F.E.A.R. Platinum

The combat is still really great. All the weapons feel and sound impactful, chunks get blown out of walls from gunfire, there's a slowmo ability and a jump kick ability, so it's pure John Woo action. The AI is still unmatched 13 years later. Enemies seem to have a sense of self-preservation and approach combat intelligently. They retreat and regroup, flank you, and communicate with each other. They seem to remain calm when they're beating you, and react with their own fear when you're outmatching them. Sometimes they'll do something completely unexpected that will go against everything shooters have subconsciously taught you over the years, but makes complete sense in the moment. The fact that later shooters seem to have been learned nothing from F.E.A.R is a crying shame. There's a certain pacing to the game where you'll go through an action-packed sequence followed by an intense scary sequence, rinse and repeat. This is quite satisfying and "comfortable" because it's easy to predict, so the player always has moments of relief to look forward to where you know you'll get a break from the horror to just shoot some bad guys; and these contrasting moments mix together really well in my opinion. It's especially good for scaredy-cats like me who want to dip their feet in horror but can't handle a whole game of it. However, this kind of predictability in a horror game won't work for those who get more thrills from surprises. F.E.A.R. doesn't really do anything surprising in the horror department, and in general it just follows the same horror tropes we've seen in films a thousand times before, but the atmosphere is excellent and always intense in spite of that. It does a great job of keeping things subtle, and there are more times the game tries to mess with your mind and your perception of the world rather than constantly jump-scaring you. It's a very creepy game. The story is cheesy nonsense though.

The Levels and the AI are designed for the perfect shootouts and the particle effects make it feel even more tense.

Honestly I was always fascinated by the A.I. and game play of FEAR. The enemies actually speak up to each other to give you a sense of them being organized. They actually use cover, try to flank, flush you out and so-on. They aren't braindead, or appear so like in newer AAA games. The weapon mechanics and their recoil are also more fun to play with. They have quite a bit of recoil but not so much so it shakes you whole screen like crazy like some games do. I wouldn't really call this game a horror game though. It may be scary to someone who's never experienced horror and/or actively avoided it, but the scares aren't really big. The scares are more like jump-scares, you weren't expecting something to be here or there so it startles you, that's about it. Considering the age of this game, I'd say it aged well. The story is a bit cheesy too, but consider the time it came out I'm not surprised. It has a lot of fun special effects though you didn't see often out of games from the earlier game years, seeing how it used to have 5 or 6 CDs for install at the time.

I also wanna marry VK 12 combat shotgun, make babies with it and live the rest of my life together.

A really fun bullet-time fps! That also wants to be a horror game... The action here is solid, the guns all feel distinct enough to feel like they were worth including and they are all fun to use, especially the shotgun... While there aren't many enemy varieties that is made up for by the AI and the numerous tactics they will use to kick your arse, they crawl under vehicles, flip over tables, sneak up behind you, and co-ordinate to corner you. The AI seem to change their approach directly depending on how you approach a combat encounter. The bullet time mechanic itself is not perfect, and engaging without that slow-mo juice bar fully charged is a death sentence, and it recharges passively when it's off. I felt like this re-charge was too slow. I think they should've allowed you to recharge the bar multiple ways, for example maybe hitting your shots allowed you to stay in slow mo longer? or maybe getting a kill fully recharges? so you could throw a nade around a corner of pull of a really cool pot shot that allowed you to instantly get back into the action. This game excels when you have an aggressive play style, It is disappointing that the games design doesn't facilitate this as much as it could which is the one of the only things holding me back from giving this a 5 star rating, well that, and the horror. FEAR tries to be a horror game, but this mostly just feels like annoying time-wasting and none of it is genuinely scary, I did enjoy the other methods this game used to deliver it's story that weren't just non skip-able horror sequences. Namely finding audio recordings, this rewards a little bit of exploration and allows you to choose whether you want to engage with the decently written story. I would have appreciated these even more if the player was able to listen to them at any time in an audio log menu or something. I'm harsh about this game because I care and I love it. It's a 9/10 from me.