F.E.A.R. Platinum

It's hard to imagine that this game was released back in 2005. It has aged very well and it still looks and plays great. The level design here is quite flat but this game shines when it comes to combat! The enemy AI is some of the best you'll ever see and frankly I don't know of any other game that has since surpassed this. The guns feel excellent and the audio and atmosphere add a lot to make the game very creepy. If you've never played it but love first person shooters and horror games, get this, you'll love it.

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.

I'm not even joking. F.E.A.R. is one of the freakish fusion of The Matrix, Pulse and a John Woo movie that you never could believe existed and that you never knew you needed. The atmosphere and horror are extremely well done, giving the game an intense, pulse pounding "What the F--K will happen NEXT?!" feel that will have you on the edge of your seat. The gunplay is extremely well done, and the addition of Bullet Time as a gameplay feature ends up being a life-saver most of the time. The story is extremely well-written and intense, with what starts out as a simple psychic/paranormal incident snowballing and escalating into a full-on crisis by the game's pulse-pounding climax in the Origin Facility. The main characters, whilst likable, are nothing to write home about, but it's the side characters and the main antagonists (Paxton Fettel and Alma) will stick with you, for better or worse. Oh, and there's also the AI. Most people have said this in depth already, so I'll keep it brief: They flank. They try to flush you out with grenades. They call for reinforcements, etc. Long story short, F.E.A.R. is a masterpiece, and it is required playing for any gamer with a PC. Oh, I forgot... The expansions. Extraction Point is a fantastic follow-up with brilliant level design, cool new weapons and difficult new enemies, and a bleaker, more nihilistic storyline that compliments the base game's tale of an escalating paranormal crisis well, whilst Perseus Mandate is... Fun, but suffers from some unbalanced areas, a weaker plot, and some far less polished visuals. EP is the better, but they're both worth playing. Anyway, F.E.A.R.. It's definitely worth fearing.

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.