FEAR 2 - THE SINGLE PLAYER SANDWHICH REVIEW-
Latest edition in developer Monolith production’s Horror/action series FEAR.
THE BREAD
Those who have played the original FEAR are aware of the how well the story created a creepy atmosphere. FEAR 2: Project Origin continues this tradition but takes some cinematic queues from the Condemned series. Beginning just before the end of the original game Project Origin takes place with a new military outfit accommodating those new to the series. However, like the original, the story still remains to be a pretty convoluted and “Akira-inspired” mess.
The voice actors do a pretty entertaining job with the dialogue that often strays into the various clichés of action and horror genre. While it doesn’t take itself too seriously at times (Snake fist??), there points where we at least see reactions of the supporting characters to the crazy insanity erupting around them making it somewhat believable. The player, however, falls into the faceless and voiceless Beckett character, which in the vein of half-life is an attempt to make his reactions yours. A design choice proven to work well in the past and it does so here.
This developer has done interesting things with the first person view to mess player and create engaging and atmospheric games. Which is a shame because for some reason, whether it’s the expectations developed from playing the original or the somewhat mismatching of horror and action, most of the scares tend to be on the mild side of frighting.
THE MEAT
The combat in this game is what really drove me back to it each night. The smooth floaty movement of the first game has been replaced by a steady trudging which leads to a slower advancement from one battle to another. It helped, not just to concentrate on what was happening in the highly detailed levels, but also to avoid running into an enemy squad. This latter part is more important a harder difficult. The A.I. enemies move through the environment in a relatively intelligent but unpredictable manner. This makes each fight exciting and seemingly fresh in a similar way to the character action game Ninja Gaiden. However, you really only fight one enemy type at a time and I felt that most battles require only the basic strategies to over come.
The hit detection does a great job a giving you a some what blood thirty satisfaction from unloading a clip into enemy turning him in to bloody mess. The game is gruesome and overtly so, an enemy soldier will often seeming spontaneously explode from a shotgun blast or lose various limbs from gunfire or grenade explosion.
However, overall effectiveness and abundance of the ballistic weapons, grenades and ammo made the power weapons a little redundant. They were really only useful in specific set ups (i.e. snipers against snipers, or the bazooka for a Mech) or used to instant win a battle. The power weapons are fun but honestly it’s pretty much a throw back to earlier shooters, a sort of FPS fan service. Besides the slow-time ability (carried over from the original FEAR) is your life-line savior that these power weapons used to be in older FPS. It would have been great if you needed to apply a bit more tactics to the weapon load out.
THE EMPTY PLATE
I was happy enough with the single player taking about 8 to 10 hours to complete. Containing various pretty environments, mech suit battles and the odd turret shooting gallery to mix up the main small-scale combat. Overall FEAR 2 improves and refines what FEAR had established, while adding a few new ideas for good measure. If anything FEAR 2 should be admired for being another successful foray into the cinematic FPS genre.
