F.E.A.R., which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, is one of the more interesting first-person shooter games to hit the shelves of late. Though it would be difficult for any game to live up to the buzz surrounding this title—the F.E.A.R. hype machine has truly been working overtime—it's safe to say that Monolith has met or exceeded most critics' expectations. Read on to find out why.
The best way I can think to describe the visuals in F.E.A.R. is to say that it's easily the equivalent of DOOM 3 (D3), but with much better effects. Seriously, were it not for the facial animation standards set by Half-Life 2 (HL2), F.E.A.R. would qualify as the best looking FPS game made to date in every respect. Aside from the characters' faces, though, F.E.A.R. is otherwise unmatched.
The modeling work is hyper-detailed, the textures are high resolution, the pock-marks and other environmental "decals" are the best and most believable I've seen, the animations are both fluid and believable, and arguably most impressive of all is the incredible array of special effects. I don't even want to guess at how many different shaders are in use throughout this game, but I'm confident it's a very large number.
Seriously, the special effects put F.E.A.R. in a class of its own by a country mile. Tracers streak through the air while regular bullets carve Matrix-esque pathways through the atmosphere in "bullet time". Blast waves from grenades and other explosives visibly compress the surrounding air while fire and glass nicely distort one's view. Firefights kick up dust and leave smoke in their wake. All these effects come together to make each firefight a new experience every time.
And that's saying nothing of all the wildly surreal visual effects in the various flash-backs, flash-forwards, and otherwise flash-elsewheres (and perhaps dream sequences?) the game employs to scare the living daylights out of the player. Spectral figures decay into shards of ash before the player's very eyes. Horrifying yellow/orange-eyed wights emerge suddenly from dancing hellfire and inkblot maws, the purest nightmares of ghoulish evil.
I could go on for a couple of pages, listing all the über-cool visual touches in F.E.A.R. Suffice it to say that F.E.A.R. sets an entirely new standard for gaming visuals in all categories save for the one already mentioned. It's the first FPS game I've played that felt more like an interactive movie than a game. It's that good.
Sadly, all this comes at a price, and it's a steep price indeed. D3 pushed my system hard, and Battlefield 2 (BF2) pushed it beyond the breaking point, but F.E.A.R. is worse than either of them in its demands. I went through hell getting BF2 to run reliably, but once I solved the problem I could run it at 1600 x 1200 with decent performance. In contrast, F.E.A.R. is a slide show on my current system at anything beyond a mere 1024 x 768!
I actually had to turn the resolution down to 800 x 600 to make it through one particular level, and I have an ATI X800 XT video card in my system. That's insane. The hardware sites I visit regularly echo my own findings, insofar as they all agree F.E.A.R. absolutely requires a dual video card solution for high resolution play. I'll be building a new system shortly, so I'll update this review when more information is available. Just be aware that you will need a bleeding edge system if you want to run at a high resolution with all the goodies enabled.
| Update: | After building Gorthaur the Cruel, I can report that F.E.A.R. is still hard on technology, one hardware generation after its release. Despite my new system's dual, NVIDIA GTX 7800 GTX video cards, the game still bogs down in spots. Granted, I am able to run it now at 1600 x 1200 x 32 bpp with 2x AA and 8x AF and all the goodies enabled, and it does look amazing at those settings, but even still it occasionally stutters in a couple of spots. For sake of comparison, I can run Half-Life 2 at the same resolution but at 6x AA and 16x AF without a single hitch. No doubt about it: F.E.A.R. is something of a system pig, but it sure is worth it (grin). |
Happily, the audio is every bit as good as the graphics. The music was a little overly minimalist for my taste; I thought there were a few moments that would have been elevated significantly by the addition of some rightly poignant music. But the existing music sets exactly the right mood. The voice acting is also very good as games go, particularly the somewhat repetitive voices of the replica troopers.
But where the game's audio really shines is in its sound effects. For example, I'm pretty fussy, but I never tired of hearing shell casings fall to the ground. They tinkle marvelously on concrete; they clink and clank upon metal; and they clack and clatter on wood—all wonderfully and perfectly distinct. I'm happy to say that every other category of sounds in the game is equally good: gunfire, explosions, the "warping" effect when shifting modes of time perception, and even ambient effects are marvelous.
The only negative comment I can make about the audio is that I suffered through quite a few popping/clicking artifacts whenever I had hardware mixing enabled. I don't know why I was having such nasty glitches, but as soon as I disabled hardware mixing they all went away. The use of positional audio and EAX effects were otherwise flawless. Perhaps there is a problem with my Audigy 2 card? I have no idea.
