F.E.A.R is one of those misfits. While the game incorporates your typical First-Person shooter experience, you are witnessed to some of the most horrific, terrifying scenes imaginable, something that comes as a common ingredient for horror games. In all honesty, we here at PALGN are a sick bunch and we crave that x-factor in horror. We love the bizarre mysteries of death, and we love to be scared out of our wits. Maybe that’s why F.E.A.R is one of those games that so distinctively appealed to us during E3.
While we’ve been lucky enough to see a lot of footage of the game in-action and learned a little bit more about how it plays, surprisingly enough Monolith Productions are keeping tight-lipped on all details regarding the game’s story and it’s inner-depth detail. What we can tell you though, is that gamers will play as a soldier in the Special Forces unit F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon) – an elite Government controlled special forces group – of who have been deployed to take on the unexplainable mysteries that has sparked certain interest from the Government.
Now a very intriguing feature of F.E.A.R that Monolith have presented to us is that this game will include some truly terrifying supernatural sequences of gameplay, that will both scare gamers out of their wits as well as promise for some unique gameplay opportunities. An example of this is that gamers will be shown to ‘nightmare’ sequences that are constantly triggered throughout the game. There’s this mysterious pasty-faced female that’ll suddenly appear during missions that truly spooks the hell out of you, as well as sequences where gamers will be transported to an all-new area where the rooms will be covered in blood and will trigger a number of spooky elements such as ghostly figures appearing for example. That’ll only make the experience that much more compelling.
Just one of the few scary figures witnessed during the Nightmare sequence
Similar to most First Person Shooter titles, F.E.A.R will include all your typical arsenal – semi-auto rifle, machine gun, battle cannon and even a rocket launcher that blast not one, not two, but three rockets through the air before hitting it’s destination. In addition, F.E.A.R will include some of it’s own unique and equally compelling weapons. Such as the Nail Gun, which will allow gamers to shoot out a rapid fire of nails that will actually pin enemies to the wall. In one instance we saw the character nail an enemy straight through the neck and he was hanging quite nicely to the door. Nice. Another particularly intriguing item is the games ‘slo-mo’ ability. Gamers will be able to simply hit a single button that’ll trigger the mode where everything in the surrounding world will slow down, which will allow gamers to quickly – well quick in regards of being in the slow mode – unload some shotgun bullets into the guards at close range, and to get to safety without taking too much damage. Your slow-mo ability replenishes itself over time, as well as being boosted through items or simply taking out enemies, and should be considered as an important part of making it through certain areas.
A particular interesting aspect of F.E.A.R is the game’s AI. While we’ve played a few games in our years that have definitely stood-out as being spectacular in terms of AI, we’ve become witness to a completely new standard for enemy AI in a First-Person Shooter. Enemies won’t mindlessly run at you out-of-cover, with guns blazing. Rather, the enemy troops that we’ve seen have taken it that much further. While, obviously, enemy troops will find their cover, run away from explosions and won’t shoot at walls. Although in this case, the enemy troops in F.E.A.R take on an absolutely new standard. They’ll knock down nearby bookcases that’ll create cover for themselves, they’ll lean behind corners, they’ll crawl under obstacles, jump through windows and do all sorts of flashy moves that makes making a direct-hit on any of these enemies a difficult task. It was pretty impressive to see the great flexibility these troops had.
Intensive combat, the bitter core to a First-Person Shooter
And that’s one aspect that makes F.E.A.R’s combat so intensive. From what we’ve seen, the combat is constantly frenetic even when it’s just you and another enemy in the room. You’ll find yourself constantly running around searching for new vanishing points, jumping around corners and blasting anything that moves. While all this is happening, debris is getting kicked up all over the place, blood splattering on the walls as well as some outstand particle effects.
That’s one factor where we’ve got to take our hat off to Monolith, their absolute dedication in to this games visual attraction. A visual masterpiece at every corner. The level interaction is particularly notable also. A lot of First-Person games in the past have lacked any real interaction with your levels; however, F.E.A.R takes it to a new level. Gamers will be able to shoot out hanging lights, blow cardboard boxes to pieces, dint some bullet holes into the walls as well as some very satisfying effects when shooting bullets through water. F.E.A.R is one of those games where you can’t help but become a graphics whore and jump up and down over the drool worthy graphics.
Ah…Um… Don’t worry; they just had a terrible tomato sauce accident…uh yeah that’s it.
As dramatic and compelling the single-player experience may be, F.E.A.R also boasts a particularly nice multiplayer mode via Internet and LAN connections that’ll allow up to 16-players in a single map. While we’ve only seen small glimpses of the mode, we’ve been reassured that Monolith will have dedicated servers for the game that’ll promise fast-running online battles. The multiplayer mode will include your typical strategic modes such as team deathmatch and death match, however, in keeping in contrast with it’s gameplay additions, F.E.A.R will include an intriguing new mode called ‘Slo-mo deathmatch’, which plays very similar to the mode ‘Capture the flag’. For those who are familiar with the premise of Capture the Flag will know how this mode will play, however, for those who don’t we’ll give a quick low-down of how this mode in particular will play. In Slo-mo deathmatch there will be a slo-mo device hidden somewhere on the map, the player to find that device will be granted the slo-mo ability that will genuinely slow the entire game down at any given time. Just like Capture the Flag, the person with this device will be shown on other player’s maps which than makes this mode more of a ‘cat and mouse’ mode where the player with the device tries to stay alive as long as possible to be determined the winner. We’ve been promised to a lot of multiplayer modes and maps that’ll make the online experience just as satisfying as the single player mode.
F.E.A.R is currently scheduled for a release on the PC later this year in the U.S (PAL release still pending), and we here at PALGN are truly anticipating the possibilities promised in F.E.A.R, a First-Person shooter that looks like it could match recent king-pins such as Halo, Half-Life 2 and even Doom 3. One thing we can say coming out of this preview, is that while playing this game we recommended that you have a few clean pairs of undies nearby, because there are sections of this game that can only be best described as ‘crap your pants’ moments.
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