F.E.A.R. Platinum

It's good. It's not perfect, but it's good. For 2 bucks, this was a great deal in my opinion. It was a very enjoyable experience throughout the 15 hours. At times, it felt like it was dragging a bit too much, but overall the experience was surprisingly good. The story is... bland? I like the storyline with Alma, but mostly it's just "point A to point B". It's very cheesy at times, but I mean, it's influenced by Japanese horror, of course it's cheesy. The characters are pretty good, mostly. I like Alma, I like Paxton and I especially like Rowdy the coordinator... but there're still characters that are somewhat bad. For example Norton, who isn't awful, is just your typical comedic relief character, which just takes me away from the game. Alice and Harlan aren't awful characters either, but they're not interesting or memorable enough to even call them good or ok characters. The level design honestly is really good. It's nowhere near the same quality as Bioshock's levels, but they're honestly really good. Levels are explorative and interesting, and they're really detailed. The soundtrack is awesome. At times the tracks don't fit with what's going on, but most of the time the tracks suck you into the game. The atmosphere is the best part of the game, easily. Most of the time, you can't expect what's in the darkness. Sound design makes the atmosphere even scarier, making the game actually pretty scary, especially when the battery runs out of the flashlight. Gunplay and the enemies are also great. The guns don't have much personality or upgradability in them, making the play a bit repetitive, which is saved by the grenades, which create more opportunities to take on enemies. And while we're talking about enemies, REV6 and Heavy Armor kinda suck. They take tons of damage, but they aren't that interesting, unlike replicas and assassins, with the latter one still haunting my mind. . Overall, it's a really good game. It's not perfect, but it's good at what it is.

The Ring + The Matrix + John Woo films in FPS form. It works and it's a lot better than it sounds. Kudos to Monolith.

Mixing horror game and military shooter, F.E.A.R. is great at what it does, and even excels when it comes to action. The horror element is, well... serviceable. The game has a few chilling moments, but I think it relies too much on tired old tropes (lights that go out, creepy children...), and I actually felt more threatened by the combat encounters than the scripted horror scenes. The story is decent, but mostly predictable. At least, it still looks great: the models and textures are nothing to write home about, but F.E.A.R. makes great use of lights, shadows and particle effects. Every place you visit, no matter how mundane, drips with unsettling atmosphere. It really shines when it comes to combat: not only do the guns feel great to use, but each hostile encounter is an awesome life or death battle with a surprising amount of tactical thinking needed. The enemy AI is one of the best out there, most combat rooms have multiple entry points and covers to exploit, and you’ll need to plan ahead and have a good sense of improvisation to survive – even if going all over-the-top and acrobatic can be a reliable strategy! The bullet time mechanic is the true star of the show, giving you a much-needed edge against the bad guys and looking really awesome: gunshots and explosions distort the air and send sparks flying everywhere, the walls and furniture explode in smoke… F.E.A.R’s combat is an achievement which has not really been reproduced since - except maybe in its first expansion “Extraction Point”, which is even more fun than the base campaign! The game has small issues however: it can feel a bit too forgiving, the enemies that are not base soldiers tend to be annoying to deal with (notably the gun turrets and the armored guys), and the "Perseus Mandate" expansion is decent but definitely skippable. You may also need to download a DirectInput fix to avoid framerate issues. Still, it’s a cult classic for a reason, and I would absolutely recommend giving it a try!

Just wanted to comment on games state out of the box. I am on windows 10 and it worked just fine with my weird resolution too (21:9 2560 x 1080).

This is the first game in a while that ive felt compelled to play through start to finish like this. not a very long game but it was very fun, but may have benefitted from a greater variety of enemy types but as it stands as a like 17 year old game i loved it