- Jan 12, 2004
- 11,078
- 11
- 81
When you take Akira, The Ring, and The Matrix and mix them together into a sugary FPS batter -you'll get F.E.A.R. All the previous movies and games were thoroughly injoyed by me and excellent in their own right. But for me, my friends, this little recipe fell short in creating a game that lives up to Monolith's rep. I've great respect for these developers and loved No One Lives Forver (1 &2) along with Shogo, so I was really looking forward to this game.
One of the most memorable moments in my entire F.E.A.R experince was the demo. I played through it the day it came out and loved the chill factor. I waved aside any scuff or cheesiness brought on by the borrowed concepts from multiple entertainment peices (mentioned above). As long as this was a blast I didnt really care. See, I love the entire horror genre. I love scarey movies, games, and books. I was ready for this game, especially one crafted by Monolith.
I purchased the game from Ebworld.com. They had a special going on, pre-order the DVD and get $5 off -I was sold. The day I got the game, I tossed in the DVD excited to experience the thrill that awaited me. Here is my impressions broken down in sections:
System Specs
Athlon 64 3500+
1GB Corsair PC3200
nVidia 6800 Ultra
Asus A8V Deluxe
20-inch Apple Cinematic Display (1680x1050 native rez)
GFX
As you can see from my setup listed above, I ran the game at 1680x1050. The game did not support widescreen out of the box, but I really didnt have any issued getting it to run at the rez -It simply involved editing a config file.
I did spend, however, a great amount of time tweaking and configureing settings to get this game to run well. For grins, I compaired the graphical beauty and rendering smoothness to both D3 and HL2 (which were previously installed). I must say, in my opinion, both D3 and HL2 run much much smoother and looked a bit better doing so. I know Monolith is big on creating their own software renderer and I respect them for that -I just wish they would have optimized things a bit.
That being said, the game is deffinitly goreous though. Despite the occassional hickup or slowdown to load textures or forgrounds, the environments were pretty exciting to look at and did a decent job of creating a "thrillers" atmosphere.
I thought the warping effect of a grenades explosion was awesome and always loved watching it.
SOUND
I dont recall anything really impressing the hell out of me, but I do recall occassinally thinking that some music just sounded appropriate.
I really really enjoyed the Matrix sound-dub of sound slowing down along with time when envolking time-slow-ability and once coming out of it, hearing all the shells from your spent bullets clanking to the ground. If I recall, this was also done in Max Payne (not the time-slow effect, but all the shalls hitting the ground).
GAMEPLAY
Let me just get this out of the way. I became bored of the office building environment rather quickly. It was a bit boring from the beginning and early on was hopeing they would take us out of it -but it never really happened. This is one of the hardest things Monolith did in this game, for me to accept. How could they play this game for years of development and not come to the conclusion that they needed to change things around. Remember all the different environments we went through in HL2? Hell, even D3 seems to have some of a variety in its environments then FEAR -and it really didnt.
I think the one thing that really saved this game from becoming a complete bomb (FOR ME!), was the super adrenaline levels of our hero, allowing us to have super-fast reflexes (IE: slowing down time). Even though it's already be done before and done extremely well in my eyes (Max Payne), it was ok. Maybe it's because this was in First Person, but I enjoyed this aspect of the game the most. Infact, I found myself doing it more and more to keep things fun. I don't know what excetly that says about the rest of the game, but I'm sure its not good.
I thought the A.I. was interesting and above most other games (FPS) out there. I enjoyed the banter between the armed guards, the calls for help, the "Oh shits!"
Over all, as you can see -I was underwhelmed. It kinda bums me out because I was really looking forward to this game. Like I mentioned, I love scarey, thrilling entertainment -but this one falls short. I'm bummed that they included some of the most thrilling moments in the demo (not THE most thrilling though
Oh, and just to make things clear....here are the borrowed concepts:
The Matrix - Obviously the sounds, look, and feel of the slow-down effect.
Akiria - If you've seen the movie, you'll know that at the end of the movie they remove Akira from his Cryogenic chamber. They go underground in FEAR in the same maner, do the same things, and the sets ever look very simular. The concept is borrowed....but hey, atleast its a cool concept.
