Ghosts Instead of Doves
As if they didn't already make it clear with the name, F.E.A.R. obviously sets out to be a horror game, what with the ghosts, corpses lying around everywhere, and hallways with pools of blood for ceilings. Plus the opening cutscene is a fairly well directed 90 seconds with little girls with no eyes walking thru fire at Dutch angles. It's an early sign that this game might actually be able to pull off horror, even if it's going to be obtuse about it.
EXCEPT this is a game created in the post-Half-Life era. Carefully directed scenes are sacrificed on the altar of immersion; taking first-person control away from the player would be blasphemy (making the moments where they nail your feet the floor to make sure you see the action even more awkward). Subtle scares often wind up happening somewhere other than where you're looking, so you'll find yourself asking, "There must be SOME reason I'm in slow motion with dramatic music all of a sudden, right?" more than once.
When the horror does actually happen on-screen, it's actually pretty effective. It knows to hold off on jump scares, and instead lean on moments where danger is merely flirting with the player. Step off of a ladder and turn to find something right in your face. It doesn't scream, it doesn't move, it doesn't even stick around long enough to tell if was man or beast. It just dissolves back into nothingness with the satisfaction of knowing you were spooked enough to squeeze off a few rounds into empty air. It's got you shooting at ghosts.
In another moment, you watch as heavily armed support troops move in to be your much needed backup. But in the second it takes for you to pass behind a pillar, in place of your backup team there is now only a lake of blood and viscera. It's a striking moment that manages to happen without any fanfare, but still make your blood run cold. It's supposed to be the lead-in to a scenario where you're isolated, under-powered, and up against an army of heavily armed super soldier clones and GHOSTS, but instead it highlights how the game has a major disconnect in tone.
You're a single man all alone against impossible odds. But you're a man who holds two guns at once. You feel like God. A being of power inside a world of chaos. Not to mention the canonical hyper-reflex slo-mo powers, and the over-the-top Liu Kang style flying bicycle kick (which might be the most satisfying melee attack I've ever seen in an FPS). If he weren't a silent protagonist, who knows what other astounding facts we might learn about him. But even as it is, it's hard to feel like you're actually the underdog.
The AI simply just doesn't pose enough of a threat. They may act clever, leaping over railings and knocking down shelves to get a good angle on you, but in most cases you can still just light them up and they go down without a problem. If you're not killing at least one enemy in each encounter with your bare hands, it almost feels like you're being unfair. But even when they do pose a challenge, they're just that - a challenge. It's not the overwhelming, dread-inducing force that the setting would have you believe. It may be a hard fight, but it's not something to fear.
You can have as many ghosts and beasts in your game as you want, but for it to work as horror you have to express it in the mechanics. The classic examples that come to mind are the fights against Nemesis and Pyramid Head. In both, running away is an option, often the better option, and depending on how strong you are at the time, may be the only available option. When you've just gotten a handle on defeating enemies, they show up to make you realize, "Oh, I can't deal with this guy the same way. I don't have ANY way to deal with them. Oh no." You can give the player power, but to keep them afraid they have to be shown that there are still things they are powerless against. But in F.E.A.R. You're always powerful, always taking on new challenges. It's not horror, it's pure action.
That combat that is so thematically out of place for a horror game is actually a fantastic fit for something more akin to a John Woo film. Every bullet fired has a life of it’s own, whether it was a hit or a miss. Blood splatters, sparks fly, chunks of debris fly away as clouds of dust kick up and make it hard to see. Every grenade has a visible shockwave that seems to distort the very fabric of space around it. Even in death there is excitement. Enemies simply dropping to the ground is rare - they let off final shots while succumbing to ragdoll, like a wildly thrashing feral dog unwilling to give up the fight of life. They make every encounter feel so alive and exciting, you can't hold it against the game for clashing with the tone they led you to anticipate.
While F.E.A.R. is made up of two tones that fail to mesh cleanly with each other, the truth is that both are handled with a certain competency. But by nature of the action being what you do and the horror only happening around you, the horror suffers regardless of how well it's handled. The game is fantastic, and I really don't want this to feel like a knock against the game, but it's just not a horror game. I do feel comfortable labeling it as GHOST ACTION however, and in a way that actually sounds more enticing.
