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

The Good
The story in this game is very interesting to me and mostly because the back of the box gives the impression you are just going to play a generic shooter with a very flimsy (perhaps nationalistic) story-line tagged unto it, the kind of game that would only be remembered as "another multi-player shooter", but actually explodes almost immediately. After wrapping your head around all the psychic stuff (I admit that it can be quite confusing) you'll find yourself playing as the silent Pointman who discovers the dark truth behind the Armacham's corporations military research as he tries to stop psychic commander Paxton Fettel from taking over the city with an army of cloned soldiers.

The graphics were amazing for 2005 and most of the people who actually gave this game a negative score on sites like Metacritic (bless Mobygames) were just angry because the game wouldn't run on their dated computers. While Monolith designed gray corridor after gray corridor and made sure there were lots of flickering lights, they decided to make it the most sophisticated gray-corridor shooter to date with great effects and lots of blood to add a little color to the grayness.

I wasn't really scared while playing this game, but I still like the horror part of this horror/fps a lot. One of my favorite moments was when Alma Wade appeared briefly and jumped into a small pool of water that I had to cross, you can't believe how quick I ran through that water, fearing that she might jump up and instant kill me if I lingered. There is little to no repetition as well, which is always good because seeing the same thing over and over again is going to lose it's touch really fast.

I can't seem to stop thinking about the main antagonist. without wishing to spoil anything: I can't seem to decide if he/she was in the wrong or if the unit I am working for is helping the people who deserved to be punished for their deeds. This feeling is well played on by Monolith because the story tends to be very neutral as well, not picking any sides or telling you who you should like and dislike. Alma is there to scare you, but she never physically harms you and often shows you the way to go, Genevieve and her servant where both the reason why stuff's gone wrong, but they also tried to solve it and in the end did tell you how to continue your journey and of course Harlan Wade did some horrible things, but he also sincerely tried to make up for what he has done and start over.

Graphics eventually date, unless you go with an animated style your realistic graphics will be topped by every game that will be made just two years later, so the graphics in F.E.A.R. are no longer a good argument when trying to discuss this game with a Call of Duty fan. What is a good argument, you ask?, well the AI is. In F.E.A.R. the enemies respond to your every move; they yell when they see your flashlight or hear you walk, they take cover when you suppress them and they flank you every chance they get. Enemies also take more damage then they do in most recent games and they aim pretty damn well.

The Bad
The weapons are all uninspired and simple. They don't have any special or secondary functions. This makes it hard to understand the difference between two guns, which only makes it weirder that they got so many of them. Just take one weapon from all the different weapon types and roll with that.

The level design is pretty much corridor after corridor, with two corridors often meaning there is a fight up ahead and that you can get the drop on the enemy. I can understand that though, if the battlefields were more open and non-linear it would be very hard to also have the strong AI, but it's still a flaw.

The Bottom Line
I really, really, REALLY love this game and because of that it's easy to look past the flaws I mentioned. The story is very interesting and even after so many years I still can't stop thinking about certain things that happened in it and who was "in the right". The AI is a lot of fun to fight and the horror is actually scary which were the two big selling points of this game.

You will notice the flaws, they affect gameplay and trouble you, but it never got so bad that I wanted to stop playing for a few days. This is a game I can recommend without any doubts, if you are old enough to play it then you should really check this game out and perhaps laugh at how easy we were impressed by graphics in 2005.

The Good
Uber developer, Monolith, has a long track record of high quality games. From the Doomesque, Lovecraft influenced FPS‘, Blood and Blood 2: The Chosen. To the zany spy shooters No One Lives Forever, and it’s sequel. Recently Monolith has gone back to it’s horror game roots, with the trailblazing horror series Condemned. And it’s “sister” franchise F.E.A.R.. Can Monolith strike gold yet again?

F.E.A.R., or First Encounter Assault Recon, is an elite group of soldiers trained to deal with the paranormal. You play as the newest member of the squad, a mysterious character with uncanny agility and strength, known only as the “pointman”.

“It is the way of men to create monsters. And it is the nature of monsters to destroy their creators.”

When the psycho killer, Paxton Fettel, escapes from his high security prison, F.E.A.R. is contacted to stop him. It seems that Fettel has some kind of psychic link with replica soldiers, these automatons will do anything to stop you. They feel no fear, no remorse, and cannot be reasoned with.

To make matters worse you keep seeing the ghost of a little girl in a red dress. And there is trouble at the arms manufacturer Armacham and something called project origin, can there be a connection?

F.E.A.R. is a first person shooter, with horror elements.(Like Half-life, or System Shock-MM-) And it can be quite creepy and unsettling, but it’s not quite as scary as say, Condemned. This is achieved largely by the great atmosphere.

