F.E.A.R 2 demo

nekolux

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Well ok so i finished downloading the 1.8 gb demo off steam today and thought i'd take half an hour to play it. Now before i start [walloftext] Here's a quick summary of what it was like.
Question : What sound does nekolux make while playing F.E.A.R 2 demo?
Answer : Meh AI's so stupid no.. .AHHH NO ALMA LET ME GO AHHH cckt *falls into catatonic state*

Yeah i screamed like a little girl when alma grabbed me. And don't say you didnt cause we all know you did!

Ok so let's start off by going through the first thing you'll notice. The graphics. Now while a lot of people might say graphics isnt everything ( it really isnt ) F.E.A.R 2 might want to work on it's graphics a bit. It's not appalling or so bad that i wanna claw my eyes out. It's actually pretty fucking scary ( emphasis on fucking and scary ). But you'll see what i mean if you play the demo. The water particle effects are pretty outdated and this is coming from a valve fanboy who stands stoically in the face of criticism about the source engine's lack of graphical prowess ( SOURCE ENGINE ROCKS WHOO ). Overall i'd say the graphics get a 7 / 10. The textures weren't bad at all. But dammit monolith stop being lazy and work on those particle effects.

Gameplay. Ok so anyone who played the original F.E.A.R would be rather disappointed at the new AI. They've been un-smarted. Artificial un-intelligence. Remember how the NPCs used to flank you and attack you from left right front back ? That's gone now, the AI right now acts as if it came out of haze. They'll run at you, pretend to take cover while exposing 60% of their head and basically most of their body. They dont make use of their numbers either. They'll just run right at you like idiots.
Pacing is pretty smooth although this is just a short demo so we can't really judge that right now. One interesting extra is that the ghosts actually hit you now. Yup that's right you have to kill them now. From the short short demo ( emphasis on SHORT ) the scariest part was probably when the ghosts attacked me. ( Excluding when alma gives you a bear hug )

Scariness. I give it 5 out of 5 diapers. Man sized diapers. Leaking with scariness.
 

Lycaeus_Wrex

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nekolux said:
But you'll see what i mean if you play the demo. The water particle effects are pretty outdated and this is coming from a valve fanboy who stands stoically in the face of criticism about the source engine's lack of graphical prowess ( SOURCE ENGINE ROCKS WHOO ). Overall i'd say the graphics get a 7 / 10.
I'm confused by this statement. I don't know whether Monolith used the Source engine, but I deem it highly unlikely. Also, I thought the graphics were very nice! Shadows were good, FSAA was good, character detailing and modelling was fantastic. I also thought the water effects were very nice, check out the bit where
you have to make a mad dash to escape a falling bus
and you'll see plenty of nice details such as the way the water splashes on your visor. I also love Monolith's contrasting use of colour palette. The industrial grey of concrete is nicely contrasted with brighter colours throughout, with an ominous red and orange for the sections where Alma pays a visit. Top marks for presentation.

The atmosphere is terrific, so I fully agree with your sentiments there. There's a fantastic bit
in the school, where you see people nailed to the ceiling whilst still alive
that really give the game its own unique edge. I like that Alma can harm you now too, as I spent much of that section firing in blind panic as I tried desperately to get the other side. I love the fact that Alma is present so much more in this game, as she tended to take a little bit of a backseat in FEAR; now she's constantly haunting your steps in both her forms, making the tension notch up just that little bit more.

Oh, and the bit in the cinema is genuinely frightening. I played it at 2am, all the lights off and with my Barracuda 5.1's on practically full volume and I actually screamed!

I found the gameplay to be good fun. Yes, the enemies can no longer flank you, but the levels have been linearized a bit more that previous FEAR games. No longer do you enter a vast area and suddenly get hit from four angles at once, the entire experience is streamlined a lot more and on the harder difficulty you'll truly love the ability to topple vending machines, tables and other objects to provide impromptu cover. Leading on from that is the brilliant sense of physicality in the world. Your viewpoint is constantly shifting depending on what the protagonist is doing; if you vault over a low object your character goes through the entire animation with visible legs/hands etc, something I'm very happy about that was carried over from previous FEARs. Melee is very satisfying as well.

