F.E.A.R. Platinum

I'm hard

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.

Not too bad for a post-2000 FPS. The main character still moves very slowly, and the levels are still linear corridors, but the unusually good A.I. and slow motion ability keeps most of the firefights fun. Enemies will react to your actions, can take cover, lob grenades, attempt to flank you, and will retreat when overwhelmed. The slow motion feature allows you to take on a squad of enemies without having to hide behind cover continuously. Still, all of the levels are bland and ugly (a water treatment facility, an office block, etc..), the horror elements are various levels of cringe (especially the very last moment, on the chopper, LOL). Also disappointing that Norton Mapes is just shot by the scientist, he should have been the final boss!