This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Perseus Mandate is the second and final story expansion for the original FEAR, focusing on a different set of characters and their actions during the last act of the original game (my review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/428982/). As a result of this, spoilers will be discussed about that release, so you have been warned.
Because the same engine was reused, and because there are only so many ways to reiterate the same thing in a new tone, I’m not going to go into detail about the technical aspects of Perseus- the link above provides an introspective look into those facets should you be interested. In terms of any distinct graphical variances, I honestly thought that Perseus appeared slightly worse with regards to NPC models - the faces came off as more clay-ey than the solid countenances of the vanilla FEAR, possibly due to the mocap process being more rushed this time around. The game also overindulges in the blood-soaked room trope- it was already old by the end of the first FEAR, but here it can’t help but come off as edgy art design. Other than those two things, though, Perseus Mandate is darkly resplendent, and unlike Extraction Point, runs without any bugs (slippery dirt grounds being the exception).
In the sound department, I thought ambient noise was handled better- environments come across a lot more sonorous than before. Nothing spellbinding, but cool nonetheless.
Gameplay-wise, again, controls are handled similarly. In addition to all the fresh gear from Extraction Point, you have two new guns: a more powerful assault rifle with tracer rounds and a lighting laser that’s essentially a rehash of the particle beam from the OG. So not much in the way of creativity, though they are fun to use.
Really, where Perseus visibly shakes things up is in its newly-conceived enemy types. You got a different merc group armed with higher-caliber weaponry; giant soldiers wielding equally giant shields; demented beings who abruptly sprout out of pools of shadow ala the Wallmasters from Ocarina of Time; and, most intriguing, goggle-wearing supersoldiers dubbed Nightcrawlers who are not only partly immune to reflex time, but capable of crawling and leaping everywhere like spiders. While Nightcrawlers are more akin to minibosses, they make for some tense fights whenever you encounter them.
Besides bringing back previous archetypes from Extraction Point, Perseus further continues the trend of shifting the series in a pure action direction. There are no drawn-out horror intervals, just occasional moments of fright that quickly dissipate to leave room for more fighting. I personally had no problem with this since neither of the prequels were particularly scary, although ardent fans will certainly find flaws here.
Perseus also feels like it employs open areas at a greater frequency than was done before, which made it a little funner to play since closed-in environs are inherently more straining on the eyes than wider ones. That being said, while I did claim in my critique of FEAR that the enemy AI would have benefitted from being able to function in broader places, maybe I spoke too soon as the antagonists came off as dumber here. With the exception of the Nightcrawlers, everyone else tends to just stand-in-place and trade suppressing fire with you until you get the better of them. I don’t know if this was an issue on TimeGate’s coding or me being ignorant in my recollection of FEAR and Extraction Point, but I’ll leave it here for the sake of a record.
A decent amount of missions give you your own allied partners, and unlike the mercs, the programming for them is actually pretty good- they won’t be chucking grenades or anything complicated, but they will actually kill opposing forces.
Now, it’s the story that gamers will be most interested in as that is the real differentiator for Perseus. Well, you’ll be happy to know that I ended up liking Mandate’s narrative about as much as the vanilla FEAR, largely because it essentially copy/pastes it! As noted in the introduction, Perseus is a sidequel centered on a second FEAR team who are deployed to another Armachan building to obtain data on some project called, you guessed it, Perseus. And it’s nearly a beat-for-beat retread of the OG Fear, with your three-man team getting separated at points, you uncovering Armachan’s secrets about Alma, an even an endgame set in the vault.
There are narrative issues at play here. For one, the Perseus Project isn’t as fleshed out as Project Origin was, and it didn’t make sense to me why the two Recon Teams weren’t sharing information with each other as they uncovered related data. Secondly, while materializing less than before, Alma still continues to be a frustrating plot device, and the post-credits doesn’t line-up with immediate prior events.+ I also heavily disliked TimeGate reemploying the silent protagonist trope- your unnamed “Sergeant” has no business being anonymous or quiet when his teammates don’t have either trait. Combined with him possessing reflex vision and experiencing intimate hallucinations, he is, for all intents and purposes, The-Point-Man-in-Everything-but-Name, rendering him an extremely lazy ripoff.