The interface of F.E.A.R. is pretty straightforward, though the menus are better arranged in some respects than most other games. I particularly liked the separation of the advanced computer/graphics options from the regular menus. My only complaint with the interface, in fact, is that I wished I had more control over the HUD. I would prefer a more configurable targeting cursor, and I would prefer to have a HUD-free mode as well; a game that looks as good as F.E.A.R. would benefit greatly from it. Otherwise, the interface is simple, functional, and attractive.
In terms of game mechanics F.E.A.R. is highly capable and straightforward. The player and enemies move sensibly, guns fire just as they should, and there are plenty of gadgets and bits in the world to twiddle with. The weapons all seem nicely balanced and useful, the selection of explosives is worthwhile, movement "feels" right, and the various stances and movement speeds work well.
I had a love/hate relationship going with the three-weapon carrying limitation, but I do have to admit it made my choices more important. It forced me to think strategically about my current situation and what I was likely to find around the next corner. If nothing else it certainly cut down on weapon switching!
The game's physics is leveraged sometimes, though it's usually limited to the player shooting through boards and padlocks that would otherwise block his path. More than anything, the game's physics is obvious from the way it controls particles kicked up during battle, as well as the rag-dolls into which enemies transform once killed. I mention these things because the game mechanics have that "solid feel" so important to a good shooter.
The only negative comment I have to make about the game's mechanics regards the flashlight. To wit, I'm getting really tired of games that give me a great flashlight with batteries that somehow last less than a minute but magically recharge. Come on, folks, it's not like having a flashlight ruins the game's feel. It's disabled in all the really scary sequences anyway, so why not give the player some real batteries?
As the unofficial D3 duct-tape mod illustrates, such a device doesn't ruin a game; it simply makes it more realistic and enjoyable. I hated toggling the flashlight on and off all the time. It makes a lot more sense conceptually and practically for the player to have a flashlight that works all the time without constantly worrying about batteries.
The developers clearly expended some effort at giving F.E.A.R. a genuinely horrifying premise, and I'd have to say they succeeded more often than not. I thought Alma's final appearance in the closing helicopter scene was a bit silly, but aside from that one case I found the other scenes quite compelling. I'm not going to divulge any spoilers, but I will say that the story allowed the game to build nicely. It's not the world's greatest game story, but it's definitely in the top ten percent.
I have to get this off my chest from the outset: something bugs me about the pacing of the game. And I don't mean in terms of the enemies; I mean in terms of the actual fear it generates. When I played the demo, I was absolutely convinced that F.E.A.R. was a must-buy game for me. Why? Because it really scared me, actually making my heart skip a couple of beats. That kind of experience is golden, and I was expecting the retail version to keep me right on the edge of my seat.
It did get off to a good start in that regard, but the fear factor dwindled shortly thereafter. Oh, it reared its head again from time to time, and the game was clearly trying pretty hard with all the "spooky" phone messages, but it just wasn't doing it for me. It was only in the final intervals that true fear came back. Fortunately, it came back in a big way, which let the game end on a near-perfect high note. The problem was that between the unsettling opening and the terrifying finish there was a large-ish chunk of game that just wasn't scary.
Two more substantive complaints might be that (1) the game is relatively short, and (2) the variety of foes is relatively limited. I'm a bit surprised at myself, but I'm not really bothered by the former. I'm normally bothered by the trend toward games with a single digit's worth of playing hours, but I'm honestly undeterred by the relatively short duration of F.E.A.R. I think it's because the game's artificial intelligence (AI) is so good that it seems more substantial than other, longer games.
Which is, in fact, the reason that (2) doesn't really bug me either. I can count the number of types of enemies on one hand, but F.E.A.R. proves to me that the variety of foes isn't important; what really matters, in terms of the elusive fun factor, is how they play out. On that point, the game delivers in spades: the enemy AI in fear is so good that I think it's the best I have ever seen.
I have never before seen enemies use cover so effectively; heck, they'll knock over tables and such to make cover where possible. They'll vault over counters and other obstacles if it provides tactical advantage. They call out to one another for support and reinforcement. They make reasonably intelligent use of grenades to flush out the player. And, most stunning of all, is the way they seem to coordinate flanking maneuvers, complete with suppressing fire from the front to keep the player's attention!
The single-player AI isn't quite as good as playing against my fellow human beings in the multi-player aspect, but it's pretty damned close. If anything it's actually better in some respects; whereas I've seen humans do really stupid things, I never saw the AI put a bad foot forward. I really felt like I was up against well-trained troops, and that was awesome.
