F.e.a.r Gold Review

[Herbert1405241469 0]

I know I'm a little late on this, but I finally got around to buying F.E.A.R. Gold from Best Buy a couple days ago. This one comes packaged with the director's edition and the expansion pack all on one DVD for the price of just the director's edition ($39.99)I figured, for the money, might as well try it.At first, I was disappointed in the fact that my computer seemed to be unable to handle it. I have a 2.4 ghz P4, ATI Radeon x800 pro (256 meg) and a gig of RAM, and the game stuttered like a mofo. I had to go Low on all the Graphics options, and "Medium" for Graphics card options. It gets a decent framerate, but Half Life 2 gets better, though this game has some nifty filters involved...Graphics-wise, it sucks if you don't have a high end rig, because you don't get the cool bullet time effects, and environmental effects are minimal if you put it on low... At Medium, you get some post-filtering and bullet decals. Bullet time, the game's highlight, is cool. It's done much better than the Matrix game (I forget what it's called, but it had Niobe and Ghost, not Neo).... You turn it on with a click, and it regenerates when not in use. In all reality, it almost makes the game too easy at some points.... At the middle difficulty, there are health packs everywhere and I'm always stocked to the max (10). So Dying usually only happens if I try exploring and jump off a building or the bottom of an elevator shaft or something.Gameplay, it's a bit better than Doom III just because it's not pitch black all the time... This is the first game where you're actually discouraged to use your flashlight, because the A.I. can see it. These other games with darkness like Splinter Cell or Condemned: Criminal Origins tick me off, because the developers give you night vision or a flashlight, but when you don't use it, you're totally blind... Which raises the question... WHY IS THE A.I. ABLE TO FUNCTION IN THE ABSOLUTE DARK?? This game, F.E.A.R. has dark areas, but at least you can maneuver without a flashlight in most cases.So far, what I've played, the basic "Plot" is almost the same as Doom III, in that you're just trying to follow some dude the whole time... In the mean time, you listen do phone messages and upload data from laptops (sort of in the spirit of System Shock's emails) to get an idea of the back story.Basically, this commander who has the psychic ability to control thousands of troops with his mind, goes crazy and starts killing people, so you have to kill him to contain the problem... In the opening sequence, the mission controllers are talking like "Oh yeah, just take this one guy down and all the soldiers deactivate and are controlled..." Yeah, right. Like it's ever that freakin easy!At the rate I'm going, I'll have his entire army killed before I can get to the bugger! Sound is top notch. Atmospheric music done very well. The problem really is that I'm not really scared. I'd just played Condemned: Criminal Origins, and that brought about more psychological fear than ....F.E.A.R is so far. There was a sequence where this lil girl keeps popping up and they employ a lot of scary bits, but really, compared to Condemned, it's just not as potent. (I do think Condemned runs on the F.E.A.R. engine, and if not, it's almost alike in execution).You never leave First Person mode, which is good. Keeps you in the mindset of your character (a la Half Life).The levels get to be somewhat repetitive... Right now, I just finished up part of an office building... All I have to say is, damn I hope I never have to work in a building like THAT! Maze-like, it's as though the developers only considered gameplay rather than realism... Real office buildings aren't that confusing. But hey, it's gameplay we're after so whatever. They did the same thing with Condemned. Sometimes it didn't even feel like being in a school when in fact I was... There are a lot of buttons to remember, so take that into consideration when remapping the buttons. Flashlight, grenades, aim/zoom, shoot, melee, slow-mo, jump, crouch, walk/run, Use...... etc. It can be quite a lot at first, even for a seasoned FPS gamer.Another cool feature is the kicks combos... If you use the Melee key when jumping a certain way, you can do kick combos... Problem with this is you hardly ever get close enough to use them. When you do, though, it usually takes out a baddie in 1 hit.That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, really... They can take half a dozen shots to the chest with armor (and maybe 2-3 in the head before they go down) but you can kick them and they die. Go figure.Dual handguns are nice. Done very well. I liked that...Weapons in general are pretty cool. Some are better than others, but you're never lacking in weaponry... That's sort of why I'm not so scared in it, I think... because I've always got a kickass gun, whereas in Condemned, all you had was a board or whatever you could grab, and a gun once in awhile if you were lucky. and even then you had to conserve ammo because you only would get 3-6 shots. Makes for a lot of head shots That's all I can think of so far... I'll review it more once I beat it.... That's one thing I hate, having a game be decent but screwing up the ending... Well, at least knowing there's an expansion that continues the story is some consolation at least!

[Herbert1405241469 0]

