F.E.A.R. Platinum

After hearing so much praise heaped on this game (looking at you, GGGManLives), I finally decided to check it out and I wish I hadn't. Hardly anything worked for me. The levels are very dull, with most of them being the same office building over and over, and corridors set at 90 degree angles like it's still 1992. You can only carry three weapons at once, but then again only three or four are worth carrying. The music is just some barely noticeable buzzing and droning, the enemies are only three or four similar guys, the story only gets in the way of shooting, and the shooting is way too interspersed with wandering around and trying to find out what you're supposed to do next. There were a few good moments, particularly shooting a bunch of guys with a remote-controlled turret, but that only happened twice throughout the game, I think. And contrary to its name, the game is not scary in the slightest, all the attempts at horror fall completely flat. Overall, a really boring experience that I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone.

Being a big fan of FPSs like Half Life and NOLF I was really looking forward to this one, but I found it boring to the max. Endless offices and industrial areas, same enemies over and over, highly linear. It may be that this is too "pure" an FPS for me - I like an interesting story, scripted events and that kind of thing to spice things up, and F.E.A.R. doesn't offer much of that.

Every time I try to download this game, it breaks when there is about 80-90% complete. I have got bad Internet connection. Parts are too big (3,+ GB). I need smaller parts, or I need some Downloader with pausing and resuming of downloading, but there is no Galaxy Downloader for Linux yet.

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.

I rather not experience this again. Severely repetitive and the scares are not even as scary as a cockroach inside your pantry!