Digital Nightfall on 16/10/2011 at 21:51

---

We don't seem to have a major FEAR series thread, so here goes.

I just finished a complete playthrough of all six FEAR titles over the past month. It's was an interesting spin through the work of three studios and rapidly devolving first person shooter design ethics.

FEAR
I was quite surprised to find AI this advanced. I am used to enemies who either just charge madly at you or if they do use cover, they do so stupidly and predictably. The enemies here are always changing cover positions, actually hide so that you can't shoot a conveniently exposed elbow, often find ways to get around behind you. Aside from that the biggest unexpected pleasure was how the particle systems impacted gameplay. I constantly had to take a time out because the smoke from the gunfire became so thick I couldn't see anything.

The level design and environmental are seemed to be a step backwards from NOLF and Tron. I remember some quite imaginatively crafted settings in those games, and FEAR is nothing but the blandest of the bland nondescript settings. It seems like they put so much focus on making sure the advanced AI worked that they were afraid to make an environment any more complex than an office or a warehouse, sure that the pathfinding and logic trees would break down.

I found the game quite difficult, on the easiest setting. I don't trust Steam's timer of course, but it says I finished it in about 11 hours. The plot was pure ignorable nonsense, and there was nothing in the game even close to scary.

FEAR: Extraction Point
The first sequel/add-on was made by Timegate, and though the gameplay mechanics are exactly the same, they dialed the difficulty way, way down. The new team tried to put more emphasis on the story this time, adding many more in-game cutscenes and plotty stuff. It's about five hours long and doesn't really offer much that's new. It continues the story of Point Man from the first game, and inexplicably resurrects your brother, Fettal, and kills off your two allies who somehow managed to survive the first game, after thankfully working to make sure they're actually characters before it kills them.

Timegate also put forth and effort to add some actual environmental art to the game, thankfully getting you out of the offices and warehouses for a little while, but it's still visually far behind other shooters from 2006.

FEAR: Persius Mandate
This is by far the best game of what I have come to consider the "original trilogy." Sadly you wouldn't know this from the metacritic scores. I suppose the problem is that this came out two years after FEAR, when everyone was anxiously awaiting "the real Fear 2," and the reviewers evaluated this with equal measure nostalgia for the first game and boredom with basically playing another six to seven hours of that game. Playing all three in a row however, and the difference in quality really stands out.

Persius Mandate has the variety the other two games lacked. There's a half dozen really unique and tricky enemy types, a handful of interesting new scifi-style weapons, and environmental art that finally approaches what we'd expect from a 2005 game, but a little late. The "scary stuff" that was meaningless window dressing in the first two games can actually hurt you this time (and you can hurt it right back), making this the only game of the six that actually provided some real, "I felt fear just then!" moments.

Timegate also created all of their own characters for this one (you being another identity-less FEAR gun-dude but without the specialness of being Alma's son.) You do a fair bit more fighting along side squad buddies here, and considering the excellent AI, that's a good thing. The difficulty level was also closer to the original game.

FEAR 2: Project Origin
Two things hit me right off the bat with this one; the environments were great, and you can no longer lean. The ability to move objects in the world to make them "better cover" didn't seem to be very well thought out from a gameplay perspective. In the time it takes you to do the "flip for cover!" action, you could have just as easily found actual cover. The lack of lean removes a large tactical slice from the feel of the game, that I really wish developers wouldn't ignore.

Other than that, the game was one of the better ones. As I mentioned we finally have some quite well done settings, and the AI and level design don't seem to suffer for it. They did tone down the "wait for the smoke to clear to keep fighting" element as well, but the environments are still gloriously destructible. The mech sections were a blast, and the "scary stuff" was more like Persius Mandate in that you actually had to occasionally react to them if you wanted to live, but sadly this often meant an immersionless quicktime-event like action.

Extra Bad: I knew a boss fight was coming, so I set up some prox bombs and hunted for some extra ammo and figured out where I'd run for cover, planned the whole thing out. But then when the boss fight came... it was just a quicktime event.

