F.E.A.R. Platinum

Its fear, thats kinda it

First time I played F.E.A.R I got bored rather quickly and quit playing about third in. It does have some great things going for it. The shooting mechanics, the AI, the particle effects and the spooks and jumps scares are all great. But... it is killed off by lack of variety. The graphics are not that great in the first place but what makes it worse is the lack of variety in environments. There's two or three different settings that repeat over and over again. It's the same with enemies. Even though the AI is superb and gunfights are fun at first, soon it all feels very repetitive because there's not many enemy types. The boredom is exacerbated by the story which is not that great that would make you want to continue to play nonetheless. Fortunately F.E.A.R is much improved by the Complete Edition mod which adds enemies and weapons from the expansions and F.E.A.R 2. It gives it a lot of more variety and generally makes it more fun to play.

RECOMMENDED unless bored to tears by FPS games. The enemy AI is the star of the game, though if shooting clever targets is not fun to you, skip this one. The story content and the marketed horror are not very good and make zero sense. For example, a minute into the game, player's team mates get violently "peeled" and then a whole lot of nothing. Every rescue and escort mission fails in the similar fashion. You put in hours and hours to recover and escort a supposed key-person, only to find it in a crimson pool. This happens many all the times, to the point in Extraction Point, everyone in the city including the player end up dying. Overall, the gameplay is very repetitive shooting of the same spec ops troops quite like Half-Life's grunt over and over again. The recoil is a bit excessive as you have to make headshots to avoid bullet-sponging the enemies to a ridiculous extent. F.E.A.R. simulates body armor and weapon caliber very diligently, meaning that hits tend to ricochet off and do zero damage (showing blue sparks) unless you score a headshot. The high recoil makes that very difficult to do with most guns and even the first shots tend to not go where you point them at even though recoil should only apply from the second shot on in real life. Not fun. Also, the shotgun magically misses all the time if there is any objects near the enemy - the object absorbs everything. This game was clearly inspired by Half-Life as demonstrated by the out-of-place vending machines and microwave ovens. It in turn inspired a lot of cheap horror titles that replicated its repeated hallway gags numerous of times. The dream sequences are identical to the ones later used in Metro 2033, especially the Hunter ones. F.E.A.R. also references a ton of movies such as Grudge (Alma's looks) and Jacob's Ladder (the usual out-of-place wheelchairs). The best part of the game: Perseus Mandate up until Chen dies. Extraction Point is outright lame and the base game is pretty meh in comparison.

Bought this because of all the great reviews. Not very impressed. The story was generic. Scares just slightly spooky. FPS action is so so.

Positives: - Games works fine on modern systems but you have to get a "FPS fix" and a high resolution font mod. Other than that, you're good to go. - Enough has been said about this game AI, and it is indeed really good. The gun fights feel satisfying. Physics were great for its time and still hold up. I was playing on the highest difficulty and the combat is definitely the best part of the game. Negatives: - The story... it's bad IMO. Uninspired from the start and never gets any better. - The "scary little girl" in horror games is always cringy. - Bland and repetitive. Dull environments, boring characters, everything is a slog.