F.E.A.R. 3

F.E.A.R. 3 (I refuse to ever call it F.3.A.R. unironically) is the latest in the first-person shooter/horror game series.  As a followup to F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin there are a lot of changes to the gameplay.  And this isn't necessarily a bad thing; F.E.A.R. 3 is a lot of fun to play.  Unfortunately, the story seems to take a hard back seat to the gameplay.

To reiterate, the game is a lot of fun to play, even if a lot of its changes are aped from other shooters.  The guns are still responsive and satisfying, albeit with the standard assortment plus a laser, and the aiming is tight.  The cover mechanic is simple, functional, and adds an additional tactical layer.  All other standard F.E.A.R. fare is present: flashlight for the dark areas that will give away your position, Slow Mo for lining up perfect headshots, and stupid melee attacks that are nevertheless entertaining in their concept and execution.  Plus, one of my favorite parts of the franchise is in full effect: the enemies are still as vulgar and vocal as ever and absolutely hilarious when screaming while Slow Mo is activated.

In addition, an interesting new wrinkle in the canvas is the level system.  Instead of finding Boosters hidden throughout the game, completing challenges, such as 25 SMG kills or three headshots in one use of Slow Mo, and completing Intervals nets you experience points.  Once you've accrued enough you level up and earn rewards such as faster health recovery, the ability to hold more ammo, and a larger Slow Mo gauge.  Nothing new to video games, but I was still pleased every time the game slowed and announced I had reached the next level.

The real selling point is the "divergent co-op" with the brothers.  Being the spirit of a dead psychic, Fettel can create psychic blasts, levitate enemies and exploding barrels, or possess an enemy soldier.  Whereas the battle-hardened Point Man has more knowledge of weapons and melee combat plus his enhanced reflexes, allowing him to enter a state dubbed SloMo.  Whether you're incapacitating foes with your specific power while your partner fills them full of holes or double-teaming some Armacham schlub with guns alone, ripping through soldiers and demons with a friend is way too entertaining and far less tense and terrifying.

"Wait," I can hear some of you interrupting, "why would you want to make F.E.A.R. less terrifying?"  Well, the lessened sense of terror isn't really a big deal because there isn't a whole lot of it to begin with; there seems to be more of a focus on action set pieces.  There are some scares, though, but it seems far easier to miss them in F.E.A.R. 3 than in the previous games.  You'll hear the music spike and let you know that you should totally be scared and turn to look for it only to see the last few bits of ashes fading away.  And there are some legitimately scary locations, such as the burned out, psychotic filled suburbs, but they're few and far between.  The tensity is mostly gone.

It's also worth noting that the co-op is optional, of course.  You can just go it alone to keep what scares are there scary.  But the game is built to be played cooperatively.  At the end of each interval there is a breakdown of score between the players, but if you're playing alone, this only takes up half of the screen, the other side being conspicuously empty.  The ending is also different based on who the Favorite Son is and runs through a small section detailing which player was best at each type of challenges before deciding a winner.  But it doesn't skip past these things if you're playing alone.  It just rings up that you won every section and culminates in saying "GAMERTAG is the Favorite Son" before playing one of two endings.  Not a huge deal, but it definitely gave me the feeling that I was playing the game wrong by playing it alone.

That's okay, though, because I really was playing it wrong.  Even in the multiplayer arena the game is built almost entirely to play cooperatively.  There are four modes, aside from the campaign co-op, and three of those are focused on working with a team of four to accomplish a goal.  The closest thing it has to a deathmatch game type is Soul King, which involves possessing AI soldiers and killing enemies to collect their souls. The best is F**king Run, wherein you race ahead of a wall of death with 2-4 players while defending yourself against enemy AI.  If one player dies it's game over, which forces you to work with your teammates and keep them alive.

But as fun as the game is to play, its biggest fault is the narrative, or lack thereof.  It seems to wholesale ignore certain major players from the first two games, such as Genevieve Aristide, and never addresses where they may have gone.  And what they have brought forward hasn't come very far.  By the end of the game there's only a sentence to connect one location to the next and not enough justification or reason given for going to one place or another.  Made worse by the short campaign, coming out at about six hours, maybe seven if you're exploring everything.  The videos in between intervals, though, of the Point Man and Fettel as children are well done and an excellent way to cover load times and flesh out their history.  And the concept of Alma being terrified of something or someone is scary as hell all by itself.  There are definitely some excellent aspects of the narrative, but not enough.

In the end, I still enjoy playing the game with my friends.  I definitely feel cheated out of a legitimate third F.E.A.R. as far as the story is concerned, but at the end of the day a game is a game and this is an entertaining one.  I just kind o' wish it wasn't supposed to be the continuation of the story from F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin.