F.E.A.R. 3

I am a big fan of the F.E.A.R franchise. The first game was a really good Japanese Horror film turned FPS and was splendid. The second dropped the "japanese" flair but managed to be a good product as well. The third installment had a lot to live up to and switching over to a new and relatively inexperienced developer had me worried for awhile.

Let the record show that this game was undoubtedly made with a co-op focus, so I took the liberty of playing through it three times for this review. Once in Co-op, and the other two times I went through the game alone as both Point Man and Paxton Fettel.

Point Man, returning to the series after being absent from F.E.A.R 2 has been captured by Armacham and is being held in a prison facility somewhere in rural Mexico (I know this because it's implied to be "South" of Fairport and all the civilians are speaking Spanish). He is rescued by his dead brother, Paxton Fettel, whom he killed in the first game and two start their journey back to Fairport to make it in time for the birth of their new sibling.

How exactly Fettel returns is a bit lost on this game. In the F.E.A.R 2 DLC campaign, "Reborn" he is resurrected through the body of his clone, Foxtrot 813. Yet in F.3.A.R, he seems to be a psychic ghost of some sort, much like Alma. Who the fuck knows which is canon at this point? Whatever the point is, he and his sexy evil voice are back.

There have been several gameplay changes since the previous installment. Remembering the health bar? Gone. Fully Regenerative Health. This is somewhat balanced by the lack of Armor this time around, however. Also, after having a 3-weapon limit in the original, and a 4-weapon limit in F.E.A.R 2, this game has settled on a 2-weapon limit. Well, I'm glad we've at least finally made up our minds, anyway.

The cover system has also been revamped, instead of awkwardly holding down Square in the middle of a firefight to flip a desk over like you did in the second game, this game uses the same press R3 to lock onto cover system that I haven't seen since Killzone 3. Once behind cover, you can do the pop-out and shoot thing.

This game plays very well, all the controls are responsive and seem to have the perfect level of sensitivity. This may seem like a given, but it deserves praise because to this very day there are alot of shooters that don't control very well. The previous game's controls always felt a tad-bit rigid to me, and too slow for the fast-paced gunplay. F.3.A.R fixes this completely and the combat is silky smooth.

Point Man still has his trademark "Slo-Mo" ability, allowing him to enter bullet-time. It's just as satisfying as ever, and earning more points through either single-player or multiplayer allows you to enter Slo-Mo for longer amounts of time. He also has a new sliding kick, which is incredibly badass. In fact, the sliding kick seems to take out most unarmored enemies in one shot.

Paxton Fettel is also a playable character this time around. He has his default Psychic Blast and Shockwave moves, but can also suspend enemies in midair or throw exploding barrels around. In addition, he can possess enemy soldiers as well. When possessing a soldier, he controls just like Pointman, minus the slo-mo power. It should be noted that when Point Man activates Slo-Mo, it also slows down time for Fettel as well.

F.3.A.R is a surprisingly solid Co-op title. Working together, while also competing against one another is great fun. It also adds a lot more replayability as well. It's actually the best thing about the game and despite having beaten it thrice already, I wouldn't hesitate to run through it again with a buddy.

Let's talk about this whole "Point System" they've incorporated here. You get scored for everything in this game. For completing challenges like getting 50 slo-mo kills, or taking out 5 guys with one grenade, or getting 5 kills with each weapon on the same level, etc.

There are four categories of Points you can earn, and they are as follows:

Aggression- Basically how efficiently you charge into battle, how fast you kill enemies and such.

Tactics- What weapons you use against certain enemies, grenade usage, etc.

Aptitude- How you strategically take cover, possess enemies, maneuver around the battlefield, etc.

Psychic- Mainly how many collectibles you find.

They all have certain challenges associated with them and whatnot, and sometimes you can make the choice to share points with your co-op partner or steal them for yourself. These points can be accumulated in both Single-Player and Multi-Player. It's little more than a scorecard but it's a fun addition.

Speaking of Multi-Player, F.3.A.R has put alot of thought into their offerings. There are four modes, but not your typical Team Deathmatch affair. No, in fact all these modes do not have more than 4 players in them and are all creative takes on some lesser-known modes of other games.

Contractions is essentially F.3.A.R's answer of CoD's zombie mode. Players work together building barricades and stockpiling supplies to take out increasing hordes of enemies. Soul Survivor is... weird. The closest comparison I can make is to the "Prime Hunter" mode on Metroid: Prime Hunters. One player is selected at random to try and kill off the other three, but nobody knows except the person who is corrupted and the last one standing is the winner... yeah I don't get it either.

Soul King is my favorite mode, it's a lot like the old Greed Matches in Unreal Tournament. Kill AI soldiers, take their souls, avoid other players or kill them for their souls and whoever has the most souls at the end wins. It's frantic, insane and fun as hell.

The last mode is appropriately titled, "Fucking Run". It's basically Horde Mode, but with the twist that you have to keep moving in order to avoid the fog of death that keeps chasing you. You need to help eachother because if one teammate dies than the game is over. This is probably the most original and fun multiplayer mode I've seen in a long time.

With all that out of the way, what did I think of the Single-Player campaign? Well it seems not much effort was put into making it scary this time around. Except maybe Interval 3, the first half of Interval 4 and perhaps Interval 8, no part of the game was truly scary. Unsettling, maybe but not outright scary. It's much more action-oriented than previous entries and while that's fun and all, I would've liked to see more effort go into the scares.

John Carpenter's involvement stretched only as far as the cutscenes, which to his credit, the cutscenes are very atmospheric, well directed and paced accordingly. I also like how the camera is always either from either the perspective of Point Man or Fettel. But I wish he might've been allowed to help more in the game itself.

You might be thinking that because of the regenerating health that this would be much easier than previous F.E.A.R games, right? You'd be wrong. After dumbing down the enemy AI in the second game, the intelligence is bumped right back up in F.3.A.R. Enemies are ridiculous smart and will constantly make you feel like an idiot, especially on higher difficulties.

There's one particular section in Interval 5 with a robot that is frustrating as all hell. I swear it has more fucking health than all the other enemies in the game combined and fires missiles at the same pace a sprinkler shoots water. To beat it you basically have to keep sprinting around it in a circle for 20 minutes using slo-mo whenever possible to sneak in some damage. It's annoying, even in co-op.

Perhaps this high difficulty is to disguise the game's biggest flaw. It's really short. It took me just over 6 hours to beat it by myself and despite the replayability, there's no excuse for this. Don't get me wrong, it's a damn awesome 6 hours but I expect more for my money.

The ending (both of them, depending on which brother got the most points) is actually fine. It's a nice conclusion to the series, if not for some unanswered questions and a lack of build-up. The game has a solid beginning, middle and end but seemingly jumps from middle to end without much of any build-up. In fact, I think this game was planned to be more 3 or 4 Intervals longer but was cut to save time and money.

No really, I think after Interval 7 there were maybe 3 or 4 planned Intervals in which you would deal with loose plot threads like Genovive Aristide. But no, you are thrown into the finale headlong. The ending boss battle against the Creep is epic but surprisingly anti-climactic due to... you guessed it, lack of build-up.

The ending of this game is supposed to wrap up the entire series but it leaves several important plot-threads hanging. And I don't know if they can squeeze another game out of what's left.

Still, I had fun with F.3.A.R. It's a great co-op game, has fun multiplayer modes and while short, what is here is very well designed. It's a good game, but just not a great conclusion to this franchise. Worth picking it up if your a fan of the franchise at a discounted price.

6/10. Above Average.