F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon

F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon—which is one of the worst meanings Monolith could've come up with for that acronym—is a shooter that, inspired by Japanese movies like The Ring, incorporates horror elements into its gameplay.

F.E.A.R. boasts quite an intriguing storyline, involving a ruthless man called Paxton Fettel and a mysterious girl with the same greasy hair as the one we saw in The Ring movies. You take on the role of a nameless protagonist that gets transferred to the F.E.A.R. squad as “point man”, and that's the way he's designated throughout the game as well. The story takes some unexpected and interesting turns, but I only truly understood what had happened in the game after I had read a plot synopsis. That's not because I'm stupid, but because most of the story is, unfortunately, unraveled and explained through a comlink in your ear, as well as messages left behind on answering machines in the various offices you traverse. That wouldn't be a problem, if only hearing what people are saying wasn't so damn hard. There's a lot of ambient sound going on, and the voices of the characters are simply lost in the mix. I'm sure that my operator had a lot of interesting stuff to say about the contents of this laptop's hard drive, but I for the life of me could not understand what he was saying. In most games, any such problems are fixed by enabling subtitles, but F.E.A.R. doesn't have any. It's a shame really, because the plot synopsis I read revealed a tale I'd really like to learn more about, because it has some really great twists, but the sound issues made it impossible for me to enjoy it while playing the game.

The shooting on the other hand, is pretty much perfect. The game doesn't have a huge variety of weapons, but all the basics are there. You have access to some assault rifles, pistols, an awesome shotgun and a pseudo-sniper rifle that's oddly reminiscent of Halo's Battle Rifle. There are some other toys as well, like a badass Particle Weapon Type 7, which turns your enemies into smoking skeletons with a single shot. Other than a good trigger finger, you also have the ability to momentarily enter bullet time, which is extremely handy. The skill does not get attributed to something supernatural though, but is simply a manifestation of Point Man's extremely quick reflexes.

Both of those things come together in an exceptional way, which results in some very good and clean-feeling shooting action. It feels very classic, and somewhat reminded me of Half-Life. Just like in that game, the enemy A.I. here is pretty amazing. Their wit is hardly noticeable on easy, which is why I don't recommend you to play on that difficulty. It turns F.E.A.R. into an average run-'n-gun shooter. On Normal and higher however, F.E.A.R.'s action is pretty tactical. That's because enemies always outnumber you, and are quite proficient in squad tactics. One enemy might suppress you while the other will flank you. Or if you're hiding out in a small room, picking them off, a barrage of grenades will probably flush you out real soon. When they're in the open, they may actually flip over a table or something similar and take cover behind it. For a game that came out back in 2005, that sort of intelligent behavior is ridiculous, and even today, there are few games with such deadly enemies as the ones found here. And much like the sober roster of weapons, the game is also very low on enemy types. You have your basic soldier, and you basically fight squads of that dude for the entire game. There are also two types of mechs, and one awesome enemy that you only see very sparsely. I won't spoil who or what that enemy is, because they're the most fun to fight when you don't know what you're up against yet. Sufficed to say that the moments spent fighting those enemies were the finest in the entire game. But even though the enemies are smart, battles are pretty varied thanks to the artificial intelligence and the enemy types that are there are great, four is still too little to appease in F.E.A.R.

The physics also work a great way towards making the shootouts enjoyable. Weapons feel like they pack a great deal of punch thanks to really good use of rag-doll. Sending a dude flying with a shotgun blast to the stomach is very satisfying. The environments come apart pretty well too, and especially when you activate SlowMo, you see windowpanes fall apart, chips coming off walls, computers exploding, and all kinds of stuff. It's a visual orgasm, and it makes the combat that much more exciting.

But F.E.A.R. does not only consist of shooting. Monolith really tried to get that creepy, Japanese-horror- flick feel in there, and for the most part, they've succeeded. However, as much as they tried, I do not feel that this part of the game worked out as well as the shooting did. The game tries to be scary by having lots of dark rooms and shadowy hallways, though you have a flashlight. But that puny lightcone loses power quickly, at which point you'll have to wait a couple a seconds for it to recharge. And then there's the jump-scares. Mostly consisting of split-second flashes of greasy-haired girl or mangled corpses, they made me jump in the beginning. However, when I realised that none of these visions could hurt me, their effect on me was lessened greatly. I'm already quite impervious to such low-grade attempts at scaring me, having watched a ton of horror movies in the past. So really, whenever I would see the girl show up, I would simply yawn and wait for her to disappear again, occasionally pressing forward on the stick in order to advance the ghostly visions. It's too bad, because this cross-over between Condemned and Half-Life would've been fantastic if the scares had been handled just a bit better.

I've already talked about the inaudible voices, but other than that, the sound design in this game is absolutely superb. Everything, from the guns to the scary ambient noises, is very well-done. And when you can hear the voice-acting, you'll find out that it's quite good as well. On the graphical front, F.E.A.R. still holds its own these days, although you might be annoyed to find how little variety there is to the environments. The game takes place in three building. A run-down factory, a desolate office building and a run-down city block. It's all pretty plain, and remains so throughout the 12 hours it'll probably take you to complete the game on the Normal difficulty setting. The level design was obviously handled in such a way that it allows for some really actiony shootouts though, that look fantastic, which is great.

If you like fast-paced, excellent shooters, I really recommend you to check F.E.A.R. out. It's simply a fantastic game.