current gaming

Back in 2005, I was still a devoted PC gamer only just beginning to understand the joys and possibilities of console gaming. Thus while new Xbox 360 owners were taking in the intensity of Call of Duty 2 before the franchise became a yearly affair, I was busy joining up with the First Encounter Assault Recon. Despite the military acronym, F.E.A.R. set itself apart from COD2 and most other popular first-person shooters by having a theme and setting based neither in real-world war nor futuristic science fiction. Instead, developer Monolith filled F.E.A.R. with normal, every-day locations like offices and warehouses — okay, really just lots of offices and warehouses — recognizable locales warped by the paranormal. And I loved it, lapping up every second in multiple playthroughs.

This week I decided to play through F.E.A.R. once more, this time on the Xbox 360. If that’s not symbolic of my near-complete transition to console gaming, I don’t know what is. Unfortunately, my shiny happy memories of the game were left slightly rusted by this replay.

Are you scared yet? F.E.A.R. 2 review from Current Gaming

(Note: Image is from F.E.A.R. 2, which I sadly have not played yet. This article is focused on the original game.)

Before anything else, I should probably note that the port of F.E.A.R. from PC to 360 is far from perfect. Ported by Day 1 Studios rather than original developer Monolith, the 360 version has some random minor bugs and, for lack of a better way of expressing it, just kind of feels wrong. The aiming and turning is just a bit too slow to match the speed required of a game that was clearly designed for the fast movement of a mouse on the PC. But I mention these issues only to make it clear that the shortcomings I realized with F.E.A.R. are not related to technical issues at all.

Rather the problem with F.E.A.R. is that it’s an ambitious game held back by…well, fear, I assume. Monolith is a smart development team that had already worked on several games that pushed the boundaries of first-person shooters by the time F.E.A.R. was released, such as the extremely underappreciated No One Lives Forever series. With this game, they wanted to blend first-person action with horror, but for whatever reason they ended up skewing a little too heavily toward the action. That may not be such a bad choice if F.E.A.R.’s combat wasn’t so bland.

The major “innovations” meant to shake up F.E.A.R.’s gameplay were impressive enemy AI and the focus on slow-mo shoot-outs. The latter works well in the game, even if that concept had already been worn thin by Max Payne, its sequel, and a landslide of mediocre Matrix wanna-bes. Unfortunately, since the enemies are hyper-accurate bullet sponges, you really do need to rely on the time slowdown ability for almost every battle if you don’t want to be running low on health constantly. For the bigger enemies, such as mechs or armored soldiers, this is understandable, but when a room full of regular baddies is impossible unless you activate your super-power, it can get a bit annoying regardless of how cool the power in question is. And don’t even get me started on how confused I am by the Achievement awarded for passing the game without using any slow-mo. As for the AI of the computer-controlled baddies, it definitely was a big step for its time, but like most technical aspects of a game, those improvements never stop generation to generation, so it’s hard to be blown away years later.

Where F.E.A.R. should succeed — and quite nearly does — is atmosphere. Though the environments are repetitive to the point of boredom, Monolith uses every modern horror idea they can grab to create some genuinely creepy moments. The best of these are the brief sections where you leave the regular office corridors and hallways for strange hallucinations, complete with voices whispering ominously and short glimpses of a scary-looking little girl. It’s difficult to predict when these tiny chunks of terror will show up in the game, which is both a blessing and a curse. That there are so few of them makes the ones in the game all the weirder, but since it’s also the one thing that sets F.E.A.R. apart from any other average FPS…there just isn’t much here that stands out. Thinking back on F.E.A.R., those horrorific moments will always be what I remember about it, but the actual process of playing the game is so short on them that it’s barely worth it.

One game that kept popping into my head while I replayed F.E.A.R. was BioShock. The comparison may not be obvious at first, but I think it’s a fair one. These are both first-person shooters attempting to break out of the aforementioned one or two genres that most shooters get stuck in. Both want to frighten the player at various intervals. Both have gunplay that is relatively mediocre compared to a lot of other shooters but is spieced up by the inclusion of special powers (although BioShock obviously has a lot more of said powers to play around with). The biggest difference is simply that BioShock creators 2K Boston went all the way.

BioShock 2: New screens reveal devastating geyser trap from Current Gaming

(Note: Image is from BioShock 2, which sadly is not released yet. This article is talking about the original game.)

The real star of BioShock is the environment, the wonderful, creepy underwater world of Rapture. Unlike F.E.A.R. and its unnecessary focus on combat, BioShock never really pretends to be about something else. Yes, you have to fight off legions of messed up citizens. And yes, the epic Big Daddy “boss” battles serve as climactic set pieces in each area. But in the end, exploring the various regions of Rapture and slowly piecing together the mystery of what happened there is the real point of the game. F.E.A.R. doesn’t provide anything terribly interesting to look at outside of the nightmare sequences, and the game doesn’t have enough of those to keep players from inevitably feeling sleepy during drawn-out gunplay scenarios.

Perhaps all the monotony in F.E.A.R. would still leave a positive impression if the game had more of a point to it, but the plot never develops beyond a series of cliches cobbled together from Akira and various Japanese horror flicks. BioShock, on the other hand, has a fantastic twist that is actually hard to see coming if you haven’t played it or had it ruined — a real surprise in video games these days. Even beyond that, the plot can be analyzed and interpreted to have a greater message about the medium of games and how much control the player has over his or her action. I’m sure Ken Levine and the team behind BioShock would even hope that you take that idea and consider your life through its lens. Of course, I am not saying that you need to think about BioShock in this way nor that every game needs to have a deep intellectual meaning, but barring any other long-lasting, memorable feature, a worthwhile plot could have gone a long way toward making F.E.A.R. a must-play game for the long run instead of just an enjoyable ride for the year or two following its release.

Just to be extra clear, I’m not comparing F.E.A.R. and BioShock on some weird scale where only one of them can be good and the other must suck. Indeed, I don’t think F.E.A.R. sucks at all. But looking back on it and giving it a second playthrough years after its release, it’s clear that the game was created to be a great action game of its time rather than a great action game of all time. BioShock’s strengths merely help highlight F.E.A.R.’s weaknesses.

-Phil

What do you guys think? Any hardcore F.E.A.R. fans who want to defend the game? Or does anyone think I’m putting too much faith in BioShock’s lasting appeal? Leave a comment and let me know!

Tags: BioShock, F.E.A.R.