Well, I just beat it. The ending got a little more intense, but still not as scary as some games I've played (Thief III's "Cradle", Half Life 2's "Ravenholm", and Condemned: Criminal Origins top it in both psychological and "jump out at you" scary fun)... But it does improve in the final levels of the game.The plot is a little confusing in delivery up until the final levels where you have a couple of people throw in an explanation... Any type of "plot twist" is rather lost by confusion. The final sequence was done well, and there is a bit o' dialog after the credits, so stay tuned once you beat it... just so you know.Overall, it was a pretty standard FPS, though its highlights included the cool slow-mo effects, and the realistic physics. You shoot a guy in the head, his head springs back realistically. You shoot his leg, he'll hobble and won't be able to walk on it. The AI was decent, though I didn't have the effects turned all the way up, so I might have lost some. Seemed pretty standard, they didn't rush into situations where I could pop them off one by one. They took cover and threw grenades. I do wish it would have had more stealth, though. There are some decent Melee moves, but you hardly get to use em. Dual pistols was my favorite, though most people prefer the shotgun.With the Gold edition, I also got the Expansion, which I heard only takes about 5 hours to beat, so that's definitely not cool, considering I saw that it cost just as much as the director's edition at Best Buy...Some minor things:Looking for health and reflex boosts took away from the game... It made me run around the level like a nut trying to find them, instead of truly immersing myself in the atmosphere of the game. They should have done it somewhat differently, like automatically upgrading you every level or so, because looking for the boosts encouraged exploration, but it also made for a lot of wasted time and boredom running around the level after killing everyone.Alma is really quite a memorable female game "villain." I'd say she's right up there with SHODAN from the System Shock series.Overall a good game, though it could have been better. I'm going to start the expansion "Extraction Point" which includes new weapons and baddies, and I'll fill you in once I get it done.

[Herbert1405241469 0]

Well I just finished the expansion... Overall, I'm not entirely satisfied with the F.E.A.R. experience. I find that the Half Life 2 story line is much richer, and is preferable, though F.E.A.R. is good for those action buffs who like Counter Strike and non-stop action...

 

I like Half Life 2's approach... They give the player an intense scene... like action, or horror ("We don't go to Ravenholm")... then once the player gets through that, they give the player some dialog with some characters (character development and whatnot) and then move the player along... F.E.A.R. IS PURE ACTION. The moments you do have some quiet, they switch gears to being creepy, making you look around, so you never really get a break at all...

 

The game pushes you around to try to scare you. I do admit, there were some scenes where the level would sort of fall apart like it was being taken down on the set of a theater and you wouldn't know what the heck is going on, but the rest of the time, they throw you in a black void with fire and have these weird poltergeist creatures attack you at all angles, which is more annoying than anything...

 

There were only 2 real moments that were semi-scary, and the rest really didn't have that much of an effect of me, because it was over the top... There were two instances in F.E.A.R and Extraction Point where Alma jumped out at me that was really effective... But, the whole time I'm playing this, I'm wondering why she's even playing with me... I mean, I see videos on screen of her walking up to a baddie and ripping his flesh to bits, leaving nothing but a skeleton without even touching the guy... yet she jumps out and tries reaching for me while I'm climbing a ladder, and fails to destroy me...

 

Levels are a bit more varied, which is good. The car parking lot is cool, because the pillars can break apart, and the last level with the hospital is pretty creepy, though overall, not as creepy as some game hospitals I've had to navigate through (Silent Hill 2 I believe.)

 

They overdid the blood on the walls, and all over the place. At some points, you can hear your character walking in puddles of blood as though you were walking in puddles of water after a rain storm. There's so much blood, you wonder how many bodies it took to create it all. Rather than making it creepy, I became immune to the sight of it... Disaffected, rather.

 

Massive Spoilers and Rants:

I find out later in the first game that the main character, that you play as, is in fact Alma's son. Yes, Alma is your mother, yet she's sending waves of ghouls after you to kill you... Yet, these same ghouls will attack your enemies and a voice comes up "You're safe now..." and about 10 seconds later, another squad of bad guys comes out to kill you. If Alma is really trying to help me, why isn't she killing everyone for me, and if she's trying to kill me, why are there times she appears to be helping me? To top it all off, the guy in charge of the soldiers trying to kill me is the main character's brother... yes, Alma had 2 kids. He's trying to kill me, Alma's trying to kill me.... Why can't they just let me in on their plan for revenge and it'll save me the trouble of killing all his soldiers! By the end of Extraction Point, his soldiers are pretty much controlling the empty shell of the city. I want to be on the Winning Side!! Alma! Why hast thou forsaken your son!!! Doing some reading on FAQs sites, there are 2 Alma's... One's the young girl, and the other is a naked teen-aged girl. One is out to kill you, and the other is like the mother figure... Don't know anything about that, but it is irking me.

 

Another thing that ticks me off about this game is that they kill off all the characters you have sympathy for. One guy that fights along side you for awhile gets flung around by some invisible force and you get to watch him squeal in pain as he gets flung into walls... Which was in fact a decent memorable moment in the game... and They kill off the only female NPC you have sympathy for, and there's nothing you can do about it. I actually jumped off a game building when I had the chance, at one point, because the situation made me feel so hopeless. At least if the developers of Half Life 2 decide to kill Alyx, the female heroine, I'll feel remorse. There's nothing to be felt when the female in F.E.A.R. dies... I was sort of pissed off, but really, there's no emotions to be felt other than "Oh damn, those bastards killed another one of my teammates! That sucks."

 

One thing I hate about FPS games, is the whole "Run here, pull a lever, unlock the door, repeat..." It's those moments, where I can SEE where I NEED to go, but can't until I run for 5 minutes in the opposite direction, killing 50 baddies just to flip a switch to open the door to where I needed to go.... Ugh. Why do they do that other than to make the game take longer to beat? I have a rocket launcher, why can't I just blow a freakin hole in the wall and go that way?? There's just not much accomplishment feeling involved in killing guys to unlock a door.

 

Anyway, overall F.E.A.R. is a good action game with a nice Creepiness factor, and is worth a look if you have a high end system, but in my own personal opinion, I prefer the story plot of Half-Life over what they've developed so far with F.E.A.R.