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Hi guys, here's a review i had written for my website. the website is still under construction
*viewzreviewz.com/fear-–-first-encounter-assault-recon/
Here's the full review.
*viewzreviewz.com/fear-–-first-encounter-assault-recon/
Here's the full review.
F.E.A.R. – FIRST ENCOUNTER ASSAULT RECONNAISANCE
GENRE : Horror FPS
GAME DEVELOPER : Monolith
GAME PUBLISHER : VU Games
OVERALL RATING = 9.25 / 10
F.E.A.R., the best from Monolith, isn’t just another First Person Shooter, but a perfect mix of horror and FPS that sends chills down your spine every now and then. Graphically a very advanced game, F.E.A.R. requires you to have a cutting edge computer to play it at high details. An Alienware would do justice to the visual experience it has to offer (sorry but I won’t be able to lend mine).
The game, a teeny-weeny bit short, has a gripping story that unfolds as you piece together information gathered from answering machines, the brilliantly done up hallucinations you have time and again and the cut-scenes. The hallucinations have the bad habit of popping up when you least expect it, relocating your heart somewhere in the general vicinity of your mouth.
F.E.A.R. – First Encounter Assault Reconnaissance – is a task force created with the sole purpose to fight the supernatural. You play a newly recruited F.E.A.R. operative. Your reflex time, strength and speed recorded in training were way off the charts, something not seen before. However, you seem to remember nothing about your past i.e. before you joined F.E.A.R. The U.S. Department of Defence starts a secret project Perseus to create an army of super-soldiers who would communicate directly with their commander. When Harlan Wade`s daughter, Alma, was born, she looked a simple girl, but Harlan soon discovered that she had great telepathic abilities. It was also decided early on, that if the prototypes gestated in the womb of a psychic mother, the results would be more favorable. When Alma was 8 years old, she was chosen to be the mother and was placed in an induced coma in a cryogenically frozen shielded cell known as ‘The Vault’ while pregnant. She gave birth to Paxton Fettel, who went on to become the Commander of the telepathic soldiers. Some unexpected events down the line force the project to be abandoned and the life support to Alma’s cell was disconnected, thereby killing her. Apparently after some time, the opening of The Vault is ordered with a specific purpose (that’s for you to find out, no spoilers here). Alma’s spirit makes contact with Fettel, who by now has an army of super soldiers and immediately begins his bloody rampage, with a goal to hunt down and kill everyone that was involved in the project. . .
The eerie environments and the terrifying visions make your heart beat so loud, you’d hear it through noise-cancellation headphones. The last few levels have less of action and more of hallucinations and cut-scenes that explain the story. Path-finding is a breeze and there aren’t many puzzles that make you exercise your grey matter.
Slow-motion effect, though not a new concept by any means, has been brilliantly executed. When caught up in massive gun-fights, which are few and far between, if you engage slo-motion you can clearly see the turbulence caused in the air by the bullets. Though it is a limited resource, it replenishes fairly quickly so you usually have it handy whenever you need it. Thanks to this, you can throw stealth in the air, walk into the midst of battles and carefully pick off-headshots.
As I had mentioned before, F.E.A.R. could comfortably slaughter the latest graphic card (read Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX). The marvel lies in the fact that it adapts wonderfully well with even comparatively less powerful systems, so you don’t miss too much of the fun. I played fear on my AMD Athlon 64 3200+ system with 1GB 400MHz RAM and a Sapphire X1600PRO graphic card at 1024x768 with 4x AA, 4x AF and most other details set to medium and got a constant 35+ frames per second (definitely playable). I enjoyed most of the effects, but had to keep soft-shadows off. Soft-shadows, though has sweet rewards in F.E.A.R., causes an enormous drop in frame rates. Indoor shoot-outs cause dust to rise up, hindering your vision. You could even turn around and by counting the number of holes on the wall behind, tell the exact number of bullets fired. Attention paid to details like these, makes the game stand apart from the countless other shooters available.
The advanced A.I. of F.E.A.R. deserves a special mention. The enemy squads base their strategies and plan of action depending on your style of play. If you prefer to flank, hidden behind obstacles, they try to flush you out using grenades. While if you prefer charging right into the action Rambo-style, their tactics are 1800 opposite. A lot is revealed from the soldier’s talk and radio chatter too. For example, if a soldier calls on his radio for reinforcements, you can safely presume that he is the last guy left from his squad. Another interesting thing is that the soldiers are quite capable of disobeying orders! A common dialogue that ensues while you’re on a rampage:
Commander: Go go go!
Soldier : No <random profanities > way
The AI’s response to injuries differs, depending on where they’re hurt. For instance, a bullet on the leg will make them collapse but as you’ll soon realize, this doesn’t stop them from shooting at you while crawling for cover. I got a rude shock when that happened the first time. Seeing the guy collapse, I presumed that he was dead and turned my attention elsewhere, only to realize he was still shooting at me. Similarly, a shot at the hand would make him drop his weapon. Give him some time and he’ll pick up his weapon again to fire at you. You’re of course, just waiting to shoot him again <insert evil laugh here>.
The only grudge I have is that one doesn’t face much variety in terms of enemies. Apart from the standard soldiers, you face some pretty challenging enemies such as EVEs that are basically super-heavily armoured don’t-know-whats (they’re definitely not humans) and occasionally partly invisible ninja-like again-not-humans. These enemies however have been greatly under-used and you face only four to five of each of them in contrast to the hundreds of standard soldiers.
The audio and sounds of the game have been given a lot of attention. Using high quality headphones or 5.1 speakers would definitely have its rewards. Each weapon has its characteristic sound and you can hear each and every shell hitting the ground. When slo-mo is engaged, the sound effects only get better. The environments, however, don’t have much variety. You seem to spend a lot of time in similar places which gives you the feeling that the developers have indulged in a lot of copy-pasting of code. As mentioned earlier, even the AI has been recycled a bit too much. But apart from these slight drawbacks, the game excels in all other fields and is a must play for all FPS fans. For the weak-hearted, give it a wide berth.
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