steve kwan user experience designer

Review: F.E.A.R.

(October 23rd, 2005 - 3:12PM)

I shamelessly stole this graphic from the F.E.A.R. website. Monolith shamelessly stole the concept of a creepy little girl from The Ring.

(3.5 / 5 stars)

F.E.A.R. is the latest first-person shooter from Monolith Studios. I'm immediately docking it half a star for its title. I hate acronyms that spell out to something meaningful (like PATRIOT Act). If you can't be bothered to come up with a real name for your game, don't expect me to take it seriously either.

In the game you play a new recruit of a paranormal investigation team called First Encounter Assault Recon, or F.E.A.R. for short - ack, I feel dirty just saying that. Your first mission is to track down a crazy lunatic who has telepathic control over an army of soldiers. Think X-Files, but with bigger guns. Long story short: things get complicated and you uncover a conspiracy. I started and finished F.E.A.R. over a weekend, which means it's pretty short. That's not unusual in a first-person shooter, but I always appreciate games like Doom 3 which have a bit more bulk to them.

F.E.A.R. has been getting excellent reviews, and they are mostly well-deserved. F.E.A.R. is a great game by all accounts; however, I feel that it was somewhat disappointing. There are a lot of great elements to F.E.A.R., but they have all been done better elsewhere.

The major comparison I've heard regarding F.E.A.R. is its resemblance to Max Payne. That's very true. F.E.A.R. has grungy urban environments, creepy flashbacks and a slow-motion ability just like Max Payne. In F.E.A.R., these elements are all well executed; however, Max Payne already broke that ground years ago, so there's nothing new to see here. I'm quite impressed that the slow-motion ability in F.E.A.R. is referred to as "Slo-Mo." Most other games with this feature feel the need to assign it flashy names like "bullet time" or "focus." Monolith tells it like it is. Unfortunately, the Slo-Mo feature should never have been included in the game. Being able to slow your enemies to a near standstill removes almost any requirement for strategy in firefights. This is a shame, because the enemy AI in F.E.A.R. is excellent. In one firefight, I actually saw a soldier kick over a table and use it for cover. The AI is really being squandered if you can slow opponents down and peg them off while they're practically unable to move.

F.E.A.R.'s graphics are excellent. However, the game is a resource hog. I had to run it at less than 1600*1200 resolution, which made it look less than impressive. Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 both run perfectly at 1600*1200 resolution, and thus look a lot better. I'm sure F.E.A.R. uses some funky new technology I've never heard of which requires me to have a computer that's twice as powerful. That's nice, but given my hardware (which is pretty good) I shouldn't need to tone down my graphical settings. Maybe I'm just being picky, and maybe it's unfair to hold this game to the standard set by Half-Life 2, but that game seemed to make better use of my hardware than F.E.A.R.

For a game as short as F.E.A.R., I would have expected more variety amongst the levels. Doom 3 was also very redundant in its level design- all the levels had the same dark, futuristic look - but the game was also very long, so it can be forgiven for re-using environments. F.E.A.R., on the other hand, is a very short game. I would have expected the developers to spend a little more time making the environment diverse, considering how few levels there are. The enemies are also extremely boring - almost all of your opponents are soldiers. For a game about paranormal activity, I would have expected more interesting enemies. The Suffering got this perfect.

My last complaint about F.E.A.R. is that it's just not that scary. With a name like F.E.A.R. you'd expect it to be frightening, but Doom 3 takes this game to school.

All complaints aside, there are a lot of things about F.E.A.R. which are really good. The weapons in this game are great. My favorites are the Penetrator (which is sort of like a giant stapler) and the Particle Weapon (which is like a railgun that turns people into skeletons). The story is interesting, and rarely feels over the top.

In summary, F.E.A.R. is a great game with several major disappointments. It's really short and lacks variety. Considering I saw this game priced at Electronics Boutique for almost $80 CAN, I can't really recommend it to anyone but a hardcore first-person shooter fan. It feels like Monolith spent a lot of time developing the mechanics of the game, such as gunfighting and AI, but didn't spend a lot of thought on developing a world around them. Games like Half-Life 2 just felt so much more rewarding.