F.E.A.R. 3

When I first started playing FEAR 3 I thought it was fantastic. Nothing too complicated, amazingly smooth and detailed graphics, excellent sound as well.
But it has two things wrong with it. One is a minor thing, the other a huge annoyance. So annoying in fact that my PC is lucky it's not found itself being heaved out of the window.

The minor point is that FEAR 3 does not know what type of game it wants to be; one minute you are running round, shooting solders, and the next minute it's all horror scenes and screams of who knows what.

The horrors parts are the best; very spooky and it even makes you jump at times.

But the most annoying thing ? The thing that makes we want to launch my PC in to the air ? You can't save your progress. What a really fantastic idea that is. So, if you're maybe not that good at it (like me, it would appear) then you can find yourself having to reply a hard section maybe 20 or more times, each time you are killed (which is often in my case), back you go the last check point, having no choice but to start it all over again.

Which cretin thought that was a good idea ? Cus I can tell them now; it's not.

The original game has now been diluted to the point where it is just a standard FPS, and not a very good one at that. There is no depth to the story at all, its just an excuse to shoot things in increasingly improbable environments. One of the great things about the original game was that a lot of the action took place in everyday places, like offices or warehouses. FEAR 3 is just one generic "game level" after another, with convenient things to hide behind and balconies to shoot from.

Once again the PC version seems to be an afterthought, but the feeling of this being a console game is even greater this time around. Worst of all, there isn't even a health level anymore. Forget the first aid kits because you can now auto-heal - that really makes the game tense, when you know you can just hide for a while and everything will be ok. Despite this, because the game only saves through checkpoints, some parts are ridiculously difficult to the point where I just gave up because I got bored of playing the same thing over and over again from the start of the checkpoint. Also, there are now achievements. Just as you're getting into the game, the atmosphere is totally ruined by a message box telling you that you've completed some pointless achievement. To top it all, there seems to be no improvement on the graphics at all and the sound quality is terrible, especially on the cut scenes.

There are a few good ideas, playing as Fettel is quite fun and different, but on the whole it would forget about this game until its in a clearance sale somewhere, just replay the original again and have some real fun!

Let's get the bad points over first;

Crysis 2 is a better FPS and is currently half the price, get that if you have neither this nor Crysis 2.

Fear 1 was a better suspense shooter; this is more of a conventional FPS.

This is another console port; some low res textures even on maximum settings, and auto aim is set by default so you have to disable it if you want a good game with a keyboard/mouse (but then Crysis 2 did that as well...!).

Fear 3 is very much a corridor shooter in terms of level design; the levels feel a tad too cramped for my liking, especially at the beginning. Also, although the characters in the game look current-gen (high textures, ragdoll physics, good movement animations and AI), the levels are more of a mixed bag and some look distinctly previous generation: very 'boxy' buildings with little or no curvature, low poly and low texture, and flat surfaces stay flat (i.e. no DirectX 10/11 complex shaders to liven them up).

Occasionally, there is only the most tenuous link between the end of one level and the beginning of the next. Even having seen the connecting cutscenes, some of the levels could have been switched around and the storyline would not care.

This is certainly not a game I can recommend at full price; wait a month or so until it drops to mid price.

That's the main bad points (and perhaps showstoppers for some) out of the way. Lets get to the good points.

I like Monolith games. Although never cutting edge, and never with standout set-pieces or graphics, they were always enjoyable as they are a little different from standard fare. Shogo, Blood 2 and Fear 1 all come to mind.
As an aside, the single player campaign reminds me a lot of a very old (and obscure) game from the same timeframe as Shogo/Blood (late 1990's) - Requiem: Avenging Angel. The mix of spell-casting and bullet time go some way to this feeling of similarity, but its mainly the atmosphere that does it; both nail that sense of an 'End of time' biblical story arc.

The main technical point in favour for Fear 3 is that it is simply a competent and out of the ordinary fps shooter. It's different because the AI is better than usual (although it does occasionally get confused, but not enough to kill immersion) and there is a rather good cover system. Not only is it good, but the AI know how to use it too!

The AI really shines at the higher skill levels; you are doing yourself and the game a disservice if you play at the low skill levels, because its only at the high skill levels you see how good the AI is.

You also have two playable characters; once you have cleared each level as the main character (`Point man'), you unlock the ability to play as Fettal (a character who uses psychic abilities rather than conventional weapons). This adds to replayability. The multiplayer options looks VERY interesting, but because I am an early purchaser, I haven't found many people to game with yet.

Fear 3 is more of a straight shooter, but it does have moments of the original Fear: here's a rather creepy supermarket section for example (with some rather cool double Uzi zombie ahooting... creepy and cool at the same time!), and later there is a haunting trip to the genesis of Project Origin (part of the backstory from the original Fear game), which shows off some cool lighting and sound effects (and which finally gives you the 'I am the hunted here!' feel of the original game).

The sound generally is very good; very atmospheric with good chunky weapon effects. I particularly like the bullet ricochets during intense shootouts.

Fear 3 runs well; FRAPS see a healthy 60-70 frames per second with all settings maxed out on 1920x1200, using FXAA. Thats pretty good for a DirectX10/11 game, especially when I have a very mid range system; AMD 6870, Q6600 quad core over-clocked to 3.6Ghz ( putting it on the heels of an i5, gotta love core 2; well overclockable!), and 8Gb memory, all running on Windows 7. Not a single crash or issue from start to finish, ao not a game that needs patching to complete.

So to conclude, 3 stars at full price (if I were being tight), 4 otherwise, but 5 stars when the price drops to post release mid price levels.