedly, the on-rails encounters always end with you being unavoidably knocked unconscious and it becomes obvious that there is NO way you can defeat this guy unless the defeat is also on rails. The rest is a standard modern military shooter, but the devs apparently couldn't figure out how to increase the difficulty without cheating. Each encounter finds greater and greater numbers of enemy troops arrayed against you with increasingly superior equipment until you're fighting a platoon of psychic superspeed runners in heavy body armor--which can only be penetrated by one particular weapon for which there is never enough ammo--as they spray you with heavy machine gun fire, never miss, shoot through walls and solid obstacles at a target they can't possibly see, and sling around grenades like they have an unlimited supply... which they do. Suddenly 10 medkits aren't enough to keep you alive for more than about 12 seconds. After about two hours of gameplay, the game begins to lag severely at random moments, often indicating that an enemy squad is about to spawn ON TOP OF YOU. No, not an ambush, it's like they beamed in from the Enterprise, guns blazing and unlimited grenades flying all over the place. Survivable only with cheats, really not worth the time and frustration.
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