F.E.A.R. Xbox 360 review

Certain console owners, the younger ones and the ones whose eyes are too close together, have had a hard time lately. With Sony entering the media-created ‘next-gen war’ so late, those with too much time on their hands haven’t been able to properly play the ‘My console is better than your console’ game.

Instead, robbed of their traditional enemy, the 360 camp have typically fallen upon each other. The source of the conflict comes down to a battle between supporters of Gears of War and supporters of FEAR, the subject of this review. Having played both of these above average titles, I still can’t see what all the fuss is about.

At least there's a plot

FEAR (I’m not bothering with the full stops in the name – it’s a pain to type every time) is a port of a PC FPS that’s been around quite a while now. This is something that GoW cloth-heads use as a weapon to beat the FEAR foot soldiers with. That is a silly thing to do, as there are so many other things they could point out. Simply being a PC port is not necessarily a bad thing.

Where to start? The story? Not much to write home about here. Don’t you start laughing, dear GoW fanatic – at least FEAR has a story. Unfortunately, anyone with half a brain will be able to predict the ending of the lacklustre narrative by the end of the first mission. Anyone with all of a brain will have it nailed by the end of the first briefing.

Black-Ops

You are the new point-man for the FEAR unit. Your unusual abilities and mysterious background make you a perfect choice to go up against the telepathic commander of a bunch of ink-stamped bad guys whom he controls from afar. Both commander and soldiers, possessed of unusual abilities and mysterious backgrounds, are the result of a black-ops type of corporate experiment >yawn< that went >bigger yawn< out of contr…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hmmm? Oh, sorry. Dozed off there a minute.

Forgot to mention, both good guys and bad guys are being stalked by the scary little girl out of The Grudge who seems to be on holiday. She also seems to have pyrokinetic powers and, on occasion, forgets her clothes. But only when she suddenly grows up, despite being dead.

You’ll be wanting it to make sense next…

Scared?

The game sets out to scare you and, to be fair, it kind of works. There were moments when the little girl genuinely scared the crap out of me. For those who have played the game – the ladder and that bit when she turns up in the lift with you. Yeah, you remember. Unfortunately, for every scare that hits home, there are huge numbers that don’t, mostly because the scary moments are telegraphed by the change in music and ambient noise.

The story is delivered in cutscenes that want to be Half-Life in style but don’t let you do more than look around, or in flashbacks and telepathic contacts from the commander you’re pursuing. Other story snippets are given from accessing computers and listening, improbably, to answering machine messages. Unfortunately, even with a very good sound system and the music and stuff turned down, the extra information delivered in these was almost inaudible.

Crispy Beru

As a result of all of this, the story becomes a little uninteresting. The same word, ‘uninteresting’ can be used to describe the environments you play in. While suitably claustrophobic and well lit, they quickly become very dull and samey. All that’s left to keep you interested is the gameplay.

The bad guys you spend most of your time fighting all look the same. The weapons you shoot them with are reasonably satisfying, but there’s nothing really stand out in the armoury - though the particle beam weapon thingy that burns folks up into Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen-style skeletons is fun for a while.

Intelligent design?

To help you in your shooting, there’s a slow-mo mode that represents your heightened reactions. Too easy to drop into by accident because of the control mapping, it gives you a few seconds of suspended time to rush in and see what your attacks do at close range. Much like the particle beam weapon, it’s fun the first few times. Unless you’re playing on the maximum difficulty level, you’re not going to need to use it - I kept forgetting about it.

Much has been said of the AI in FEAR and the way no two battles ever play out the same. Your enemies are supposed to use superior tactics that are reactive to what you do and don’t do. They will flank you, flush you out with grenades, call in reinforcements, retreat to cover and so on. In fact, the AI does do some of this but, more often than not, you can set off an encounter and then fall back out of the area the AI is ‘trained’ to use, and then shoot the baddies as they run through a door one by one. A lot of the assumed AI seems based on the fact that the enemy call out that they are sending for reinforcements, or shout out for others to cover them, none of which actually seems to happen. Also, they seem to be able to see through walls when it suits. I got spotted a few time, allegedly, by troops two rooms away.

Predictable

Many of the set-pieces are utterly predictable (the mini-battlemech you meet coming up on a lift platform thing, for example, or the snipers in the distant windows on a rooftop), and the AI seems distinctly switched off for these moments. The best thing about the big fights is wandering the battlefield after looking at all the bodies stuck comically in the walls.

FEAR commits many cardinal gaming sins worse than ‘corpse clipping’, such as taking away control from the player by putting them in situations where they can do nothing but fail. Dying can be quite a surprise, as the only real warning you have that you’re being shot is that fact that the number showing your health total starts to drop. Can someone please remind the developers that the 360 has a really nice rumble feature built in to the controller?

Grudge girl

The ‘contradictory messages’ associated with the creepy little girl are another nuisance. She is a super powered killing machine one moment, untouchable and unassailable, and then, abruptly, you can kill her. Suddenly, she’s not even vaguely scary any more and, as a result, the incredibly predictable last ‘scare’ is laughable. Mind you, before you have to kill her, the plot has made you feel so sorry for her that you would rather she got away.

Players get a paltry number of gamer points for just playing through the campaign. In a transparent attempt to make players replay the single player story, you get more for playing it without using the slow-mo, or by only using 500 shots throughout, and so on. The majority of achievement points are delivered in multi-player, which is really, really annoying. Some kind of balance would be better.

Final Words

If you’re tired of the main game, there are the Instant Action Mode levels to try. These take place in modified versions of set-piece combats from the game. The idea is to rack up a good high score to post on the Live! leader boards to show how fab you are. Uh-huh… You get gamer points also, but that’s the only reason to play these through.

I will be adding to this review, in the comments section, a bit about the multi-player (connectivity issues prevent this at the moment), but reports elsewhere say that it’s pretty good. It must be – the Live! stuff was released as a separate downloadable preventing anyone having to go through the disappointing single player experience. Still, confession is good for the soul.