"An Underwhelming Yet Serviceable Expansion"
The second and final expansion for F.E.A.R. had a lot of potential for both adding to the story of the franchise as well as expanding on the combat in a unique or thoughtful way. However, instead of trying something new, this expansion delivers next to no original content for the series up to this point, a few decent but boring weapons, and takes a huge step back in terms of quality of combat, horror, and graphical fidelity.
The first thing every player will notice right out of the gate is the awful texture work done for this game. Many buildings, streets, floors, and walls are extremely plain, looking completely out of place in a laughable way. While this doesn't directly affect the gameplay in any major way, it definitely made the experience much less interesting to go through, which is especially rough considering that the environments are one of the weakest aspects of the original game and its first expansion. A much better effort should have been put into making the game look nice, especially with this coming out two years after the base game's release.
The combat is also noticeably more bland in this entry. There are less areas where enemies can pull off interesting tactical maneuvers against the player, leading to very bland fights that rely on sticking your body in and out of cover repeatedly. The dynamic nature of the previous entries is mostly lost in a lot of the levels, which is a huge shame because it is what the first game shined at. The visual effects are still intact, making every firefight extremely theatrical, but the lack of quality textures leaves much to be desired.
The horror is also very poor in this title. There are a multitude of cheesy jumpscares that only a toddler would freak out at, with a VERY small handful being effective. The death scenes for some characters are also pretty bad, save for one during the final third of the game that was pretty interesting to witness. There are many extended horror sequences that are a part of the game now as well, which lead to extremely boring sections of the game that have irritating enemies to kill. The base game had a good balance of horror and action, but the action was always much better than the horror. This time around, the developers didn't get the memo.
The weapons are plentiful, but some players may grow tired of the arsenal. The new weapons added in this expansion are just "okay", but aren't nearly as effective as older weapons. Unfortunately, those weapons fell very boring to use after 15+ hours of F.E.A.R. content.
Other than this set of flaws, the nature of the game is still intact. The new enemies are pretty similar to the base game's, minus the cool voices those dudes had before. The entire experience is diluted this time though, so many players may not feel like finishing the experience due to a lack of meaningful content. The story is still pretty bad, and starts to take a turn for the worse once the convoluted "Origin" piece is added to the franchises' lore.
Overall, I can still Recommend this expansion if you're really craving some more F.E.A.R. , but you won't walk away very impressed with this one. There should have been more effort in not only maintaining the quality of the original's experience, but with adding interesting and compelling designs that would make this expansion fresh for fans. All that remains is an "alright" experience, one that some players may choose to forget.
Final Verdict: 6/10 (Above Average)
The second and final expansion for F.E.A.R. had a lot of potential for both adding to the story of the franchise as well as expanding on the combat in a unique or thoughtful way. However, instead of trying something new, this expansion delivers next to no original content for the series up to this point, a few decent but boring weapons, and takes a huge step back in terms of quality of combat, horror, and graphical fidelity.
The first thing every player will notice right out of the gate is the awful texture work done for this game. Many buildings, streets, floors, and walls are extremely plain, looking completely out of place in a laughable way. While this doesn't directly affect the gameplay in any major way, it definitely made the experience much less interesting to go through, which is especially rough considering that the environments are one of the weakest aspects of the original game and its first expansion. A much better effort should have been put into making the game look nice, especially with this coming out two years after the base game's release.
The combat is also noticeably more bland in this entry. There are less areas where enemies can pull off interesting tactical maneuvers against the player, leading to very bland fights that rely on sticking your body in and out of cover repeatedly. The dynamic nature of the previous entries is mostly lost in a lot of the levels, which is a huge shame because it is what the first game shined at. The visual effects are still intact, making every firefight extremely theatrical, but the lack of quality textures leaves much to be desired.
The horror is also very poor in this title. There are a multitude of cheesy jumpscares that only a toddler would freak out at, with a VERY small handful being effective. The death scenes for some characters are also pretty bad, save for one during the final third of the game that was pretty interesting to witness. There are many extended horror sequences that are a part of the game now as well, which lead to extremely boring sections of the game that have irritating enemies to kill. The base game had a good balance of horror and action, but the action was always much better than the horror. This time around, the developers didn't get the memo.
The weapons are plentiful, but some players may grow tired of the arsenal. The new weapons added in this expansion are just "okay", but aren't nearly as effective as older weapons. Unfortunately, those weapons fell very boring to use after 15+ hours of F.E.A.R. content.
Other than this set of flaws, the nature of the game is still intact. The new enemies are pretty similar to the base game's, minus the cool voices those dudes had before. The entire experience is diluted this time though, so many players may not feel like finishing the experience due to a lack of meaningful content. The story is still pretty bad, and starts to take a turn for the worse once the convoluted "Origin" piece is added to the franchises' lore.
Overall, I can still Recommend this expansion if you're really craving some more F.E.A.R. , but you won't walk away very impressed with this one. There should have been more effort in not only maintaining the quality of the original's experience, but with adding interesting and compelling designs that would make this expansion fresh for fans. All that remains is an "alright" experience, one that some players may choose to forget.
Final Verdict: 6/10 (Above Average)