[NeonAges]

    Despite having a relatively stupid acronym, F.E.A.R. has been recieving plenty of praise from numerous publications and websites.  After a lot of procrastinating, I finally got around to playing through it.  I was expecting a suspenseful, scary, and exciting game.  Is that what I got?  Unfortunately, not really.
    We'll start with the good; the game's engine is absolutely awesome.  Particle effects are over the top and incredible looking.  Dust gets kicked up from bullets, so much dust in fact that I frequently had a hard time seeing what was ahead of me.  Shadows are incredible looking, water and reflections look fantastic, and the player models are great!  But then again, this is Monolith we're talking about, they rarely fail to please.  That being said, I found the weapon models and weapon animations to be pretty lackluster.  The shotgun, for instance, was pretty thin and lacked beef, the handgun had pretty horrid texture work on it, but in contrast to that, the Type-7 Particle Weapon looked really cool.
    The sound was also well done.  Everything from voices in your head, distorted whispers and warnings, explosions, and soldier screams; it was all good.  But once again, I feel the weapons got shafted.  A lot of the weapon sounds are pretty 'tinny' sounding.  They sound artificial, which is not a good thing, and once again, lack beef.  It's easy to overlook this though, after hearing the desperate cries for backup from the enemy soldiers.  The soldiers always seem to have something to say to you about the current situation, be it "Die mother-fucker!" or "We can't stop him!".
    The AI also does not disappoint.  Your enemies will work as a squad, inform each other of your intentions, try to flank you, flush you out from cover with grenades, and constantly shift to different types of cover.  This makes the AI unpredictable and harder to kill, which is certainly welcome, because I don't know about you, but watching an enemy stand there and shoot at me isn't my idea of fun.  A nice addition, is the radio commands they give.  They can hint you as to what to expect.  For instance, if an enemy yells out, "We need backup!"  You know you've wiped out most of his squad.  They'll clue in on audio disturbances, investigate flashlights, footsteps, and of course, gunfire.  In fact, fighting the AI in FEAR is so much fun, I wish they made a 'Gauntlet' gameplay mode where you just fight waves of enemies, but a mod may yet come out doing just that.
    Now, since there's good, there has to be bad, right?  In this case, yes, there is.  First, the 'scary' parts of the game.  Unfortunately, you always know it's coming when you're by yourself.  There are never enemies around when there's going to be a 'scary' part.  You're only attacked during 'hallucinations' and even then, it's laughable attacks.  Let's face it, if watching a girl giggle at me and run across my screen over and over again is suppose to scare me, then they must think I've five years old or a pansy.  You can tell they got their inspiration from moves like 'The Ring' and 'The Grudge' because there are numerous nods to both films in the game.  Even so, the game just didn't scare me.  I'm not trying to say I'm a badass because a video game doesn't scare me, but if they're going to make claims that the game is suspenseful and creepy, shouldn't it be?  They claim that there's a constant sense of dread, and I just didn't feel that.  If I heard soldiers, or just fought a pack of soldiers, I was confident that nothing was going to happen, and I was right.  When there was no one there, I suspected something to happen, and I was right.
    The story and hallucination sequences aren't much better either.  You constantly see the same hallucination sequence over and over, only maybe one slight new addition is tacked on, or the location is different.  It's always a long hallway, and you have to go to the end of it.  That's wonderful, but why am I doing this?  I never got anything new to the story and never felt any 'OHHHH that's why!' moments at the end when all was revealed.  I will give them this however; one part in the ending was particularly explosive (teehee, I'm so witty), and awesome to see.  But other than that, I was less than impressed by the ending.  Now I know an expansion is being released soon, and hopefully it will shed some light on this.
    As it stands though, FEAR is a great action game and it does have some decent moments of suspense, but don't get this game expecting to be scared out of your mind.  It's somewhat creepy at times, sure, but the gameplay is too disjointed and broken to enjoy it.  There are action sequences, and there are 'scary' sequences, and they never blend.  In my opinion, it just feels like the horror parts of the game were just tossed in there.  If you're looking for a fantastic looking shooter with some truely awesome action movie moments, this is a good game to try, just don't expect much in the horror department.

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