There are lots of scripted scares. Including a really cool sequence with the pointman being haunted by a former F.E.A.R. agent. There is also the System Shock esque, use of messages you hear on answering machines, these help fill in the story and can be quite creepy.

I would like to now take the time to set the record strait on one of the biggest misconceptions of F.E.A.R. Every tom, dick, and harry, says that F.E.A.R. is like a Japanese horror movie. When it’s really not. The only element that is like a Japanese horror movie is the ghost of the little girl, but unlike crappy movies like “Dark Water” it actually makes sense in F.E.A.R. Furthermore this game is actually scary.

It also takes techniques from American horror films, namely John Carpenter films such as, Halloween. And even Italian and French horror films.

“You will be a god among men.”-Harlen Wade-

The graphics in F.E.A.R. are good. Not great, just good. Keep in mind that this game was released initially in 2005 for the PC, and a launch game for the 360. It looks better in HD, but it’s no Bioshock or Mass Effect.

The sound department is really were it’s at in F.E.A.R. The voice acting is all top notch. And the music is eerie and helps establish the mood. The gun effects are all accurate and sound great. But it is the creepy sound effects that steal the show, from the cues when you see something strange, to the screams and cries of the damned.

The Bad
The difficulty settings seem to be a bit askew. Easy offers almost no challenge, Medium is oft to hard, and the other two settings are just about impossible.

The auto aiming is dubious at best, and unnecessary. The critical attacks are very cool however.

Sometimes you can get stuck in walls. And even worse there is a bug where your guns disappear, and you must load to correct it.

I am also not a fan of the checkpoint save system. I prefer the good old days when you could save whenever you wanted. Or at least meet me halfway and have manual and autosaves. With this checkpoint nonsense, you can only quit when you get a checkpoint.(Thanks a lot Halo.-MM-)

The Bottom Line
“He deserved to die, they all deserve to die.”-Paxton Fettel-

Overall F.E.A.R. is a great game. And one of my favorite FPS games. It has the perfect mix of action and horror. Now I’m off to play the two expansions Extraction Point, and Perseus Mandate. And I am already looking forward to 2009’s Fear 2: Project Origin.

The Good
The game incorporates most popular and proven things of its time. They are: 1) military combat very popular thankfully to Counter-Strike franchise, 2) Japanese horror critically acclaimed in 'The Ring' movies and its American re-makes, and 3) the talents of the developers from Monolith. The blend of such things gave the "F.E.A.R.".

Horror in the game was raised to the very high point. The plot is composed by you mostly not based on the straight-forward story-telling, but on the phone calls and laptop data you've discovered along your way. Some of the dead bodies are cannibalized and shown to you to scare you, but some of them are hidden, and you may find them if you want tracking the blood spots. The game is very bloody and the plot was scary even for me.

The music and sound effects are very atmospheric. The action is very challenging. Since the very beginning, you should be ready to the full hard contact with different enemies as soldiers in real world as paranormal creatures in your hallucinations.

The Bad
The game is very straight-forward. You should run mostly on only one road and it doesn't give the freedom to the player. Too much questions were left after the game finish than the answers were taken. Sequel should cast the light on several issues, but not on all, I guess. But also I guess that it was a twist of the designers to make the game in such way. You will not replay the game to revive the memories, for sure. These memories are too terrific to revive them. Instead of it you have a multiplayer option, if you want to play this game once more.

Some of the weapons are useless during the game. The shotgun was almost not used by me as well as mini-guns, but it is personal preference. However, I've played Extraction Point (the game's add-on), where shotgun was my one of the best weapons during 2nd Interval instead, but I'll review the add-on later.

It is definitely, that the game is not NOLF2 with all its best parts, but it is solid (yeah, I've remembered Metal Gear Solid, it is also Japanese and also military and slightly paranormal based game) action. Some of the plot twist are not clear for me. For example, why you've killed Paxton Fettel so easily, and why you have killed him at all? Why Alma've killed her creator and Alice? I've guessed that answer will be that Paxton should be dead because it was your main mission goal during most of the Intervals and that Alma is a monster who should killed her creator, but who knows...

I wrote much letters in this section, but I didn't think that game is bad at all. It is great, instead.

The Bottom Line
The game is a solid horror military Delta Force-based shooter, where you as shoot the enemies in challenging combat as untwist the story (if you want to). It should be played for the FPS fans, for sure. It should be played by adventure game genre fans also, because the story is not so simple as it seems, and the plot will capture your imagination and put it in a real-life's nightmare.