F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate versus Project Origin - by Digital Nightfall
Bjossi on 31/1/2009 at 05:53
I actually found PM extremely scary at times. Especially the parts after the sidekick gets dragged into the pool of blood by some creature. Just seeing those red eyes quickly approach my character gave me the creeps, and there were a lot of those bastards down there.
Taffer36 on 3/2/2009 at 23:56
Felt really meh about the demo. Granted I played it on my 360 and perhaps FEAR is a game you just have to play on the PC, but from the sounds of it they even removed the lean on the PC. IMO that was the whole basis of FEAR 1's gameplay.
If they don't want to add in a cover system, that's fine, but we still have to use cover in a sense. In the first FEAR for me it was all about advancing and retreating to cover points, peaking out and unloading into an enemy, then quickly retreating before his buddies could react. Now without a cover system or even a lean system you're forced to run out and use slow-mo. The combat also feels a bit less "oh shit advance, retreat, advance, ruuuuuuuun", and now a bit "let's get set up, take some potshots, take advantage of super-easy choke points." It's not that it isn't fun, but it just feels less intense (although perhaps the encounters were subdued a bit for the demo). And what's with being able to knock over cover BUT NOT BEING ABLE TO CROUCH LOW ENOUGH FOR IT TO WORK?!?!
Found gun sounds to be lame but that's already been brought up. Also, I've found that I'm totally bored of FEAR scares now. The trippy moments were just annoying for me. But I guess playing through FEAR, EP, and Condemned 2 will do that to me.
Quote Posted by dethtoll
What are you fucking talking about? FEAR 1's story was great.
Word. EXCELLENT story.
Angel Dust on 4/2/2009 at 00:07
I was never the biggest fan of FEAR, I liked the feel of the combat but the dull environments/enemies and, for the most part, muddled story made it a chore to finish. However from this demo it seems Monolith have managed to completely cock-up what was FEAR's greatest strength: the intense combat. I don't know what is exactly wrong but I think it's the combination of factors eg. weaker weapon sounds, seemingly dumber AI, no lean, terrible gibs, neutered meelee. It just lacks that punch that FEAR had, so much so in fact that I went out and got PM for cheap yesterday just to remember how it should be.
Zygoptera on 4/2/2009 at 08:56
So, I was having a look at one of the preorder display boxes in the EA downtown today, and it says a Steam installation and online authorisation (presumably via Steam) is mandatory, and the official specs claim a broadband connection is mandatory too.
Is that right or was I (hope, hope, cos I won't touch Steam with a 12 parsec bargepole) looking at a box for the demo or something?
van HellSing on 4/2/2009 at 09:20
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
I won't touch Steam with a 12 parsec bargepole
I think I just found my soulmate.
Zygoptera on 4/2/2009 at 10:31
Sweet, $90 saved.
EvaUnit02 on 4/2/2009 at 11:31
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
Sweet, $90 saved.
Lemme guess, bad experience with Steam due to being on Xtra's Go Large? That's Telecom's fault, not Steam's.
deathshadow on 4/2/2009 at 11:53
Quote Posted by Morgoth
Played the F2 demo, and quickly came to the conclusion that this has been dumbed down for consoles.
I'm coming to the same conclusion - it is visually impressive, and has some cute touches, but yeah, the enemy highlighting, highlighting boxes around frobbable objects (even when ten yards away) combine to scream "Dumbed down for consoles" in the same way as the cyan frobbing that looked like a rendering error, "loot glint", mines the size of SUV hubcaps with blinky lights on them and oversized non-aliased fonts designed for a 320x240 display made TDS feel dumbed down for consoles.
Damned shame it's the current trend in games - console first, **** the pc gamer. SO MANY games for PC now are just piss poor console ports - though to be fair from what I've found in the demo Project Origin is the least offensive of them... compare to say, the COMPLETE TRAIN WRECK of PC ports Rockstar has been vomiting up with the likes of Bully
(gotta love that if you have more than 2 gigs of RAM it assumes you have less than 512 megs and downgrades you to 64x64 8 bit textures) or worse, the completely unplayable GTA4 with it's broken copy protection that gives wobbly camera to legit copies if you have more than one display adapter installed - or if you have a virtual CD device driver installed - did we mention that includes the drivers for VMWare or M$ VPC? Convoluted multiple login system for online trash PC gamers likely could give a **** about, auto-starting crapplets, inability to configure any controller other than an actual XBOX one without hacking the directInput drivers in your system32 directory, amaturish intro music that sounds worse than 1990's midi on a MT-32 (lemme guess, Casio CZ-101?), lack of aliasing or even quality encoding in the cutscenes making them look like something off the old 3d0 systems, and that I still had to mousejail it (something there is no excuse for on new games - is it so hard to contain the mouse in fullscreen mode?!?)
So yeah, from what I've seen of the demo Project Origin could be a lot worse off in terms of the consolitus, but it does show some of the signs.