The Ring - AAAaaaah! Scarey little girls with long, black, stringly hair thats always in their face. Yes, still creepy in the game.
What can I say, all in all.....not that great of a game and too short. I was actually looking forward to beating this game and moving on to Quake 4.
This is my honest opinion(s).
One of the most memorable moments in my entire F.E.A.R experince was the demo. I played through it the day it came out and loved the chill factor. I waved aside any scuff or cheesiness brought on by the borrowed concepts from multiple entertainment peices (mentioned above). As long as this was a blast I didnt really care. See, I love the entire horror genre. I love scarey movies, games, and books. I was ready for this game, especially one crafted by Monolith.
I purchased the game from Ebworld.com. They had a special going on, pre-order the DVD and get $5 off -I was sold. The day I got the game, I tossed in the DVD excited to experience the thrill that awaited me. Here is my impressions broken down in sections:
System Specs
Athlon 64 3500+
1GB Corsair PC3200
nVidia 6800 Ultra
Asus A8V Deluxe
20-inch Apple Cinematic Display (1680x1050 native rez)
GFX
As you can see from my setup listed above, I ran the game at 1680x1050. The game did not support widescreen out of the box, but I really didnt have any issued getting it to run at the rez -It simply involved editing a config file.
I did spend, however, a great amount of time tweaking and configureing settings to get this game to run well. For grins, I compaired the graphical beauty and rendering smoothness to both D3 and HL2 (which were previously installed). I must say, in my opinion, both D3 and HL2 run much much smoother and looked a bit better doing so. I know Monolith is big on creating their own software renderer and I respect them for that -I just wish they would have optimized things a bit.
That being said, the game is deffinitly goreous though. Despite the occassional hickup or slowdown to load textures or forgrounds, the environments were pretty exciting to look at and did a decent job of creating a "thrillers" atmosphere.
I thought the warping effect of a grenades explosion was awesome and always loved watching it.
SOUND
I dont recall anything really impressing the hell out of me, but I do recall occassinally thinking that some music just sounded appropriate.
I really really enjoyed the Matrix sound-dub of sound slowing down along with time when envolking time-slow-ability and once coming out of it, hearing all the shells from your spent bullets clanking to the ground. If I recall, this was also done in Max Payne (not the time-slow effect, but all the shalls hitting the ground).
GAMEPLAY
Let me just get this out of the way. I became bored of the office building environment rather quickly. It was a bit boring from the beginning and early on was hopeing they would take us out of it -but it never really happened. This is one of the hardest things Monolith did in this game, for me to accept. How could they play this game for years of development and not come to the conclusion that they needed to change things around. Remember all the different environments we went through in HL2? Hell, even D3 seems to have some of a variety in its environments then FEAR -and it really didnt.
I think the one thing that really saved this game from becoming a complete bomb (FOR ME!), was the super adrenaline levels of our hero, allowing us to have super-fast reflexes (IE: slowing down time). Even though it's already be done before and done extremely well in my eyes (Max Payne), it was ok. Maybe it's because this was in First Person, but I enjoyed this aspect of the game the most. Infact, I found myself doing it more and more to keep things fun. I don't know what excetly that says about the rest of the game, but I'm sure its not good.
I thought the A.I. was interesting and above most other games (FPS) out there. I enjoyed the banter between the armed guards, the calls for help, the "Oh shits!"
Over all, as you can see -I was underwhelmed. It kinda bums me out because I was really looking forward to this game. Like I mentioned, I love scarey, thrilling entertainment -but this one falls short. I'm bummed that they included some of the most thrilling moments in the demo (not THE most thrilling though
Oh, and just to make things clear....here are the borrowed concepts:
The Matrix - Obviously the sounds, look, and feel of the slow-down effect.
Akiria - If you've seen the movie, you'll know that at the end of the movie they remove Akira from his Cryogenic chamber. They go underground in FEAR in the same maner, do the same things, and the sets ever look very simular. The concept is borrowed....but hey, atleast its a cool concept.
The Ring - AAAaaaah! Scarey little girls with long, black, stringly hair thats always in their face. Yes, still creepy in the game.
What can I say, all in all.....not that great of a game and too short. I was actually looking forward to beating this game and moving on to Quake 4.
This is my honest opinion(s).
Facebook
Twitter