𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐨𝐧

#𝟑: 𝐅.𝐄.𝐀.𝐑.

Where to even begin.

For starters I honestly don’t know what I was expecting going on. I knew that the game was taking homage from psychological Japanese horror movies and the action spectacle of John Woo movies, and I knew it was more shooter than horror but that was about it. But man I was not ready for the absolute blast that was FEAR.
Just wanna get the negative stuff out of the way first since I have very few complaints. For starters the horror isn’t very scary, hell I’d even say at times it’s honestly very laughable at times. Whenever Alma did her little spookie light trick it never failed to not scare me, and whenever it tried to pull a proto-Outlast 2 flashback scene it’s the funniest thing in the whole goddamn game.

Ok so if the horror of this “horror game” didn’t really work on me then why am I giving this game a 9? Well that’s because the FPS side of this “Horror Shooter” is quite possibly one of the best FPS’s of the 2000’s. For starters the visuals hold up extremely well, I sometimes forget that Lithtech’s Jupiter EX had the same abilities to make lighting and visual effects almost on par with IdTech4 and Source, which for a studio like Monolith who were just getting off titles like AVP2 and Tron 2.0 it’s really impressive that their in house engine was able to compete with IdTech 4 and a lot better than their stuff made on the Build engine. Everything from the really impressive lighting and reflective flashes from the muzzle of your gun really help give each area of the game such a cold and isolated atmosphere; which I think is the closest the game ever got to being “scary” and I mean that in a good way. The environments all look really well detailed (for 2005), all the areas feel really well designed both as levels and places in the game. It’s about as perfect a game could look for 2005.

The actual combat however thought, OOOOOOH BOY; that’s where the real fun begins. All of the guns feel and sound so satisfactory in a way I can’t properly describe through words. Everything from your basic assault rifle to your bone dissolving Type-7 Particle gun that sounds like a mix between a blender and a microwave. They just feel good I don’t know a better way of tying it out, you know when your just playing a game and the guns just click for you and they feel and sounds like you have the power of god in your hand, that’s what it felt like when I was playing the first level of FEAR. The crown jewel of the guns however would have to be the shotgun, my god the shotgun. Not only is it extremely overpowered and took the second gunspot in my arsenal for most of the game, but it just feel so fucking good to use I will gladly award it the “𝒮𝒯𝑅𝑀'𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝒮𝒽𝑜𝓉𝑔𝓊𝓃 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝒾𝒹𝟤𝟢𝟢𝟢'𝓈 𝒶𝓌𝒶𝓇𝒹” for being just so fucking great, the power to just send enemies flaying away with their ragdolled dead body hitting walls to the way stray bullets will hit contrest walls and leave dents midfight, it’s just allaround a master piece in gun form.

That brings me to what is possibly my favorite part of the game, the reactive environments and the game’s AI. I will not pretend like I know what I’m talking about when discussing the game’s AI so I’ll just go with the very simplistic way of explaining it. So all of the enemies work on a system called ‘goal oriented action planning’. The AI is set with predetermined ways of executing their goal for said area they're placed in; in which the goal is to stop you from reaching the next area. The AI can achieve this goal by trying to bum rush you, flank you by running around your cover, they’ll take cover from your gunfire, and a lot more I’m probably forgetting. The AI takes all the predetermined points given to them depending on the area and forms a possible plan on the spot to try and kill you. If you enter a room and a bunch a enemies before the other AI’s can react their first response is to either go for cover or try to kill you, if the AI survives its first encounter it will survey the situation and determine whether or not it’s previous plan is still worth it and if the AI deems it’s not then I’ll try something else like throwing a grenade to get you out of cover to bum rush you or try to flank you to shot you from behind. The enemies also have callouts so you can determine what their gonna do next and to make it feel as if the squads of enemies are all working in sequential but if I’m remembering it correctly that’s not how it works, the call outs are just a simple trick to make the player think the AI are working together when in reality each enemy is it’s own AI making their own plan depending on the situation. Again I’m probably scraping the basic surface of how this AI works. If you want to learn more about it from someone who actually understands computer programming I’d suggest reading an article about it or watching a video. From my perspective however as the simple video game enjoyer everything I just described made for an amazing experience, with the AI basically making up their plan as they go along with the fight; making almost every fight in the game almost completely unique then the other.
The other part of the game that really solidifies the game’s combat as legendary is the reactive environments.
What I mean by reactive environments is that almost everything in arenas you shoot besides enemies have a real tangible outcome mid battle. Blood from your enemies will splatter the walls, glass from shot out windows will litter the ground, dust will get kicked up from explosions while bullets still fly through them, bullets will ricochet off metal walls and leave holes in the walls of concrete it hit, if a bullet hits an electric power boxes it will shoot out electrical sparks and smoke or when shooting explosive barrels will lead to enemies going flying along with items around it flying of or breaking apart. Now take all of this, and give the player the ability to go into slow motion, with this you can see the force coming off the bullets from your gun, you can see the particles and heat coming off of the explosion, when you fire your shotgun you can watch and see the spreading bullets send an enemy ragdolling away while also hitting the walls around it leave bullet holes in the wall. Take all of that, plus the well crafted AI and a really well done OST, and you have a full proof combat system that never got old even 8 hours into the game.

Go play FEAR. Do it now. It’s a little hard to get the game working on modern hardware and having WB lock the game behind a bundle of FEAR 2 and 3 is honestly really shitty but please go play it, it’s honestly one of the best FPS’s I’ve played in a while and I’m so glad I was able to get it working.