F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

i had no expactations for F.E.A.R 2, i never played the first one, but i read up on it so i know what was going on...this game takes place, maybe thirty mins before the first ended..you play as Michael Becket and you and your squad are trying to stop Genevieve Aristide and Colonel Vanek which are attacking the city..

the game starts out with you having a hallucination of a destroyed city (major foreshadowing), and you see Alma (the supernatural girl from the first, she continues to make things go nuts in this game as well), you follow her, and by the end of that you are sitting with your squad...now that happens a number of times, youll be with Stokes (a girl in your squad), and the next youll have a hallucination and when you snap out of that, she will be long gone...because of this, you spend most of the game alone, and when you do play with others, it isnt for long. When you do start fighting you first go to a pretty fancy hotel, and that is where you really start to see what is happening, you work your way up to the top of the hotel, and then thats when you see the explotion that ended the first game, and this scene is very cool...but after that, thats when this game gets messed up and very good.

in the first you get the ability to slow time, you dont start out with this ability, but you gain it through a very extreme surgrey that happens after the blast you see at the hotel..and you awake at a hospital, i felt that the hospital, well most of it, was a tutorial for the slow-mo..they just sent wave after wave of soldiers at you, and they went down fast, but it did feel as if they just did this so you can get the hang of the slow-mo...and the slow-mo really helps to move the game along, also with its great shooting, that really pushes the game along, with the story being a tad unmotivated, it saves the game from being average.

now the story is weak like i said, it starts off great, you get into it, but it goes off track so much..it reminds me of Dead Space, well most of this game remindes me of Dead Space..they both had great storys as a whole, but they both for some reason do really stupid things that really slow down the pace of their stories as well as gameplay, in Dead Space it was the stupid missions, and in F.E.A.R 2 it is the, what i thought, terrible direction, for some reason you are always going the long way, and this never pushes the story along, and really hurts it, cause by the time your doing all this pointless going through tunnels and streets, i forgot how good the story was...and there is a scene in a school (scarest part of the game by far), when you fight ghost, and when you are doing this, the lights are flashing, you cant see a thing..and boy is that unnerving, then they try to do it again while you are in a basement, and that is not scary, and its not unnerving, it is annoying, and it seemed pointless...

now that the complants are done, lets get to the stuff that really pulls the game along, first off the shooting is top notch, the aiming is great, it felt so comfortable, and if you add the slow-mo to that, you have easily the best shooter of the year, yeah thats right Killzone 2, eat your heart out...and the atmosphere is stunning, you never know if Alma is around the corner, or a group of soldiers, and when Alma does show up, its just done so well, the game overall isnt scary, but some of the Alma stuff is...theres one where she throughs you up against the wall and just stares at you, it was pretty creepy..the ending will be iffy for most people, but i liked it, it really, in a strange way, shows why Alma never killed you when she could have so easily, i what i think opens the door for a sequel.

this game is stunning, even with its annoyances its a great game, a great shooter, and has a great story is not realized because they dont do as much with the story as what they could have..overall, i feel that it will be on some "game of the year" list, it will be on mine, go get it