Isn’t this game supposed to be scary? Then why am I completely obliterating these guys in a mech?
The F.E.A.R. 2 demo was released last week, so I figured I’d check it out. I played the game originally on the PC, but I got bored with it and never ended up beating it. I decided, why not check out the sequel’s demo? Maybe this time around it won’t be as boring. I had a hard time deciding whether to try the demo on my 360 or my new PC. I ended up going with the 360. Read on for my thoughts on it as someone that didn’t really get hooked in by the first one.
F.E.A.R. 2 comes from developer Monolith Productions, who I remember must fondly for the Shogo: Mobile Armor Division and No One Lives Forever games on the PC. Seems like these guys have been doing a lot of FPS games – Aliens versus Predator 2, and now the F.E.A.R. series. F.E.A.R., which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, is sort of a “horror” first-person shooter. I say it loosely because it plays like a regular shooter but you encounter supernatural things like ghosts and disturbing images every once in a while. But I rarely, if ever, was afraid due to the amount of fire power I had in the game.
Upon starting up the demo, I remarked to myself how similar the game felt to the Condemned games, in its general look and feel. The only difference was that in Condemned I was stuck with primarily melee weapons, while in F.E.A.R. I have all sorts of assault rifles and firearms. Then I discovered that Monolith Productions is also the same company behind the Condemned games. It all makes sense now why they play so similarly…
I almost didn’t make it through the demo and realized that I still couldn’t get into this new F.E.A.R. sequel just like the previous one. The demo level has you starting out through a street and going through a dark school/hospital or something, and it’s really dark. What annoyed me (besides not being able to see where I was going) was that the in-game flashlight I turn on only works once in a while. Meaning, if I was staring at a wall with the flashlight on, the wall would be clearly illuminated like I expected, but if I turned and looked down the hall (with the flashlight on still), there was no sort of illumination going forward so I couldn’t tell what the heck was in front of me or which direction I should be walking. It’s like I didn’t even have a flashlight but the annoying thing was that it was definitely on. Apparently, I’m just not permitted to see ahead with it.
The other “unique aspect” of F.E.A.R. (and its sequel, apparently) is your ability to slow down time (yeah it’s kind of been done to death by now). What I don’t like about the time slowing down aspect of the F.E.A.R. series is that it doesn’t allow you to jump and do cool maneuvers like you would in Stranglehold or the Max Payne games – the time slowing mechanism is simply there to make shooting easier instead of giving you better maneuvering. There’s nothing fun about it since it”s like you’re fighting guys with your frame rate dropping to single digits.
What I also didn’t like about the original F.E.A.R. game was how there’d be some “scary” cutscene, and then you’d be assaulted by generically armored guys, followed by another “scary” cutscene, and then more generically armored guys, etc. This apparently didn’t change in the F.E.A.R. 2 demo. I’d walk down the street and some ghostly images would appear, then I would get attacked by generic looking enemies (which I would have to fight in slow motion) before repeating the next set of ghostly images and enemies. I like shooters, but something about the F.E.A.R. games just don’t work for me. And it’s not like I don’t enjoy a little bit of horror in my games either – but it just seems to be totally tacked on here as it doesn’t flow well with the gameplay.
Strangely, the most enjoyable part of the demo was probably the end bit where you get to get into a mech and go at it: shooting rockets and spraying bullets at enemies. It seems awfully out of place though – a scary game where suddenly you’re in a mech and blowing up whatever you see. Also, when you’re in the mech you’re assaulted by enemy mechs as well. This is all sort of…just strange. If this is a game about fear, why am I trading rockets with this mech in front of me? Then the demo ended abruptly.
I’ll be skipping out on this game. The first one got good reviews and perhaps maybe the second one will too. But for the life of me, I can’t seem to enjoy these games. And it’s strange because I can enjoy nearly any shooter I play and I like horror games too. F.E.A.R. is sort of an anomoly it seems, but it looks like perhaps it’s the game design and mechanics of the whole series that’s putting me off since the sequel isn’t treating me any better.
