Stay in touch with your inner ghost-child
I've recently received the FEAR complete pack as a Christmas gift and have a completed a marathon of FEAR, its expansion packs, and its sequel. While it would not be entirely fair to review the older games at this time, I am ready to provide my thoughts on FEAR 2.
From the opening moments, it is clear that the story-telling of FEAR 2 is vastly improved over its predecessors and on par with modern first person shooters. The "Dear Diary" technique of collectible intelligence items fleshes out the back story, and like all games that use this technique, it is a disconnect from the play experience. Voice overs, cut-scenes, and non-player characters are handled well by virtue of the fact that you will never see a death screen based on the stupidity of AI or miss objectives and story content due to poorly placed dialog.
The graphics of FEAR 2 were somewhat of a revelation to me. It may be because I play many action games on the consoles these days, but all of the environments were stunningly detailed and illuminated by eye-catching environmental and weapon effects. The ability of FEAR 2 to organically litter its world with objects is up there with the best and in sharp contrast with the sterile office corridors of its predecessor.
The game-play of FEAR 2 keeps some ties to the tactical shooting of the series' origin (sorry), it is however not without the quirks of a console and Call of Duty dominated world. I will discuss these in order of increasing annoyance.
If an enemy is hit, the characteristic Call of Duty cursor pop occurs, which is needless in a game where said hit is accompanied by a spray of blood.
The ability to lean around corners has been removed, diluting the tactical element of the gun play in favour of a guns blazing approach using the still present bullet-time system. The ability to create cover by flipping tables and shifting objects has been added, but the tactical advantages are limited to specific situations at the discretion of the level designer. Luckily health management has not gone fully regenerative, and I experienced a few Die Hard movements where I was scrounging for health pickups amid suppressing fire.
The self-induced shortcoming that rules them all however, is the ridiculous decision to make the save system checkpoint based. Checkpoint saves are a hold-over from the memory unit days of consoles. It has no place in a PC game where players have for decades been able to manually save when and wherever they want. Playing on the hardest difficulty, I had to hear the same dialogue countless times as I waded through entire squads only to be picked off by a straggler at the end of the next hall, and was sent back to try it all again.
I cannot conclude my thoughts on FEAR 2 without stipulating my awe at the game's Mech piloting sequences. They are reason enough to play FEAR 2, and leave me wanting more "AAA", mech-based experiences. I must also point out that the frequency of scares and the horror aspects have been toned down (to the relief of some). The sequences that are present are inventive and well presented and go beyond the repetitive jump scares that plagued the earlier games.
FEAR 3 is looming on the horizon and I'm eager to see if its developers will perfect the horror-FPS cocktail of this series. Hint: add two dashes of Half Life. Although I did not try the multi-player in FEAR 2, the campaign is of a high quality and its length a good value on a higher difficulty level. Despite some annoyances, I fully recommend FEAR 2 to anyone trying to escape the multi-player machinations of the modern shooter crowd.