Extra Good: Waking up in a hospital that you discover is actually a science lab that you discover is actually deep underground (realizing that the view outside of a sunny day was actually just LCD panels was a cool Aha! moment.) that you have to navigate out of only to discover that the city above you is burning ruins. I like long-term exploration sequences spanning many levels and many environment types, and this one was quite well done.

FEAR 2: Reborn
A tiny, compact experience that offers some pretty good gameplay and story elements that hearken back to the original game and what seems like a prelude to Fear 3. My main complaint about Reborn is that it briefly attempted greatness but then quickly gave up. There's a very short sequence in a building that's fallen on its side. Sadly it's very short and involves little more than unintuitive falling. Other than that the environmental art was a big step backwards from Project Origin, but I suspect that's a combination of a restricted budget and lofty goals. It has some pretty big idea for such a small package.

FE3R
Day 1 Studio made this one, and the game is hideously ugly. The level design approaches the original FEAR's level of bland and uninspired, but add on top of that an "ugly" filter that turns every rendered object on your game screen ugly. I don't mean like "this artwork depicts something ugly." That can be done well, and cool... like Dead Space. This is just bad art ugly. Oddly they tried to stay away from the types of environments that were mainstays of the series (offices, science labs, warehouses, etc.) and place you in settings that aren't typical for FPSs at all. This actually results in a big failure, as they painstaking took locations which naturally don't lend themselves well to corridor-shooter level design and somehow managed to transform them into a series of linear corridors. That said, the big-box-mart level did contain some neat ideas, but neat ideas doesn't cut it.

One review of the game talks about how it is constantly high-fiving your eyeballs with achievement notifications. It's true. The colorful banners jump up at the bottom of your screen every ten seconds or so, giving you a cookie for using cover for 30 seconds or killing ten guys in a row. In a row! Because you didn't actually do anything other than killing during that span... since there's nothing else to do. It's entirely obnoxious, and there's no way to turn it off.

So, your health regenerates and there's no health packs or armor. I don't think I need to explain what this does to the gameplay. On the other hand they did ramp up the difficulty again, but I think that's more them being insensitive to single-player balance and not them compensating for the health regen. Leaning is actually back in, but it's in the form of sticky cover spots. It works alright, especially since the cover is never magical. Sometimes I think I am perfectly hidden and the enemy is still pumping me full of bullets. On the other hand I noticed that the AI's idea of cover far more often goes into the "leave the elbow exposed" category.

The subtle storytelling using a few in-game sequences and many findable books and recordings is totally gone. Instead there's a ton of prerendered cutscenes where we get to watch our silent protagonist (the point man from FEAR 1, again) actually become a literal mute. Seriously... all he does is stare at people looking angry. He's no longer a silent protagonist... he's actually mute. Everything that happened in Reborn is ignored (which is surprising, since it seemed like it was designed to be a lead-in to Fear 3!) and a squad-mate who died in Extraction Point is alive again with no explanation. But the weirdest thing is that the player-character from Fear 2 is an NPC here, and not only is he not mute like the point man (in spite of him also being a silent protagonist), but he's a raging numskull.

In spite of all of that, it's still a decent shooter. The great AI is intact, and some parts are extremely tense. I only experienced a portion of the game since I was doing it solo, so I don't think I've really played it "as intended".

FEAR 4
Unannounced, but I suspect it's coming. Cliffhanger ending and all of that. I'd vote for Timegate to tackle this one, as I'd much rather see Monolith do something other than Fear again. (And not that Batman game, either.)

Jeshibu on 17/10/2011 at 00:08

---

Perseus Mandate: Really? I got bored with this, as I recall. I'll have to give it another try, then.

FEAR 2: Reborn: Still need to play this too.

FEAR 3: I played through most of this as Fettel with a buddy. I enjoyed making the host bodies last as long as possible. It kept crashing (somehow DX11 games are prone to crashing on my PC), but I thought the shooting bits were great. Shame about the story. And the lack of scares (the few times they did try were hilariously bad).
How was the FEAR 2 protagonist stupid though? He said he got raped, then he got 'sploded because Fettel's a dick.
I don't think the ending is all that conductive to a sequel. Either you have an apocalypse-baby that's implied to turn out just fine, or an "unstoppable" Fettel/Point man. Also, no Alma, unless they decide double-dead still isn't dead enough to stop her.

