never finished perseus mandate before, so i thought it was about time to do so. PM is the lowest the first F.E.A.R. can get, full of depressingly bland lighting, boring skirmishes, and weak additions. LithTech lighting is some of the greatest to be found in a game from its time and even today. Pitch-black silhouettes of enemies and deep voids accent the surfaces of F.E.A.R. to create an impeccable atmosphere. fighting in the shadows, exploring vents in a vacuum, and witnessing horrors in the dark, the stark lighting is great in the base game. timegate studios, for some reason, thought that the game should just have global illumination turned to 11, making nighttime outdoors combat incredibly drab. no muzzle flashes to light up dark corners or flashlights to cut through shadows, just plain ol', evenly lit arenas for 90% of the game. the arenas dont make it any better. many of them are boring single-floor, open rooms with boxes as the only cover. gone are the anxiously close-quarters gunfights of the original F.E.A.R. as most encounters are quick skirmishes across large rooms and halls. the verticality of the original made it even tenser when fighting enemies as they could flank from above or take a long winding path for a surprise attack. enemies in PM can barely surprise you. the new enemies arent even that interesting. the mercs are the same thing as the clone soldiers, so they're basically clones of clones. the quick ninja mercs are too tanky and quick to be entertaining fights, made worse by their usually terrible arenas. the new monster enemies are neat, made better by the area they're introduced in. that's probably the highlight of the expansion, the underground area where the invisible beasts kill your buddy chen. timegate remembered about the great lighting and puts it to great use while also putting f.e.a.r. in a new locale. it's a nerve-wracking level where you tiptoe and obsess over your flashlight battery. but good things always end and you get thrust back into the grinder of boring to decent fights. the new weapons arent even that exciting with a 'new' assault rifle (it has a scope?!?! woah..), a weaker railgun equivalent, a kinda sick grenade launcher, and a neat laser beam rifle. the placeable turret isnt really worth mentioning. Its only value is that it can distract enemies. the highs reached f.e.a.r.'s baseline, with great horror visuals and atmosphere on occasion. however, the lows were so low and more common, just dragging the expansion into a pitiful crater. it does scratch the f.e.a.r. gameplay loop at times, but it's not wholly worth getting into unless you're a big f.e.a.r.-head, which is the only reason i even decided to play it after hearing it was disappointing. a middle-of-the-road expansion, so replay f.e.a.r.