FEAR is a somewhat-creepy sci-fi first person shooter from Sierra that debuted on the PC over a year ago.
The Good
The graphics are generally good, character models are strong, and the animation is fluid. I like the fact that if you shoot an enemy in the leg, he will limp around until you finish him off. FEAR runs on the same engine as Condemned, and the lighting effects are similarly strong.
The enemy AI is very good. Soldiers flank you in appropriate situations, back off from fire-fights, and communicate with each other. They react to sound and light realistically.
The strong AI plus an interesting assortment of weapons leads to some intense firefights. Whatever you may think of the horror elements of FEAR, the action is undeniably fun, and that's the heart of the game.
FEAR is fairly creepy, at least in the beginning.
The ending provides a couple of really excellent moments that I won't spoil for your here.
The Bad
Holy repetitive environments and enemies Batman! You will fight the same generic-looking death squad soldiers over and over and over and over and over…. And you will fight them in either office space or sewers that don't have any variety. After playing HL2, it's hard to get through a game like this that does such a poor job of providing varying gameplay elements.
The story, at least as I experienced it, is pretty useless. There are a bunch of laptops and phones that provide back-story, but a lot of it is boring junk that turned me off to the entire process. By the 2nd half of the game I was ignoring these optional story elements. The end is fairly nonsensical.
Rating: 8/10
NOTE: This review is based exclusively on the single-player elements of the game.
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