EvaUnit02 on 17/10/2011 at 00:29

---

@Phatose

Who are you replying to? If it's mine, of course Alice is the aunt. I don't know where you got the idea from that I confused her with Alma.

My point was, Alice's murder by Fettel's hands (or rather, his jaw) was unjustified, unlike Harlan's fate. Also that Fear 3 never mentions Alice.

june gloom on 17/10/2011 at 01:38

---

I just played through the series myself (skipping the Timegate expansions.) I am a big big fan of this series and have been basically since 2007 when I got a PC capable of running the first game.

Here's my review of the main games in the series, ignoring Timegate and Reborn.

FEAR 1 remains one of the best games I've ever played, though yes, the levels all start looking a bit samey. That said, they put quite a lot of emphasis on well-placed moody lighting, which is one of the fastest ways to please me. I got a strong System Shock 2 feel out of the game from time to time- a lot of it, again, was the lighting, but also the phone messages. I don't really see the plot as "ignorable"- derivative, maybe, sure. Unless you're mothra and confuse inspiration for plagiarism. But the slow uncovering of the doings of Armacham can be pretty concerning; especially towards the end when Betters starts making comments like "That's pretty fucking sick." Because it is.

Having played all three in a row, FEAR 2 remains on the throne as my favourite in the series. Sure, it's easy (unless you play on the hardest setting- prepare to die a lot, a single shotgun blast will tear you apart.) But the environments are significantly better, playing to a lot of the best bits of the expansions. I absolutely love the whole paranormal wasteland thing; and even if the Outer Shell can be a bit boring, everything before and after it are amazing. As for the plot... We already know what Armacham's been up to. Now we see the full extent of the shit they're pulling, and it reaches some truly ridiculous levels. This could be either good or bad. But the ongoing thing with Alma, and the hints regarding Becket and Keegan, is rather subtly pulled off. Halford's role as the obnoxious exposition fairy belies this subtlety, and that weird creepy moment when you realize Alma is drawn to Becket for more than just absorbing his power is topped by that absolutely horrifying moment at the end that NOBODY saw coming. Gainax would be proud. The lack of lean is perhaps the only real flaw I find with the game, and honestly it's not really that big a deal.

FEAR 3 is... well, they made it difficult like the first game. Must've died a million times in the prison. The game is very short, and the cutscenes are mostly dumb. The environments are mostly cool (I love the suburban settings- and the cult thing is straight out of Condemned) but the cover system is a load of useless horseshit and the points system is unbelievably stupid. The plot gets silly and I have to say I don't really like Fettel. Becket's death is one of the most mean-spirited things I've seen in a game, especially since I like him as a protagonist more than the Point Man. I also don't really understand Ghost!Harlan's evil attitude when he was deliberately trying to atone for his sins in the first game. Oh yeah, and giving the Point Man a face? A mistake IMO. He didn't look anything like I imagined him to, though if he's spent nine months in a prison in Brazil I suppose it makes sense he's gonna have a beard.

FEAR 3 isn't... a bad game, but FEAR 2 is the clear winner here.

Volitions Advocate on 17/10/2011 at 06:13

---

The plot from Fear 1 was a little more substantial I think than the OP mentioned, but others have shared why they think so so I'll just leave it at that. There is only one thing that really bothers me about the end of the game. Why was it necessary for Pointman to Destroy the facility, and all of the city with it, killing how many thousands of people and creating a paranormal wasteland. If Wade had already unleashed Alma? It seems like he could have avoided a great deal of pain and death for himself and many others if they (the fear squad) had switched gears when the situation changed. I really don't see the reason he made the place nuke itself.

The biggest thing that bothered me about Fear 3 was the lack of story. There were so many things left undone and unsaid from fear 1 that I was really looking forward to finding out about.
Mapes? Jankowski? Betters? not even a nod. That and Beckets death Really pissed me off. Not made that theykilled him. Just mad that he was tossed aside like his role was over.

I've beaten it, and gone back to try to play as fettel, and I just can't find the interest in playing as him. Maybe its better in co-op and that's my problem.