More thoughts
But F.E.A.R. has more up it’s sleeve than just these almost balletic, bullet ridden scenes with the unfolding story gradually revealing more of your past and more of what’s going on now. I’ve only scratched the surface so I don’t have much of an idea yet, but it’s definitely a reason to keep playing. Another compelling reason to play is the shock factor that F.E.A.R. throws in every now and then, just when you least expect it. Like the excellent original Japanese version of The Ring, F.E.A.R. does it’s damndest to scare the pants off you just when you don’t think anything is going to happen. I thoroughly recommend playing this with the lights off and the surround sound on… and if this game doesn’t give you some genuinely scary moments you must be dead from the neck up… I think we might have a classic gaming moment in the making with the ladder in the Bad Water section… and those that have played it will know what I mean.
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Click for larger imageThe AI appear to be a major step forward too, and though it’s early days, I’d say they beat Half Life 2’s AI quite easily which, if I’m honest, weren’t that much of a step up from Half Life anyway. These guys communicate with each other and will try and out flank you if they can, even opening up doors and taking the back route around to get behind you to give you the good news. If they’re wounded they’ll stay in cover until you flush them out and even lay down huge amounts of suppressing fire to allow others to get in position. I’ve seen these guy blind fire around corners, lean out from behind walls and take cover to reload… and they don’t have computer controlled super vision either, if you create huge dust clouds they might perhaps fire blindly into it but it’s more likely they’ll stop and reinforce their positions… I have actually managed to sneak all the way around them and creep up behind a squad… only to get drilled by the squad they called for reinforcement when we first had a contact.
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Click for larger imageSo that’s my first impressions of F.E.A.R., spooky, scary, creepy, well told and brilliantly executed. It’s a real system hog if you want to run it with all the details and options on max at high resolution, but after all, that’s why you forked out £400 for a graphics card anyway, isn’t it?
