F.E.A.R. is a real test of your "fight or flight" response. Put simply, it is a adrenaline-pumping shooter with an unhealty dose of spine-tingling creepiness.
The strengths are really the engaging firefights (through some impressive AI and reflexive bullet-time) and the cleverly placed undie-soilers through flashes, whispers, and outright in-your-face scares from a Ringu-similar little girl. The story was well-handled (with some slightly confusing dream sequences) and the character acting was acceptable.
On a small tangent, I personally appreciate the game dropping f-bombs right from the start. If you are going to have a game as violent as this... a little bad language from the character actors is warranted.
The weaknesses might include something of a fairly bland mission, enemy, and weapon design. These are minor nits, and not really that bad, but you will go through a lot of office and industrial park "room-to-room" missions. You will see the same models everywhere; the same chair, the same storage rack, etc. It gives the feel that every place in the story shopped at the same office supply store. You will be channelled along through the level to hit the appropriate (and alternating) combat and scare points. You will see the same enemies again and again. Which might actually be appropriate, since in game, they are actually "replica" troops. Still, a bit more variety would have been nice. As an example, contrasting F.E.A.R. against FarCry; FarCry had a bunch of different types of enemies, and more as the game progressed.
Another tangent: the enemy AI was great, but maybe a little too vocal. When you can clearly make out the replicas yell out something like: "There he is! Move up on the left!" - it kinda gives you a strange tactical advantage. It was almost like I was supposed to har how smart they were.
Anyhow, the weapons were fun and powerful, but really nothing new or clever. Pinning a baddie to the wall with the nailgun was oddly not as satisfying as say, the stake gun in Painkiller.
If you want an engaging shooter, than this is the one... with some caveats:
Make sure your system is up to snuff. On my higher end gaming-rig, there were a few graphical heavy load moments that tended to stutter the framerate, but it otherwise played smoothly. For the best effect, a decent surround sound gaming setup will increase the spooky-factor.
As with any linear story, there really isn't much single-player replayability. Unfortunately, this is also true for the combat itself. The AI may react differently to the situation, but just knowing where, when, and how many there will be effectively spoils the feeling of combat chaos you get on the first run through the game.
There is multiplayer, but it seemed less fun than that of Half-Life 2 multiplay. I guess I missed throwing toilets around and didn't really play it that much.
Buy this game (and a 12-pack of Hanes) for the creeps and corner-crawling, bloody FPS goodness.
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