F.E.A.R.. Barely three years after its release, and its name is already synonymous with gaming-done-right. You don't have to be Nostradamus to see the ultimate ascension of this title into gaming's Hall of Fame, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Doom, System Shock, Final Fantasy, and Zelda. Each were pioneers in their own way, and F.E.A.R. is no different.
I wasn't gonna do this, precisely because F.E.A.R. is three years old, most people have already played it, and there's a glut of reviews for it by now. But when I searched them out and read them, most reviews I found consisted of fanboy praise for it, and the others glossed over its flaws, and focused instead on how many awards F.E.A.R. deserves for its most obvious accomplishments. Some were informative, but not nearly enough, and not in nearly enough ways.
So, you've heard all the hype, the stories, and the horror tales. You could do a search of F.E.A.R. in just this forum, and come up with a couple of thousand mentions of it. But is this game for you? Should you take the plunge and experience it for yourself, or move on to something else? Well hopefully this review will help you decide.
System Specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 6000 dual core
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8600 256 MB
RAM: 3.25 GB
Operating System: Windows XP, Service Pack 2
F.E.A.R. comes on CD-ROMs. 6 of them. If you have an imagination, you can probably imagine how long this behemoth takes to install. On one hand, I can appreciate the decision by Monolith to put the game on CDs, as not everyone had access to DVD technology around F.E.A.R.'s release. I myself only upgraded to a DVD-ROM about a year ago, so I know firsthand just how limiting having only a CD drive is, especially for gaming. I appreciate Monolith wanting to make the game as accessible as possible to people who don't have $80 to shell out for a DVD drive, on top of the price of the game.
On the other hand, 6 discs are a ***** to install.
2005 wasn't that long ago, and I kinda thought disc swapping for installation had gone the way of the dinosaurs, much like boiling CDs. I haven't had to boil a demo CD in years, and doing so now would make me feel a little weird, much as trading out discs for F.E.A.R. did. The sheer number of CDs feel amazingly unsafe to me every time I install this game. That's 6 times the things I could damage, or lose, that will prevent me from ever installing and playing this game again. On top of that, Monolith didn't even have the courtesy to put my CDs in a jewel case. Instead I got six paper sleeves, and if you've ever handled discs in these things before, you know they don't inspire a whole lot of confidence in their sturdiness.
Wrong.
Riiiiiiiiiight!
Getting from the first CD to the last took me about 45 minutes, and chewed up most of my processing power. Even on a next gen computer, don't expect it to happen very fast. However the process goes smoothly, and except for when it came time to change discs, I never felt like I had to babysit the process and guide it by the hand.
Load times only happen between levels, and average out to about 45 seconds each. Not so bad, I've certainly encountered worse. And when you get into the actual gameplay, the option to enable soft shadows will be what hits your performance and load times the hardest. I turned them up all the way, and even on my system the game lagged, stuttered, and had trouble keeping up with me as I walked down an empty hallway. But with soft shadows off, you can turn just about everything else up, and the game will run smoothly. The only times I encountered any slowdown doing this was during high pitched battles with me and multiple enemies firing, breaking stuff, and knocking things over. Even then, the slowdown was hardly noticeable, and had no impact on my gameplay.
If you're not sure of what's gonna cooperate with your particular setup, F.E.A.R. includes a handy little graphics demo in the options screen that'll guide a camera through a setting in the game, and across some of the more common graphics-intensive events that'll be encountered. (explosions, fire, bullets, multiple enemies on screen) At the end of this demo the game tells you what your frames per second were, and recommends a graphical set up for you. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I was for this option, and how much time and headache it saved me.
Prepare to have your video card worked like a runaway slave
Speaking of things like the graphics, let me be honest, they're not gonna wow you here. Crysis this ain't. Most of the game takes place in an indoors setting, and all of it takes place in professional/industrial environments. Don't expect wide sweeping views of detailed mesas on the horizon, or to stalk your prey through some third world jungle or across the skin of a far-flung space station. The game doesn't look bad, not by any stretch, but it's obvious when playing that the graphics were only a secondary consideration to the gameplay. Which is how it should be.
