The forcible bundling of the expansions does kind of reduce the value, I think. I’ve heard mixed sentiments about Extraction Point but the consensus seemed to be that Perseus Mandate definitely sucked. Why download that crap?
The core game is pretty awesome, though. Some of the best pure shooting I’ve encountered in a long time. Maybe skip buying it on Steam and see if you can find a cheap retail copy.
FEAR 2 is prettier and more atmospheric, with more interesting environments and a slightly more interesting story, but it does lose a bit of what made the firefights in 1 special for me. (That is, there doesn’t really seem to be any terrain deformation or similar. The big dust clouds and bullet holes and such kicked up by shootouts in 1 were awesome.)
I liked playing Fear last year.
It had some cool firefights though the story was strange.
I hardly / never used the slow-mo on normal since it would have made the game too easy.
The “oompf” of the weapons was pretty satisfying and it passed my “headshot = dead” test which is always good.
Yeah, I’d recommend playing the game on either Hard or Extreme. I played it on Hard, and I had to use slo-mo sometimes. I never died, or maybe died once or twice through the whole game. I don’t know how much Harder Extreme is, but I know that Hard is just about what Normal difficulty is like for most other shooters on the PC. It gives you incentive to use the slo-motion, and if you use it, I think most people who play shooters will get by without any deaths with that tool at their disposal. (Especially since the game also lets you keep up to 10 health packs that can instantly heal you when you need them). It’s hard to die in FEAR on Hard difficulty.
Yes, these are my feelings too! I really liked fear. I didn’t get what was happening in the story, I was almost never afraid, but didn’t care much either. Say what you will about the levels, they may be the same, aesthetically, but as Rock8Man says they provide you with a lot of cool combat situations. And as much as the second game tried opening up the environments, they actually only made them look different, but where more linear than the first one. I love the shooting, bullet time included, I think the basic game play is top notch, on of the best in recent shooters.
Try activating bullet time, with your shotgun, then get at point blank range to an enemy and see what happens, he he.
Monolith did a great job, so I would definitely recommend the game, especially at that price. I never played the expansions though.
I’ve gone back to it, treating it as a bunch of puzzle shooting situations rather than a linear shooter like HL2 and the experience is much better for it.
I’m on the fourth act of several and am enjoying it
I see HL2 as being the exact opposite of FEAR. You go through amazing environments and the sense of progression is great, but the shooting less so. Fear is all about those shooting puzzles.
Went back and replayed FEAR right before the sequel launched last year. I suggest playing it on the highest difficulty as you will notice the AI doing some impressive stuff that will definately keep on your toes(and it will also keep you from office box syndrome as discussed). It’s the most engaging aspect of the game, and the sequel very much suffered from not matching.
If you don’t plan to go hardcore, then I’d pass. FEAR’s little nuggets of story that pop-up aren’t worth trudging through the bland environments on a casual difficulty.
I’m playing through on hard now and I realized that L4d has dulled my FPS skills. I have to get accustomed to hitting a button again for refined aiming. I’m enjoying it so far and once I get my controls just right things should be fun. Also it is great going into slow mo and just running around blasting things with the shotgun.
I played through the game on normal, and the AI was doing some pretty cool things. Dudes would jump out windows when I started shooting, run around hallways behind me.
It reminded me of the first time I played Half Life, I was like… whoa! The AI knows how to kick my ass.
The office world was made more painful by the various opportunites to get lost and trapped in there! It wouldn’t have bothered me if I hadn’t found myself thinking - shit is that the same reception desk? Again? Or another one… Or was that the other floor…? Let me out of here please Jesus!!!
17gb seems like a WTF HUGE install size for this game. Is it installing the expansion packs with the base game, and then when I go to install the packs it’s going to say “1mb”?
I found FEAR to be a very mixed bag: a great graphics engine tied to dull level designs; fun shootouts against trite enemies; a narrative which is both simplistic and nonsensical (i.e., the plot’s actually not that complicated, but it’s told in a confusing manner, IIRC); creepy atmosphere but not a lot of real scares. If you’re in it just to shoot crap and don’t mind linear games, I think it’s still worthwhile; but there are better survival-horror games out there, including Monolith’s own Condemned.
It’s a good shooter with a nice feel to the weapons. The “bullet time” is well done and adds to the strategy. Hope you don’t mind blood, it’s everywhere.
I played the 360 version and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. The only real disappointment was the determined “realism” of the game that had you wandering around an office building or a warehouse most of the time. I would have liked a bit more variety but I understood the design decision.
The first expansion, however, was so flavorless I was quickly distracted away by other games. Never got to the second one on the same disc, but I’d heard it was better. If I recall correctly, neither was done by Monolith.
It’s the other way around for me: Extraction Point was just as good as the original imo (except for an ending which told you as much as the original), and Perseus Mandate really sucked balls.
FEAR is very good (even now), offices are offices yes but the level design itself had plenty of good stuff in it and rarely felt railroad-like. The AI beat everything in close quarters at that time and was a serious step up from Far Cry (HL² doesn’t count because that game actually managed to be more easy and dumb than HL1 and Opposing Force). Biggest complaint here are the endlessly respawning flying zombies near the end, just ridiculous stuff.
Also a pity Monolith threw everything away with FEAR2, now that was a horror of a game.
Incidentally, I was trying to figure out why FEAR is so much less scary than AvP2 and I think the answer is that Alma doesn’t do anything. She appears. Ooh, spooky (in fairness, there were very rare occasions when it was spooky). But I’m at the end and she’s actually been a threat twice, and then only if you were a total fucking moron and decided to walk into the flames or explosion (and I think in the latter case your escape was scripted anyway). Whereas the xenomorphs are scary because they’re deadly. And they’re everywhere (or at least it feels like they’re everywhere). And they’re fast. And if they’re in an elevator with you, they’ll eat you. Whereas Alma…will disappear.
