 F.E.A.R. | F.E.A.R. | | Vivendi Universal | | Day 1 Studios | | Rating(s) Pending | | August 8, 2006 | | First Person Shooter | | Yes | | 1 | | TBD |
Anticipation score 85% Hands on impressions Skipping the introductory movie, the demo immediately drops me into F.E.A.R.'s single player adventure. A car drives me to the backside of a treatment plant, and I am ordered to gain access to this plant via the sewer system. My main objective is to find and neutralize a person that goes by the name of Paxton Fettel. Weapons at my disposal are a pistol and a sub-machinegun, but I also seem to have quite a few melee attacks.
Making my way through the sewers, I immediately notice one of F.E.A.R.'s main selling points: the game oozes atmosphere. The tunnels are often badly lit, with flickering lights and threatening shadows. I shoot a light source, causing it to move around, which in turn makes the shadows dance across the walls. The music is of the ambient type, but there also is a moody, creepy background tune, and then there are a couple of shock effects as a mysterious little girl briefly appears in front of me. All of this is keeping me glued to the screen.
Exiting the sewers, I arrive in front of a control room. I can hear radio chatter from enemy soldiers. Taking a peek around the corner, I see a soldier, fully geared up and wearing a gas mask. After I take him out with a couple of well-timed shots, his buddy decides to dive through the window and surprise me. I throw a grenade, and it explodes upon contact, creating a neat ripple effect. This is where I get my hands on the G2A2 Assault Rifle, and as I try the assault rifle out, I notice that it rips chunks out of the wall, kicking up dust in the process.
Past the control room, I have to get through a rather dark corridor, and I can already make out even more enemy soldiers here. I have the element of surprise, and easily take one out, but the ones left standing decide to team up on me. One soldier takes cover behind a pillar, and another one throws down a rack, and moves behind it in order to give himself cover. They all show a high degree of awareness to their surroundings, as they constantly dodge and strafe. This, coupled with the rather limited ammo, makes it necessary for me to employ a well-devised strategy. The game forces situational awareness, and downplays the “gung ho, storm the fort” approach. Eventually, I manage to take all of the enemy soldiers down, and it turns out it was worth it, as one of them drops a shotgun. In these close quarters, the shotgun certainly is a weapon to be treasured.
Further into the complex, I take out one soldier on top of a staircase. This is time for F.E.A.R. to show off its ragdoll physics, as the soldier falls over the railing and plummets to his doom. I think the room is clear, but when I get close to the door, it suddenly bursts open and a soldier bigger than the ones I have seen so far enters. This soldier is heavily armored and carries more firepower than his buddies. The game also goes into slow motion spontaneously, making for an even more dramatic battle, as I can see the air distortion caused by the bullets, as well as various particle effects. When the heavily armored soldier is defeated, I can choose to pick up his 10 mm HV Penetrator weapon, but I have to make a choice because F.E.A.R. only allows you to carry three weapons at all times. The environment you're in plays a big role in F.E.A.R.'s weapon choice.
I decide against picking up the Penetrator, and it turns out to be a wise decision as I discover the Type-7 Particle Weapon a bit further on. This looks like an excellent sniper weapon, and I immediately get a first chance to try it out as there is another control room to clear. The sniping works great and I claim my first victim with the particle weapon. The soldiers inside of the control room don't know where the attack came from and have trouble organizing their defense. Time to try some of that SloMo. At the press of a button I activate the mode, and a little bar at the bottom of my screen starts depleting. Blasting a rain of lead into one of the soldiers with the shotgun, he is sent flying backwards and hits the wall behind him. SloMo lasts just long enough for me to clear the control room. As I browse the room in search of extra ammunition, I notice a skeleton on the floor and realize that the particle weapon has quite an effect on human flesh!
As I look through one of the windows, I notice an outside area up ahead, where a couple of soldiers are patrolling. One of them notices my flashlight and heads for cover, warning his comrade. I manage to take them out and get outside, thinking that the coast is clear. Then a helicopter appears and a fresh batch of soldiers sling down. As I activate SloMo again, I can see an explosive barrel close to them (one cliché no FPS can seem to live without). With one shot into the barrels I am able to turn the tables covering the soldiers in flames.
I can now get inside another part of the facility, but there is that mysterious girl again, and also the ghostly male apparition, telling me that "they all deserve to die". What follows is some kind of nightmare sequence, as the passage that I'm in suddenly transforms into a narrow corridor with a ceiling that seems to be holding a river of blood. Bloody footsteps lead to the exit in front of me, but when I try to get there, I am treated to another shock effect. I can finally get out of the haunted corridor, but there seems to be no end yet to this hallucinatory sequence, as now I'm in a room, witnessing somebody being interrogated. He appears to be in bad shape. As I get closer, the interrogator vanishes in thin air. The victim murmurs something, and then dies.
There is only one way for me to proceed, and that is to head into the garage up ahead. I crawl underneath the gate and get inside. I can hear another helicopter above me. Then something bursts through the garage's ceiling. It looks like a mech soldier. I can make out the words REV6 on its armor. That's when it starts firing missiles at me, and this is where the demo abruptly ends, leaving me stunned, and craving for more.
Conclusion The F.E.A.R. demo I played was running at a decent speed, with not even a hint of slowdown in sight during the most intense firefights. Technically speaking, this looks like a solid conversion, with all of the effects in place, and the Xbox 360 definitely being able to digest the F.E.A.R. engine without any hiccups. Most notable in F.E.A.R.'s single player adventure is the enemy's highly advanced A.I., as well as the immersive atmosphere triggered by the horror theme with its hallucinatory sequences, and all of this seems to be well present in the Xbox 360 version.
For the most part, control felt very good and natural, but in some areas the controls still need a bit of optimizing to allow for better movement with the Xbox 360 controller. As I tried to slightly tilt my left stick forward to take slow steps, it all felt somewhat clumsy, as if my character was hesitating what to do. I also had the impression that the aiming was overly sensitive when compared with most other Xbox 360 shooters, but of course here it's just a case of digging into the game's options and toning down the controller sensitivity. A couple of the visual effects can use more attention as well. Dust clouds, kicked up by bullets shattering wall plaster, sometimes appear too layered.
F.E.A.R. is shaping up to be a top shooter on the Xbox 360, just like it was on the pc. Look forward to our full review of this game once it hits the shelves.
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