In fact, with the exception of one area, pretty much every part of the game looks and feels the same. The waste treatment plant feels like the military compound. The military compound feels like the office complex. The office feels like the lab. If I had to guess, I'd say they had only a limited number of design molds for levels, maybe three or four, and they applied each of those molds over and over, with fresh coats of paint and a few details tweaked. As a result, much of the game's environment gives you a continuous feeling of deja vu, although the developers went to pains to make these areas unique in other ways.
Again, with the exception of that one area, (the apartments) every "level" you're tasked with exploring is just linear enough to keep the player from getting bored or lost, but there are lots of little nooks and crannies to explore, (most of which you'll soon be real hesitant about doing so, and for good reason) and usually offer at least two different ways to approach any key point, often times more. Much like in Call of Duty 4, this offers a chance to be tactical about how you approach enemies and handle certain encounters, and trust me, tactical is what you'll be all about by the end of the game.
While graphics were kept to a minimum for the most part, F.E.A.R. does feature options intended for high-end systems, like anti-aliasing and soft shadows, and the moments when you enter FMV's or non-interactive cutscenes are highly detailed, as are some of the creepier touches throughout the game. (Blood on the walls, bodies, fire)
The lighting and setting are especially important; in each area they make at least half the game experience, and if you can play with regular shadows turned all the way up, do so. F.E.A.R. is rife with scary, spooky, even terrifying moments, (and there ARE terrifying moments in this game, have no doubt) and all of these are compounded by the atmosphere the game creates with things like shadows and light. Unlike most shooters, F.E.A.R. focuses at least equally on the atmosphere and combat, and there are several non-combat areas of the game where atmosphere and setting are all you have.
Yeah, that... that's a little disturbing.
In spite of its lack of focus on graphics, F.E.A.R. caught a lot of attention when it was released for its unusually high system requirements. Much like Crysis, this game required a player to have HAL 9000 for their personal desktop in order to fully enjoy it, and the developers certainly made the most of what they had. In light of recent games like Crysis and Bioshock though, those requirements are no longer as impressive. Still, for such a graphically minimal game, what is making such demand on those resources? Where's all that power going?
I'm not a software developer so I can't say for certain, but if I had to pick something, it would be the A.I.
In virtually every review of F.E.A.R. you can find, some mention is made of the game's ingenious enemy A.I., and it's reputation is well deserved. Even on the lower difficulties, the A.I. is leaps and bounds beyond every FPS I've played to date. The enemy soldiers in this game never run blindly into a player's fire, never dash stupidly through an open doorway where the player's waiting to ambush them, and never stand around in a single spot so a player can anticipate where to lob grenades and sneak up on them.
Enemies radio for backup, (which WILL come in short order) refuse to fight you in separated, easily isolated pockets, and always operate as a team. Multiple soldiers will keep you suppressed with fire, while others flush you out with grenades, or use cover to advance on your position. Rarely will you encounter just one soldier, and the battles you fight can play out in a hundred different ways, and none of them ever felt like time wasted to me. And if you decide to kick the difficulty into high gear, the A.I. gets really creative. Some of the funnest moments in the game were when soldiers would improvise traps using proximity or remote mines the way a human player would, or lead me into an ambush where they quickly reduced me to kibble.
I laud F.E.A.R. for taking this approach towards A.I. development. They could've taken the easier route of simply increasing the number of enemies you fight, or boosting their ability to soak damage, and turning their accuracy up to the level of "clairvoyant". But no, Monolith has standards. They went the extra mile, and left the enemies just as easy to kill on all four difficulties, but made it harder to put yourself in a position to do so. The difference between these two approaches can't be understated.
Well. Aren't you proper f*****?