Despite these downsides, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t kind of thrilling tracking down and opening another one of Armachan’s skeleton-filled closets whilst simultaneously dealing with supernatural machinations. For all the negative sentiment Perseus Mandate gets, I definitely enjoyed it more than Extraction Point and would recommend it, flaws and all, to those who appreciated the story of the first FEAR. At the very least, in contrast to its predecessors, it has a pretty satisfactory conclusion.
Notes
-After completion, Perseus includes three bonus missions that are pure shooters involving you running around clearing waves of gunners as you try to progress to the end of a level. I personally didn’t finish them after dying during the first, but more content for you if you like the gameplay.
-I’m surprised to hear popular complaints about the length -- to me, Perseus kind of overstayed its welcome, but even if it hadn’t it took me 30+ minutes more to beat than Extraction Point.
-Steven Blum voices one of your teammates! I don’t know if I can say his voice fit the Army Captain role, but it was sweet recognizing him.
-This is the first time I’ve seen explicit product placement in a video game, with DELL and Alienware Computers being used by Armachan personnel (though I guess it’s all Dell since Alien is a subsidiary).
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+Like a sensation of déjà vu, Alma is back and inconsistent in her magnitude. She’s clearly against the soldiers of fortune trying to acquire Fettel’s DNA, as exhibited by her murdering some of them, yet that’s just it….why is she allowing so many of them to continue forward on their mission whilst vaporizing a select few? No explanation is given whatsoever.
++The post-credits shows a corrupt US Senator being handed Fettel’s DNA ala the ending of Dead Man’s Chest with Norrington giving Beckett Davy Jones’s Heart. My question is how? You blatantly kill the head assassin holding it and take it back to FEAR HQ, so where did this rando get it from? At least show some switch happening between henchmen if you’re going to pull a fast one.
Perseus Mandate is the second and final story expansion for the original FEAR, focusing on a different set of characters and their actions during the last act of the original game (my review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/428982/). As a result of this, spoilers will be discussed about that release, so you have been warned.
Because the same engine was reused, and because there are only so many ways to reiterate the same thing in a new tone, I’m not going to go into detail about the technical aspects of Perseus- the link above provides an introspective look into those facets should you be interested. In terms of any distinct graphical variances, I honestly thought that Perseus appeared slightly worse with regards to NPC models - the faces came off as more clay-ey than the solid countenances of the vanilla FEAR, possibly due to the mocap process being more rushed this time around. The game also overindulges in the blood-soaked room trope- it was already old by the end of the first FEAR, but here it can’t help but come off as edgy art design. Other than those two things, though, Perseus Mandate is darkly resplendent, and unlike Extraction Point, runs without any bugs (slippery dirt grounds being the exception).
In the sound department, I thought ambient noise was handled better- environments come across a lot more sonorous than before. Nothing spellbinding, but cool nonetheless.
Gameplay-wise, again, controls are handled similarly. In addition to all the fresh gear from Extraction Point, you have two new guns: a more powerful assault rifle with tracer rounds and a lighting laser that’s essentially a rehash of the particle beam from the OG. So not much in the way of creativity, though they are fun to use.
Really, where Perseus visibly shakes things up is in its newly-conceived enemy types. You got a different merc group armed with higher-caliber weaponry; giant soldiers wielding equally giant shields; demented beings who abruptly sprout out of pools of shadow ala the Wallmasters from Ocarina of Time; and, most intriguing, goggle-wearing supersoldiers dubbed Nightcrawlers who are not only partly immune to reflex time, but capable of crawling and leaping everywhere like spiders. While Nightcrawlers are more akin to minibosses, they make for some tense fights whenever you encounter them.
