Games: F.E.A.R. -ful

So I picked up F.E.A.R. a few weeks back when GoGamer was having a 48 Hour Madness sale. Thirty two smackers after shipping. Here is the skinny:

There is still life left in my overclocked AthlonXP (1.4GHz @ 2.0GHz) and Shuttle nForce2 motherboard. :-D While the graphics requirement in FEAR is high, it's also amazing how fast gaps like these close up.

While this game wasn't scary enough to make me stop playing or even turn on the lights it was scary enough. It kept me on edge. And this isn't Doom 3's monster closet cheap scares either. I only wish there was more. The gun battles are nuts, with or without the slow-mo. Your enemies are quite satisfying to play against. However they are not perfect. You will see them do stupid things like take cover behind a hand-rail. One of my favorite things to do is a stealth melee attack on a bad guy, then stealth melee his buddies when they come over to see why he's laying down on the ground.

There is a lot of stuff that is very FPS cliche here. Level design and weapons are somewhat unexciting. Granted, if all the short comings were fixed up, it would have taken another three to five years to finish the game. The game starts very strong and finishes strong, but in the middle it tends to drag. The game is also easy because of the slow-mo feature. I played on hard and hardly broke a sweat. The slow-mo is hardly used out side of combat to solve puzzles. This makes it a real one trick pony. The story is a good/bad thing. It could have been good. While stuff like that ends up being a bigger disappointment then no story at all, it also could have been a lot worse. And maybe Half-Life 2 started a new fad with the plot holes, cause FEAR has them in copious amounts. In it's defence, this could just be setup for a sequel.

I'm looking forward to the mod community to do some really nifty things with this game. Hell, I might even break out into the modding scene with this game. I'd love to see some cooperative modes. I'm a sucker for endless survival co-op scenarios. And the AI would make such a thing quite fun.

Good stuff slow-mo gun fights scary graphics melee attacks bots

Bad Stuff easy plot holes answering machines sequal/expantion/mods uninspired multiplayer

For $32, I got a lot more then I expected. I wouldn't have paid more then $40 for this game, but thats my principals.