I enjoyed the demo a lot, enough to play it through three times and maybe a fourth, the graphics are perhaps a bit too soft for my liking, but hopefully that will rectified come release date.

A good review nekolux, nice job!

L. Wrex
 

L33tsauce_Marty

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Who cares about the graphics so much? They are good enough. As for the AI bit I have to say that I killed them before they could do a thing. I'll wait for the full game to make a final judgement about that. Rest is pretty straight on.
 

nekolux

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Lycaeus_Wrex said:
nekolux said:
But you'll see what i mean if you play the demo. The water particle effects are pretty outdated and this is coming from a valve fanboy who stands stoically in the face of criticism about the source engine's lack of graphical prowess ( SOURCE ENGINE ROCKS WHOO ). Overall i'd say the graphics get a 7 / 10.
I'm confused by this statement. I don't know whether Monolith used the Source engine, but I deem it highly unlikely. Also, I thought the graphics were very nice! Shadows were good, FSAA was good, character detailing and modelling was fantastic. I also thought the water effects were very nice, check out the bit where
you have to make a mad dash to escape a falling bus
Oh right sorry for the confusion, i didn't mean that monolith used the source engine. I'm just comparing their engine to the source engine. What you said is really true. But the effects seem inconsistent.
Check out the part where you have to jump off a train and you see water leaking from the roof. It MIGHT be my settings but the water looked kinda fake. ( I have them on medium - high )

One additional after thought. I wish they let us play more of the game. I get that it's a demo and all but it is kinda short for 1.8 gb I'm calculative and petty like that. Unlock moar monolith!
 

Reg5879

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I dont like F.E.A.R 2 for the same reason I didn't like the 1st one, its all scary until u fight a whole load of soldiers, I liked the part in the school, but I wont say anything, but the problem is when u fight the soldiers, it gives u time to lose ur scare meter and make u think ur playing an action game, not a horror.
 

Lycaeus_Wrex

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It's what Monolith call a 'palette cleanser' moment. Much like when you get to use the EPA, it breaks up the horror with some action in order to give the player a break. I think it works very well.
 

James Cassidy

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Reg5879 said:
I dont like F.E.A.R 2 for the same reason I didn't like the 1st one, its all scary until u fight a whole load of soldiers, I liked the part in the school, but I wont say anything, but the problem is when u fight the soldiers, it gives u time to lose ur scare meter and make u think ur playing an action game, not a horror.
I think yeah it loses your "scare meter", but this only adds to it.

Imagine you are at a point where you think you have the situation under control. Where you think you can do everything. Then Alma comes. Now you don't know what to do, if you can do anything at all. Basically, you get to a point where you are fighting to stay alive from Alma attacks. Soldiers are easy cause they just take a few bullets. Alma always come back for more.

As for the AI, I think you have to look at the environment before you judge it.. How are you going to flank someone in a narrow corridor with barely enough room to maneuver? The environment is not as open and blank like FEAR 1 was. FEAR 1 was good, but most it environments was like "copy paste." It all looked the same. That plus it was like a maze with all the desks.

Now you have a more open world with rubble that causes these irregular maps. If you want to talk about flanking, you should look at the end of the demo where you pilot the mech. The world is more open than before in the beginning and you will notice that The replicas are firing at you from all angles and hiding behind cover. I also notice that when I destroy the cover of one area, they immediately move to a better cover. Some took me a while to kill them because they kept moving through the cover even when I had all this firepower...which is good. Some even killed me with combined rocket fire. Keep in mind I was playing on hard.

So I think the AI is intact, you just have to understand the environment they are in. An office building uses Geometric shapes, but a destroyed city has things less than that.

