2005 by Monolith and published by Sierra. Ah, sierra... How I miss thee. But anyway.

FEAR is an interesting FPS. It tries to be a mixture of first person action with horror

elements. And it both kind of works and kind of falls flat. Seemingly the game was created

by two people; one person wanted a horror FPS and one person wanted a sci fi FPS, and

then they sort of mixed the two together to varying results.

Now, the game can be scary. But the scary elements are mainly just relegated to freak

out moments - it's where your character kind of freaks out and sees disturbing imagery

that doesn't really have much of an impact on the game itself. Sure, during some of these

freak out moments you can be attacked, but it's very rare and really, it just sort of

comes out of nowhere. And I guess that would be scary, but it comes off as more annoying

because you don't know which freak out moment will actually have things that can hurt you.

Now another thing going for this game when it comes to horror is the fact that the main

villain is a creepy little girl that is basically an Eldrich abomination that no one can stop,

even if you detonate a nuke right on top of her she can just sort of teleport herself

out of there. That can be scary but she doesn't really do anything to you. She just sort of

tries to creep you out, I guess, even though in theory she should just be able to vaporize

you with her mind.

Really, the main enemies you fight in this game are just cloned soldiers. See, that's

where we're getting into sci fi FPS territory. You gotta fight clone troopers. And I don't

show it here, mainly to avoid spoilers, but yes, you will fight power armoured soldiers.

Not really horror based there, I'd have to say.

Really, first person shooters today, and when this game came out, weren't really scary,

and I think that's mainly because it's kind of hard to make them scary at this point.

First person shooters are really nothing new. You see, back when they were new, you could

actually scare people with them. Doom, for example. We all look at that game as just

a run and gun FPS, but back when that came out, it was pretty bloody scary because no

one had ever seen monsters that realistic before. Quake is another good example; you

never saw monsters that realistic before and you never saw an atmosphere that creepy before.

But here, though, it's just another first person shooter. Oh no, it's a creepy girl

who's just.... walking around. Really, you're not going to be that scared by this game.

I suppose if this is your first playthrough and it's late at night you might get a little

scared by it, but really, there's only one or two jump scares that are actually effective.

And the atmosphere, while good, just does not convey a sense of creepiness when you're

fighting some powered armour with a rocket launcher. It just doesn't work.

Now the graphics for this game are really very good. This was probably one of the best

looking games of 2005. Everything is highly detailed, all the enemies look really good

- and the enemies actually have good AI. They know how to go to cover, they can actually

crouch and crawl under things, and that's really this game's main strength. The AI is

very fun to fight.

Another aspect of this game that also got rather famous was bullet time. Basically you

can slow down the game and massacre enemies en mass. This, while fun, also decreased the

horror factor quite a bit. Because basically, you're a super human fighting an Eldrich abomination.

Now if you were just a generic person, maybe that might make the game a little more scary,

but when you're a highly trained soldier who's also genetically augmented on top of that,

the horror aspect is definitely reduced somewhat.

Ultimately, FEAR is a good first person shooter. But it is definitely not a horror first person

shooter in any way, shape or form. Do I recommend it? Yes I do. Primarily because the gameplay

is really quite fun and the enemy AI is really quite good. And so, this is Jon, signing off.