The story's decent enough. It's not high quality fiction, but it's enough to keep the player interested without getting silly or hokey at the same time. You're a new recruit in the ultra-elite First Encounter Assault Recon force, who's job it is to investigate and respond to paranormal incidents. When a telepathic commander goes rogue and takes control of an entire battalion of clone soldiers, it's up to your team to stop him. There's more but I don't want to spoil it. The game ends on a cliffhanger, and from what I understand, the rest of the story is told through F.E.A.R.'s expansions, but I haven't played them, and so can't tell you how that turned out. (Besides, with the exception of CoD 4, I have a strict policy
against reviewing anything Yahtzee's done)
So now we come to the end, and with all this information, we return to the question at the beginning: Is F.E.A.R. right for you? Different gamers have different tastes so that question really comes down to individual preference, but here are some things that might help you decide:
From what I understand, F.E.A.R. is primarily a single player experience. The option for online multiplayer exists, but I've never met anyone who's played it. It seems like this is something CoD 4 did a lot better, so most gamers have migrated in that direction.
If you're new to gaming, particularly to FPS gaming, then this is not where I recommend you start. The difficulty curve for F.E.A.R. is a little steeper than most shooters, and can lead to a lot of aggravation if you find yourself getting killed 10 times in every battle.
Definitely don't go with this if you don't like horror games. However, if you DO like the thought and creative problem solving required in tactical shooters, as opposed to the run-and-gun tactics of Halo and Doom then F.E.A.R. has what you need.
Finally, there is absolutely no replay value to this game other than beating it on the higher difficulties. There's only one ending, no extra paths to take or decisions to make, and no easter eggs. The sequences are all scripted, which is nice and makes for some surprising moments, but it also means that what happened during your first play through is gonna be exactly what happens the next time. Even the enemies will be in the same places. This lack of replay is probably it's single most damning aspect.
F.E.A.R. may not be perfect, but its advantages far outweigh its flaws. It remains one of the best shooters I've ever played, and I cut my teeth on the original Quake and Doom, so it's got a lot of competition. If you're a fan of FPS gaming at all, and you get the chance to play F.E.A.R., do so, you won't be disappointed. As far as spending money on it goes though, don't. Borrow it from a friend. Rent it if there's still a place around you ludicrous enough to rent PC games. F.E.A.R.'s a great experience, but it's also a one-time only experience.
(Sorry about hijacking some of the photos. I'd use my own, except I can't find disc 3 to F.E.A.R. so I can install it again.)
I wasn't gonna do this, precisely because F.E.A.R. is three years old, most people have already played it, and there's a glut of reviews for it by now. But when I searched them out and read them, most reviews I found consisted of fanboy praise for it, and the others glossed over its flaws, and focused instead on how many awards F.E.A.R. deserves for its most obvious accomplishments. Some were informative, but not nearly enough, and not in nearly enough ways.
So, you've heard all the hype, the stories, and the horror tales. You could do a search of F.E.A.R. in just this forum, and come up with a couple of thousand mentions of it. But is this game for you? Should you take the plunge and experience it for yourself, or move on to something else? Well hopefully this review will help you decide.
System Specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 6000 dual core
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8600 256 MB
RAM: 3.25 GB
Operating System: Windows XP, Service Pack 2
F.E.A.R. comes on CD-ROMs. 6 of them. If you have an imagination, you can probably imagine how long this behemoth takes to install. On one hand, I can appreciate the decision by Monolith to put the game on CDs, as not everyone had access to DVD technology around F.E.A.R.'s release. I myself only upgraded to a DVD-ROM about a year ago, so I know firsthand just how limiting having only a CD drive is, especially for gaming. I appreciate Monolith wanting to make the game as accessible as possible to people who don't have $80 to shell out for a DVD drive, on top of the price of the game.
On the other hand, 6 discs are a ***** to install.
2005 wasn't that long ago, and I kinda thought disc swapping for installation had gone the way of the dinosaurs, much like boiling CDs. I haven't had to boil a demo CD in years, and doing so now would make me feel a little weird, much as trading out discs for F.E.A.R. did. The sheer number of CDs feel amazingly unsafe to me every time I install this game. That's 6 times the things I could damage, or lose, that will prevent me from ever installing and playing this game again. On top of that, Monolith didn't even have the courtesy to put my CDs in a jewel case. Instead I got six paper sleeves, and if you've ever handled discs in these things before, you know they don't inspire a whole lot of confidence in their sturdiness.
