Hobbit
Senior Member
Wow, just wow. I just got through playing the 15-30 minute demo of this game and it's SWEET. It's the new Half-Life, and it's scarier than HL2. First off, the effects of combat show full force. The intense physics engine produces more of a "ragdoll" environment than simply ragdoll people. Stuff gets knocked around and rolls on the ground the way it would in real life. You'll also see chips knocked out of walls, holes put through stuff, and, in general, things get TRASHED during gunfights. It really adds to the immersion, as in traditional shooters, gunfights leave small, 2D bullethole textures on the object, while this one actually shows the destruction you might expect after a gunfight. The guns are also sufficiently loud and battles sufficiently chaotic to get these virtual shootouts closer to the loud, violent, lightning-fast shootouts of the real world. Now, it's hard to survive such shootouts, which is why you're a supersoldier engineered with fast reflexes in the form of Matrix style "bullet time."
Now, with all the stuff I've listed, I haven't gotten to the best part. Well, the game's name is F.E.A.R., and for good reason. Officially, it stands for First Encounter Action Recon and is a government unit created in 2002 to respond to supernatural events. In this case, an army of cloned soldiers has been taken over by some nutcase who has a mean cannibalistic streak. He doesn't even bother to kill the victims first. All the while, the chick from "The Ring" keeps showing up and giggling. This is the demo, mind you, and I found myself genuinely terrified of this girl, as at random times, she would giggle, then run across my path, only the dissappear or fade into a noxious looking cloud. She's also the main feature in one (of several, I'm sure) hallucinogenic scene that involves scaring the living sh*t out of you, then droping you back into the real world in time to see something equally disturbing. Many times, you'll be in an already tense situation only to have a hallucination pop up at you and say something cryptic along with one of those sound effects they play in a Japanese horror movie when something jumps out at you. The game draws heavily (perhaps too heavily) from this movie genre and from the genre defining "Half-Life." If you like these two things, go buy this game as soon as it hits shelves, like I probably will. If you like one of them, you should get this game. If you like neither, you may like this game, anyway.
On first assessment, I must agree with the 92% rating given to this game by PCGamer. According to their article, the multiplayer also has its ups, as in one multiplayer mode, one person controls the slo-mo thing and must be killed for it to change hands, which sounds cool. As soon as I finish the game, I'll post an update.
Now, with all the stuff I've listed, I haven't gotten to the best part. Well, the game's name is F.E.A.R., and for good reason. Officially, it stands for First Encounter Action Recon and is a government unit created in 2002 to respond to supernatural events. In this case, an army of cloned soldiers has been taken over by some nutcase who has a mean cannibalistic streak. He doesn't even bother to kill the victims first. All the while, the chick from "The Ring" keeps showing up and giggling. This is the demo, mind you, and I found myself genuinely terrified of this girl, as at random times, she would giggle, then run across my path, only the dissappear or fade into a noxious looking cloud. She's also the main feature in one (of several, I'm sure) hallucinogenic scene that involves scaring the living sh*t out of you, then droping you back into the real world in time to see something equally disturbing. Many times, you'll be in an already tense situation only to have a hallucination pop up at you and say something cryptic along with one of those sound effects they play in a Japanese horror movie when something jumps out at you. The game draws heavily (perhaps too heavily) from this movie genre and from the genre defining "Half-Life." If you like these two things, go buy this game as soon as it hits shelves, like I probably will. If you like one of them, you should get this game. If you like neither, you may like this game, anyway.
On first assessment, I must agree with the 92% rating given to this game by PCGamer. According to their article, the multiplayer also has its ups, as in one multiplayer mode, one person controls the slo-mo thing and must be killed for it to change hands, which sounds cool. As soon as I finish the game, I'll post an update.