As to the other aspects of the game's content, the arsenal of weapons is pretty cool. I never had much use for the ASP rifle, but maybe I just didn't get it. I absolutely loved the VK-12 shotgun, the 10mm HV penetrator, the Type-7 particle weapon, and the MP-50 repeating cannon. Those four were my clear favorites by the end of the game. The penetrator wins extra points for its ability to pin enemies into walls with its painful spikes, the particle weapon has wicked-cool special effects, and the repeating cannon is just plain fun to fire. True, the VK-12 is basically the same shotgun I've fired in dozens of other games, but it remains an entertaining workhorse nevertheless.
I suppose the selection of environments isn't exactly breathtaking, ranging from run-down urban locales to up-scale urban locales, but what's there is nicely detailed and fun to explore. Maybe I'm spoiled from the days when every FPS game packed at least three wildly different and complete unrelated environments (as with most of the plot-free George Lucas films). But don't worry: it doesn't detract significantly from the game.
What I did find a bit distracting, though, was how messages to and from the same people kept turning up on phones scattered all over the place. I realize it's a game and we're trying to tell a cohesive story here, folks, but it really didn't make much sense to me that I'd find phone messages from person X, intended for person Y, on telephones belonging to office drones A through Q, scattered across several facilities. That shattered the illusion for me. It's so glaringly silly, in fact, I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something obvious, some explanation as to why it makes sense.
On the whole, the game's content works well, despite the fear-pacing issue and the minor things I've mentioned, and I think it deserves a lot of credit for its ending. I like a good boss fight as much as anyone else, but most boss monsters in most games end up suffering from Achilles Syndrome in my experience. That is, they're absolutely unbeatable until the player finds the one trick that can destroy them, at which point they become complete pushovers. I was very happy with the way F.E.A.R. ended because it avoided this problem altogether.
I don't want to give anything big away, but I thought the ending was absolutely perfect. Paxton Fettel, for example, didn't require a thousand rounds of ammunition to kill. The ordeal wasn't fighting him; the ordeal was in catching up with him, in making one's way to the end of the game. Because of the way it was handled, the final scene with Fettel paved the way for the subsequent events. It was precisely as it should have been.
Suffice it to say that I thought the final few intervals were the very best in the game. They were exciting, increasingly horrifying, and one heck of a fun time. The game ended on the perfect note, both artistically and from a practical standpoint (i.e., the beginning point for a sequel is almost painfully obvious). I can't say that of many games, but it's certainly true of this one.
F.E.A.R. is clearly intended to be a single-player game, but it's not entirely without multi-player charm. In fact, the graphics, audio, and special effects are so cool that they manage to inject a bit of life into plain old deathmatch (DM) and capture the flag (CTF). The reason I'm not bowled over by the game's multi-player aspect is simply that I've done it all before, and about a bazillion times at that. F.E.A.R. just doesn't do much to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack when it comes to multi-player.
And what a pity, for the game teems with untapped possibilities. How about a replicas versus ATC mode? One human player could play as Paxton Fettel with a top-down view, sending groups of AI- or human-controlled replicas after the other team populated by the other human players. Or what about a survival mode where all the humans have to band together if they're to have any prayer of surviving an assault by an AI- or human-controlled Alma? Even a straight up humans on humans fight would be a lot more fun, were there control points to capture, documents to retrieve, or pretty much anything beyond straight up DM and CTF.
I'll probably get some additional play from the multi-player aspect, but I doubt it will hold my attention for long. I'm not saying that every game has to have a fabulous multi-player aspect, but with F.E.A.R. it's hard for me to understand why the developers included only plain, vanilla DM and CTF. Perhaps they simply ran out of time? It just strikes me as odd to have such a bland multi-player aspect wedded to such a wonderfully imaginative single-player experience.
In the final analysis, F.E.A.R. is a must-buy game for any FPS devotee for one, simple reason: it delivers entertainment more memorable than most other titles. Just as the original DOOM's cyberdemon encounter will never be erased from my mind, so too the final interval in F.E.A.R. will live in my nightmares for the rest of my life. I will never forget the fear and fun of that last level, arguably the ultimate endorsement for the game.
The only people who wouldn't enjoy F.E.A.R. are those who don't enjoy horror, don't like single-player games, have mid-range hardware—it's really quite demanding as I've previously explained—and don't easily compromise when it comes to frame rates/resolutions, or, of course, those who simply don't enjoy FPS games at all. But those folks probably aren't reading my reviews anyway. I figure the vast bulk of gamers will easily get their money's worth from F.E.A.R. It's just that good.
11/17/2005