Wrong.
Riiiiiiiiiight!
Getting from the first CD to the last took me about 45 minutes, and chewed up most of my processing power. Even on a next gen computer, don't expect it to happen very fast. However the process goes smoothly, and except for when it came time to change discs, I never felt like I had to babysit the process and guide it by the hand.
Load times only happen between levels, and average out to about 45 seconds each. Not so bad, I've certainly encountered worse. And when you get into the actual gameplay, the option to enable soft shadows will be what hits your performance and load times the hardest. I turned them up all the way, and even on my system the game lagged, stuttered, and had trouble keeping up with me as I walked down an empty hallway. But with soft shadows off, you can turn just about everything else up, and the game will run smoothly. The only times I encountered any slowdown doing this was during high pitched battles with me and multiple enemies firing, breaking stuff, and knocking things over. Even then, the slowdown was hardly noticeable, and had no impact on my gameplay.
If you're not sure of what's gonna cooperate with your particular setup, F.E.A.R. includes a handy little graphics demo in the options screen that'll guide a camera through a setting in the game, and across some of the more common graphics-intensive events that'll be encountered. (explosions, fire, bullets, multiple enemies on screen) At the end of this demo the game tells you what your frames per second were, and recommends a graphical set up for you. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I was for this option, and how much time and headache it saved me.
Prepare to have your video card worked like a runaway slave
Speaking of things like the graphics, let me be honest, they're not gonna wow you here. Crysis this ain't. Most of the game takes place in an indoors setting, and all of it takes place in professional/industrial environments. Don't expect wide sweeping views of detailed mesas on the horizon, or to stalk your prey through some third world jungle or across the skin of a far-flung space station. The game doesn't look bad, not by any stretch, but it's obvious when playing that the graphics were only a secondary consideration to the gameplay. Which is how it should be.
In fact, with the exception of one area, pretty much every part of the game looks and feels the same. The waste treatment plant feels like the military compound. The military compound feels like the office complex. The office feels like the lab. If I had to guess, I'd say they had only a limited number of design molds for levels, maybe three or four, and they applied each of those molds over and over, with fresh coats of paint and a few details tweaked. As a result, much of the game's environment gives you a continuous feeling of deja vu, although the developers went to pains to make these areas unique in other ways.
Again, with the exception of that one area, (the apartments) every "level" you're tasked with exploring is just linear enough to keep the player from getting bored or lost, but there are lots of little nooks and crannies to explore, (most of which you'll soon be real hesitant about doing so, and for good reason) and usually offer at least two different ways to approach any key point, often times more. Much like in Call of Duty 4, this offers a chance to be tactical about how you approach enemies and handle certain encounters, and trust me, tactical is what you'll be all about by the end of the game.
While graphics were kept to a minimum for the most part, F.E.A.R. does feature options intended for high-end systems, like anti-aliasing and soft shadows, and the moments when you enter FMV's or non-interactive cutscenes are highly detailed, as are some of the creepier touches throughout the game. (Blood on the walls, bodies, fire)
The lighting and setting are especially important; in each area they make at least half the game experience, and if you can play with regular shadows turned all the way up, do so. F.E.A.R. is rife with scary, spooky, even terrifying moments, (and there ARE terrifying moments in this game, have no doubt) and all of these are compounded by the atmosphere the game creates with things like shadows and light. Unlike most shooters, F.E.A.R. focuses at least equally on the atmosphere and combat, and there are several non-combat areas of the game where atmosphere and setting are all you have.
Yeah, that... that's a little disturbing.
In spite of its lack of focus on graphics, F.E.A.R. caught a lot of attention when it was released for its unusually high system requirements. Much like Crysis, this game required a player to have HAL 9000 for their personal desktop in order to fully enjoy it, and the developers certainly made the most of what they had. In light of recent games like Crysis and Bioshock though, those requirements are no longer as impressive. Still, for such a graphically minimal game, what is making such demand on those resources? Where's all that power going?
