From Monolith Productions, the creators of Condemned Criminal Origins comes F.E.A.R.; a First Person Shooter with a horror twist which stands out in a crowded field and demands attention.

F.E.A.R. is a PC game ported onto the 360 (and eventually the PS3) which tells the story of a First Encounter Assault Recon agent tasked with tracking down a dangerous Hannibal Lector-esque psychic named Paxon Fettel.  You are blessed with reflexes that are off the charts and can slow down time with the press of a button.  When entering this Slow-Mo mode, everything slows down making you an incredible marksman and practically invincible for a short period. 

F.E.A.R. separates itself from other FPS by being genuinely creepy, sometimes outright scary.  Auditory and Visual hallucinations abound, lights flip on and off or flicker, ceiling panels fall to the ground, bottles tip over and break along with a multitude of other details which really push the atmosphere.  The story is mostly told via telephone messages you intercept and laptops you hack into while your commanding officer tells you what you’ve uploaded from the computer.  The story isn’t anything spectacular and the method of storytelling leaves a little to be desired.

By far the greatest aspect of F.E.A.R. is the enemy A.I.  I have never played a game where the computer enemies act so lifelike.  Gone are the days where you can camp out in one spot and take out groups of enemies.  If you let the enemies see your flashlight, they’ll immediately flank and investigate the light.  The A.I. is constantly learning from you, taking cover, lobbing grenades when you stay in one spot or try to hide and surrounding you when you try to retreat.  They’ll kick over tables to make cover, advance on you when they have numbers on their side and retreat if they feel outnumbered.  It honestly feels like the computer characters are being controlled by humans, something that I’ve never felt during an offline FPS experience. 

The damage system is also quite amazing. Not only do your bullets and rockets make and leave their realistic marks around the environment, but the enemies respond to what you shoot as well.  If you shoot an enemy’s upper leg, they will limp to cover to try to fix the wound, shoot below their knee and they’ll drop to the floor and roll to cover.  Shoot the arm and they’ll either drop their weapon or switch it to the other hand.  Perhaps you’ll enjoy the shotgun as much as I do, and you’ll notice that when you fire correctly, you can literally blow off arms, legs, and heads, cut bodies in half or just make them evaporate if you shoot them at close range.  There’s a sick pleasure in firing the H.V. gun into an enemy’s head and watching as the stake goes through their head and impales their writhing body on the wall behind them.

The graphics and sound are brilliant, the A.I. is unparalleled and the game is truly scary and challenging even on the normal setting.  Once the story is complete, there are additional scenarios to play through along with a robust online mode and the main campaign will call you to play at a harder difficulty.  F.E.A.R. is easily the best FPS I’ve played since Halo 2 and I’d recommend the game to EVERYONE who owns a console or a P.C. capable of running it, whether you’re a fan of the genre or not. It’s a fantastic experience that will scare you.

9.3/10  Incredible

Mahalo,