A "must play." 5 out of 5.
This game is awsome. People tend to give reviews according to a trend by company critics, but seriously, if the review was based objective standards as much as possible, this game clearly is a very good shooter/survival/horror hybrid. As any good creepy/scary game, I'm always impressed when in certain moments of the game, I really don't want to progress further, or explore every area, because I'm too creeped out to go on from the atmosphere the game has built up. The original FEAR, Dead Space, and Bioshock are good examples of this. And yet, it's not from frustration of controls or the game system, such as Silent Hill series or the Resident Evil series, where often, i don't want to progress further because the game mechanics interfere with playing the game.
Good sounds and music. They support the visual atmosphere very well. Whether the action music for a situation(such as the man vs mech fight) or the background sound of running generators, they work well. The guns sound powerful(like the shotgun) and the talking replicas/soldiers, whether they notice the flashlight or shout in their death, add to the action(as opposed to when all you hear is gunfire).
Good graphics. Especially with the whole blood splattering on the visor and everything. Plus, with the reflex meter now moved up to the center, it's easier to see and to ration the slowmo in the heat of the battle.
Good gameplay. Even on hard difficulty, the game starts of easy, then begins to pick up momentum in terms of difficulty. The slowmo effect is improved from the first FEAR, in that the enemies are now highlighted, and so if you try to do what I did and kill all the enemies on screen before the slowmo runs out, its easier to spot them. It feels good when you kill 5 to 7 enemies in one slowmo moment.
I only have one complant about this game, that I wish the ammo and health were also moved to the center too, perhaps to make a complete circle or something. I would die sometimes because I wasn't watching my health meter at the bottom or would run out of ammo for the auto-shotgun since I was so focused on the cross hair.
5/5