I'm not a software developer so I can't say for certain, but if I had to pick something, it would be the A.I.
In virtually every review of F.E.A.R. you can find, some mention is made of the game's ingenious enemy A.I., and it's reputation is well deserved. Even on the lower difficulties, the A.I. is leaps and bounds beyond every FPS I've played to date. The enemy soldiers in this game never run blindly into a player's fire, never dash stupidly through an open doorway where the player's waiting to ambush them, and never stand around in a single spot so a player can anticipate where to lob grenades and sneak up on them.
Enemies radio for backup, (which WILL come in short order) refuse to fight you in separated, easily isolated pockets, and always operate as a team. Multiple soldiers will keep you suppressed with fire, while others flush you out with grenades, or use cover to advance on your position. Rarely will you encounter just one soldier, and the battles you fight can play out in a hundred different ways, and none of them ever felt like time wasted to me. And if you decide to kick the difficulty into high gear, the A.I. gets really creative. Some of the funnest moments in the game were when soldiers would improvise traps using proximity or remote mines the way a human player would, or lead me into an ambush where they quickly reduced me to kibble.
I laud F.E.A.R. for taking this approach towards A.I. development. They could've taken the easier route of simply increasing the number of enemies you fight, or boosting their ability to soak damage, and turning their accuracy up to the level of "clairvoyant". But no, Monolith has standards. They went the extra mile, and left the enemies just as easy to kill on all four difficulties, but made it harder to put yourself in a position to do so. The difference between these two approaches can't be understated.
Well. Aren't you proper f*****?
The story's decent enough. It's not high quality fiction, but it's enough to keep the player interested without getting silly or hokey at the same time. You're a new recruit in the ultra-elite First Encounter Assault Recon force, who's job it is to investigate and respond to paranormal incidents. When a telepathic commander goes rogue and takes control of an entire battalion of clone soldiers, it's up to your team to stop him. There's more but I don't want to spoil it. The game ends on a cliffhanger, and from what I understand, the rest of the story is told through F.E.A.R.'s expansions, but I haven't played them, and so can't tell you how that turned out. (Besides, with the exception of CoD 4, I have a strict policy
against reviewing anything Yahtzee's done)
So now we come to the end, and with all this information, we return to the question at the beginning: Is F.E.A.R. right for you? Different gamers have different tastes so that question really comes down to individual preference, but here are some things that might help you decide:
From what I understand, F.E.A.R. is primarily a single player experience. The option for online multiplayer exists, but I've never met anyone who's played it. It seems like this is something CoD 4 did a lot better, so most gamers have migrated in that direction.
If you're new to gaming, particularly to FPS gaming, then this is not where I recommend you start. The difficulty curve for F.E.A.R. is a little steeper than most shooters, and can lead to a lot of aggravation if you find yourself getting killed 10 times in every battle.
Definitely don't go with this if you don't like horror games. However, if you DO like the thought and creative problem solving required in tactical shooters, as opposed to the run-and-gun tactics of Halo and Doom then F.E.A.R. has what you need.
Finally, there is absolutely no replay value to this game other than beating it on the higher difficulties. There's only one ending, no extra paths to take or decisions to make, and no easter eggs. The sequences are all scripted, which is nice and makes for some surprising moments, but it also means that what happened during your first play through is gonna be exactly what happens the next time. Even the enemies will be in the same places. This lack of replay is probably it's single most damning aspect.
F.E.A.R. may not be perfect, but its advantages far outweigh its flaws. It remains one of the best shooters I've ever played, and I cut my teeth on the original Quake and Doom, so it's got a lot of competition. If you're a fan of FPS gaming at all, and you get the chance to play F.E.A.R., do so, you won't be disappointed. As far as spending money on it goes though, don't. Borrow it from a friend. Rent it if there's still a place around you ludicrous enough to rent PC games. F.E.A.R.'s a great experience, but it's also a one-time only experience.
(Sorry about hijacking some of the photos. I'd use my own, except I can't find disc 3 to F.E.A.R. so I can install it again.)
