My wife bought me F.E.A.R. for my birthday, and I was fairly excited about playing it. I hadn't heard much about it, except that it had very good graphics and was being usd by several sites for benchmarking. So, I installed the game and decided to test my computer. Yea, the graphics are great. There's lots of little attention to detail, like ejected brass from the weapons, particle effects from bullets striking walls, and other cool little touches. Most importantly, though, is the demo level. While in the options menu, you can launch a brief but visually intense demo "video". Afterwards, the game displays a statistical breakdown of your framerate. So, I cranked the graphics settings to max, and the demo told me that I was lagging a little bit, but averaged 28 frames per second. I found this to be acceptable, so I proceeded to play. I didn't have to open the graphics settings a ton of times during gameplay to tweak my settings or anything of the sort. This feature needs to see wider use.
Anyways, after configuring nd setting up my system, I launched into the game. There was a bit of lead-in to the action, not too long, but interesting enough. I won't get into detail, so as to not spoil the game, but it had me jumping out of my seat within the first ten minutes. And that wasn't the only time I did so. On advice from a friend, I played the game at night, in the dark, even going so far as to turn off my secondary monitor. It was intensely scary. Monolith made wonderful use of shadows and lighting to truly create a horrific atmosphere.
F.E.A.R. isn't just a scary game though. It's also a wicked, thinking man's gunfight. Your enemies are intelligent, and work together to try and flush you out into the open where you can quickly be gunned down. Thus, you must make careful use of the slomo feature to survive gun battles. And, entering an encounter with the proper weapon is essential. Since you are linited to carrying three primary weapons, plus grenades, you must choose which guns to pack carefully. A shotgun is wondeful up close, but it can't deal the pain at long ranges. Likewise, the sub-machinegun has a very nice rate of fire and can quickly spray several targets with lead, but it lacks the power of a sniping rifle. Again, choose your weapons carefully, because they can be key to surviving encounters.
Overall, F.E.A.R. is an excellent game. The graphics are truly eye-candy. The atmosphere is among the best in any game, and the weapons are well thought-out. I look forward to Monolith giving us a sequal.
Create an Account
Member Login