Besides bringing back previous archetypes from Extraction Point, Perseus further continues the trend of shifting the series in a pure action direction. There are no drawn-out horror intervals, just occasional moments of fright that quickly dissipate to leave room for more fighting. I personally had no problem with this since neither of the prequels were particularly scary, although ardent fans will certainly find flaws here.
Perseus also feels like it employs open areas at a greater frequency than was done before, which made it a little funner to play since closed-in environs are inherently more straining on the eyes than wider ones. That being said, while I did claim in my critique of FEAR that the enemy AI would have benefitted from being able to function in broader places, maybe I spoke too soon as the antagonists came off as dumber here. With the exception of the Nightcrawlers, everyone else tends to just stand-in-place and trade suppressing fire with you until you get the better of them. I don’t know if this was an issue on TimeGate’s coding or me being ignorant in my recollection of FEAR and Extraction Point, but I’ll leave it here for the sake of a record.
A decent amount of missions give you your own allied partners, and unlike the mercs, the programming for them is actually pretty good- they won’t be chucking grenades or anything complicated, but they will actually kill opposing forces.
Now, it’s the story that gamers will be most interested in as that is the real differentiator for Perseus. Well, you’ll be happy to know that I ended up liking Mandate’s narrative about as much as the vanilla FEAR, largely because it essentially copy/pastes it! As noted in the introduction, Perseus is a sidequel centered on a second FEAR team who are deployed to another Armachan building to obtain data on some project called, you guessed it, Perseus. And it’s nearly a beat-for-beat retread of the OG Fear, with your three-man team getting separated at points, you uncovering Armachan’s secrets about Alma, an even an endgame set in the vault.
There are narrative issues at play here. For one, the Perseus Project isn’t as fleshed out as Project Origin was, and it didn’t make sense to me why the two Recon Teams weren’t sharing information with each other as they uncovered related data. Secondly, while materializing less than before, Alma still continues to be a frustrating plot device, and the post-credits doesn’t line-up with immediate prior events.+ I also heavily disliked TimeGate reemploying the silent protagonist trope- your unnamed “Sergeant” has no business being anonymous or quiet when his teammates don’t have either trait. Combined with him possessing reflex vision and experiencing intimate hallucinations, he is, for all intents and purposes, The-Point-Man-in-Everything-but-Name, rendering him an extremely lazy ripoff.
Despite these downsides, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t kind of thrilling tracking down and opening another one of Armachan’s skeleton-filled closets whilst simultaneously dealing with supernatural machinations. For all the negative sentiment Perseus Mandate gets, I definitely enjoyed it more than Extraction Point and would recommend it, flaws and all, to those who appreciated the story of the first FEAR. At the very least, in contrast to its predecessors, it has a pretty satisfactory conclusion.
Notes
-After completion, Perseus includes three bonus missions that are pure shooters involving you running around clearing waves of gunners as you try to progress to the end of a level. I personally didn’t finish them after dying during the first, but more content for you if you like the gameplay.
-I’m surprised to hear popular complaints about the length -- to me, Perseus kind of overstayed its welcome, but even if it hadn’t it took me 30+ minutes more to beat than Extraction Point.
-Steven Blum voices one of your teammates! I don’t know if I can say his voice fit the Army Captain role, but it was sweet recognizing him.
-This is the first time I’ve seen explicit product placement in a video game, with DELL and Alienware Computers being used by Armachan personnel (though I guess it’s all Dell since Alien is a subsidiary).
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+Like a sensation of déjà vu, Alma is back and inconsistent in her magnitude. She’s clearly against the soldiers of fortune trying to acquire Fettel’s DNA, as exhibited by her murdering some of them, yet that’s just it….why is she allowing so many of them to continue forward on their mission whilst vaporizing a select few? No explanation is given whatsoever.
++The post-credits shows a corrupt US Senator being handed Fettel’s DNA ala the ending of Dead Man’s Chest with Norrington giving Beckett Davy Jones’s Heart. My question is how? You blatantly kill the head assassin holding it and take it back to FEAR HQ, so where did this rando get it from? At least show some switch happening between henchmen if you’re going to pull a fast one.