F.E.A.R. Review
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Article by: Heather Mckinnon
Heather took the time to write this great review for throwback Thursday of the one of the best FPS suspense games ever made, the original F.E.A.R.!
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So my Dad had been getting after me to play F.E.A.R. for a long time. I hadn’t been into gaming for a while. But now that the Gaming Queen is back and proudly sitting in her throne, I played and loved the first F.E.A.R. game. I will be giving another review on the two expansions after I’ve played them, as well as the second and third games, because after this game I just can’t get enough. There may be some spoilers so if you haven’t played the game read with caution. :D
Graphics: This game came out quite some time ago, in 2005, and honestly, I thought even for today’s capabilities the graphics were really cool. The effect of having dust kick up when you’re in the middle of a shoot-out with a bunch of replica soldiers was such a great touch. They really thought through how to make this game freaky. For the first hour of playing, everything was scaring the crap out of me, the way they had the scary characters appear in the game was so well done. My only criticism that is if you weren’t facing the right way, you missed stuff. That sucked. But it does leave the potential to not know something is there next time you play. Everything is so atmospheric. The offices are given great realistic touches like post-it notes. The phones have messages to check as well. You get so much story just from listening to them. The blood effects were really good as well. Bloody pools leading up to and into an elevator, blood dripping onto the floor, blood smeared into a trail of something to follow. Oh it was just so riveting.
Storyline: I was fascinated. What happened here? What did they do to this girl “Alma”? How does she relate to me? Why is my character getting all these freaky visions and having Fettel constantly come after me and yet not kill me? The way the dots kept connecting made me want to play and find the answers to my questions. It made me want…need to get through the next bunch of soldiers so I could find out what had happened. One thing that I kept thinking was how this game reminded me of Max Payne. With the slow motion effect as well as the flashbacks. I really liked how they were used, it was a nice touch because they made it their own. It was also good that people kept coming onto your radio to talk to you, otherwise I think the game would have been too scary to play for me.
Overall Freakiness: Like I said before, the first hour scared the hell out of me. Well I said “crap” but same diff lol. Getting jumpy at things faded away for me after a while and I was just in a constant state of anticipation, which is sometimes more fun. Yet there were still times in the game that I was totally startled and ended up wasting bullets on an apparition. And as hard as it was to explore everything because you think something’s going to jump out at you, it really is the way to go to find awesome boosters that make the game so much more fun to play. You get tougher, and that really makes it worth going into scary dark places to explore. I will give nothing away about specific encounters because that just spoils it. But I will say this: turning around is fun.
Closing thoughts: It’s really great to get back into first-person shooters with a game like this. It makes you want to play others. But a stipulation for me is that it must have a good storyline, or it’s just boring, I need the whole package to keep me entertained. I’ve heard disappointing things about the third game, but I’m hoping once I get to play it, it won’t be so bad. Again, I really loved this game and I think if you’re into horror stories, you will too. Hmm…maybe I’ll cosplay as Alma next…red dress Alma, (SPOILER!!) not naked Alma haha whoops…
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June 21 2012