*SPOILER FOR FIRST MISSION OF MARINE CAMPAIGN IN AVP 2 **********************
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I also loved that in AvP2, they had the whole first mission without any aliens whatsoever. I was so jumpy and scared of my own shadow, but in the end, there was… nothing. That’s the first game I remember ever doing that in a first person shooter, where a whole level goes by without any enemy contact whatsoever. Just the threat of enemy contact keeps you scared. It was brilliant.
Yeah, that was pretty good. Hell, I knew the level’s gimmick beforehand and I was still jumping at shadows and shooting at motion contacts.
Meh. Alma will attack you in FEAR 2 (specifically because the folks at Monolith heard from people who thought like you and decided to fix that), but the game was if anything less scary than the first game, at least for me.
Thanks to this thread, I reinstalled FEAR. While I played through it last year, this time I’m using my larger, higher res monitor. It really doesn’t impress graphically as much as I remembered. One thing that stands out is how barren a lot of the levels are in terms of their reuse of the same textures on walls and such.
SPOILERS, I think. YOU HAS BEEN WARNED
Interesting, but I have difficulty believing that the threat Alma poses in the sequel is anywhere near as omnipresent as that presented by the xenos (well, except for the mission with Predator and that horrible sequence in which you fight other humans. And maybe the final level) in AvP2. Which means I should refine my argument to something along the lines of Alma: not scary because she’s not a constant, suffocating threat that’s always probing, always attacking, always on the verge of overwhelming.
In support of that notion I’d note that I found the sections in the final Interval with the, ah, new enemy type to be the most tense sequences in the game. The new enemy was pretty lethal and pretty fast but also, unfortunately, rather uninspired and, frankly, boring.
The ninjas scared the crap out of me the first time I met one (wait, what just…is that? Damn, I’m dead?), but any tension disappeared when I realized all I had to do was put my back to a wall and hit slowmo whenever they were around.
Which brings me to a design complaint I had; Monolith seemed reluctant to mix enemy types. Eventually you faced squads with light armor included, but the heavies were always on their own, and the ninjas were always grouped with other ninjas. They weren’t a problem on their own, but if they’d been introduced during a firefight, well, that might have been interesting. But I dunno, maybe they tested it and it was too hard or something.
If it sounds like I’m being hard on the game, well. I quite liked the firefights. I thought it was pretty good. It simply could have been better–they’d done better work in the past (although admittedly, the firefights were much better than those in AvP2).
The first Unreal did that as well. Scared the crap out of me with the blood and bodies everywhere. You sorta see an enemy but no combat.
If I wasn’t at work right now, I’d be able to spend the time writing up my thesis as to why FEAR 2 actually has the most under-rated game plot of the past few years. (Edited synopsis: It’s the only game I can think of that, consciously or otherwise, explicitly plays off of the Freudian idea of the link between Eros and Thanatos.)
Without getting too spoiler-y, IMHO FEAR’s fundamental flaw as a horror game is that the things which are meant to scare you - Alma, Paxton, the nightmarish visions, etc. - are not the things you end up fighting. In a good horror story, the main protagonist is in a constant state of dread about whatever monsters are chasing him because he’s always afraid of them bursting out of the shadows to kill him. But in FEAR the monsters just show up to spook you a bit, then you fight off another wave of generic dudes with guns. Imagine a Resident Evil game where you kept catching glimpses of zombies and other horrors, but you only fought other humans; that’s FEAR in a nutshell. After a while, I figured out the gimmick and rather than being scared every time Alma showed up, it was “hey, let’s see how they rip off ‘The Ring’ this time” because I knew she wasn’t an actual threat. [Except maybe once or twice.]
Fortunately, FEAR’s primary interest value is not as a horror game (Monolith’s concurrent game, Condemned, does that much better, imho.) but as an excellent shooter.
The first time I remember experiencing the trick of making a first level with no actual enemy encounters, was in the Aliens DOOM total conversion.
Yeah, that’s a great point. The fear and tension in Condemned were pretty well done. Plus I agree about FEAR being an excellent shooter, of course. But yeah, Condemned actually did make me scared at a few points, not just startled. I thought that had to do with my complete disbelief about anything supernatural. Of course, in the end Condemned did bring in the supernatural, but I played through most of that game believing it was just a hunt for a serial killer, so the dangers in it seemed much more real, and my mind could actually grasp that type of fear. As opposed to Alma, who was clearly a supernatural entity who I never feared.
As a matter of fact I could have done with a lot less scripted and “spooky” hokum before they allowed the shooting to begin.
I think I agree with you, but at the same time, I think that the other sections allowed the game to feel better paced, at least to me. It’s like they build up your adrenaline, make you excited during the fire fights, then slow things down and let you catch your breathe, maybe try to scare you unsuccessfully, but at least varying up the pace. I think that’s partially why the game never felt monotonous to me. Despite the monotony of the scenery and backdrops, the fights and spooky sections kept the gameplay at a tempo that kept the game fresh. I think fight after fight after fight would have gotten older a lot quicker. Although it worked for Quake 4 in the second half of that game, so I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.
Just to throw in my own two cents, I loved the original F.E.A.R. and even had room in my heart to enjoy those two non-canon expansions, if only as an excuse to see that ass-kicking AI they have again. That’s gotta be my favorite thing about this game 'cuz I don’t think I’ve ever been genuinely surprised by being snuck up on in by an AI a shooter before or since. And I’m a sucker for slow-motion, especially when I can flick it on and off whenever I want. Reading through the other posts about this game, it seems like I’m the only one who used it in every single fight. It was just so rad!
Ah, great. Readin’ through this thread makes me want to go and buy the Steam version and play through them all again. F.E.A.R. 2 was pretty darn disappointing so it might be fun to cleanse the palate. At least it’s only ten bucks. I’m not sure what’s up with that sixteen gig thing, though… I’m almost positive installing all three off the disc didn’t take anywhere near that much space on my hard drive. Guess I can go find out.
Stupid question, anyone know if I decided to uninstall one of the expansions off of Steam, will it uninstall everything or just the expansion in question?
I wouldn’t do it. I’m looking at the download progress page and both expansions are 1MB. This means that their information is already tied into the base game, which confirms my suspicion about the base game’s 17gb. You’re not going to be able to uninstall the portions of that 17gb that make up the expansions.
I’m really enjoying it so far, well worth the $10. And no Panda you’re not alone. I use the slow-mo as often as I can. I find I really need the extra accuracy to keep from running out of ammo.
Speaking of Quake 4, I am dying to revisit that game again and have been hoping it would hit Steam for awhile now. It didn’t get much attention launching the same time as FEAR years ago, but I found it the more enjoyable game at the time. Just a solid Raven setpiece fest.
Ditto. Especially those sequences when you basically wander through an abandoned level and maybe Alma shows up once. I was playing for the shooting, so I, um, wanted more shooting. Like now.
The first time I played FEAR I really enjoyed it, multiplayer included. The second time, I started to realize the repetitive environments, but if you consider each area like an arena, it kind of changes the way you look at it. Generally yeah, most fights are in an office environment, but the arrangement of cover and the types of enemies your fighting make each encounter a unique combat puzzle. And, some of the level design I remember thinking was really quite cool. For 10 bucks, I’d say give it a shot. If anything, it’s a fun game to play with a few friends online for a lan or a gaming night.
Also, first person slide tackles and dropkicks felt great.