Plus this isn't the final game. This demo I've heard is from a build like 9 months old. You don't know what they have changed since then.
 

nekolux

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Yup i agree with the above. It's to break the tension and let you relax a bit. So when alma pops out of no where to scare you nuts off it's 10x scarier. Seriously mate if the entire game was as scary as the school 80% of the gamers would have nervous breakdowns. The other 20% gets tachycardia.

Also one more thing. The demo is spliced up. It's pretty obvious, they got you to go through the scary parts, the actions parts and the power armor parts in a small little map so the pacing might not feel right.

harhol said:
Probably the worst demo I have played in five years. Stunningly mediocre. I couldn't wait for it to end.
Now now harhol. Just because alma made you shit bricks out of your wee wee doesn't mean you have to hate the game! =P I jest, to each his own i guess but like i said above. This was just for you to feel how the gameplay would be like. The pacing, the story. You can be sure it'll be much better than this in the full game.
 

Chaos Marine

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It was all right. Too much visual clutter in my opinion and the AI needs a serious tune up. I can see where it's been dumbed down for consoles. Original F.E.A.R. was for the PC first and then ported to the consoles. Just like Deus Ex's squeal. Sigh.
 

gamshobny

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The graphical style is so completely different from FEAR 1. I don't like it. To me, the only thing the FEAR engine needed was better textures and some more post-processing effects, not this Crysis rip-off.
 

nekolux

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Hardtofindaname said:
I didn't find the graphics to be disappointing... not even the water effects :O However, I didn't like the gameplay :s I can't really explain why, it's not even the button layout, but the way the game flows feels unnatural and accelerated... (maybe they should make it a bit slower and make you a bit heavier (what with the heavy ass equipement and all...)
Like loads of peeps said above, this is a demo and they were splicing everything so you could try out all the weapons, the power armor etc.

Another thing i'd like to point out for the graphics. If you shoot the missiles in the power armor and you look at the smoke. The volumetric rendering is not there at all. Again graphics isn't everything but
1. 2009 game, i sort of expected something more.
2. Keep the art work focused on the dark, gritty and gory details rather than the action if you arent going to build your engine from the ground up so that it can keep up with the graphics of other FPS games released recently.

You know on after thought it might just be because of the second point more than anything else. They focused too much on the action-style gameplay.
 

Calax

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Just played it, there were a few moments where I jumped out of my skin, but I found that there were also moments where I was awed at the powers I was fighting (child alma walking on the ceiling for example).

I was however frustrated at the fact that Armacham is no longer a less then demonic entity. In FEAR1 it felt like they were just a corporation who's dirty secret was of the world destroying variety. In this it started to feel like Armacham is viewing the entire city as a petri dish for their expiraments. Which is weird given they are a defense contractor based primarily in Missiles and other munitions. I do like some of the models, and I agree that the demo is spliced together from various portions of the game. The school appeared and ended very abruptly for example.

A part of me missed the finding of laptops and phone messages to explain the plot but I understand that they couldn't do that because to many people lost the plot line somewhere in texas on the first game.

Also in the hud I found things to be missing. I couldn't find how many Medkits I had on me at the time for example. I also miss the old reflex meter, the new one is to small.
 

nekolux

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samsprinkle said:
ansem1532 said:
samsprinkle said:
I disagree. I will now right my own review...just to spite you.
..woo!

I love publicity on F.E.A.R. ^^
lol. I wrote another review...just to spite him.
Mine's better deep down you know it... deep down... you know alma is watching you...
That.. was completely random.

Also calax i totally agree. The HUD tries to make way for actual vision but it actually sacrifices a lot of things that are kinda necessary for you to play properly. I think valve has their HUD dead on. You will never miss anything on a valve game's HUD. It's uncluttered and.... no dont hit my face! Yahtzee's a valve fanboy too you know =P