F.e.a.r

[Addled Platypus]

anyone out playing this gem

[Quillan]

Played it twice now, though I don't own it. I borrowed a copy from a friend of mine, right after it was released and he finished it. I borrowed it again, after I got my 6800 GS card, because I wanted to see how it looked with SM 3. It looks good, damned good in fact. If you measure stress on the video card strictly by core temperature, it causes the most work I've found so far. My core temps were higher in F.E.A.R. than they are in Oblivion, though I got higher framerates in FEAR.

As to the game, I really liked it. It did a better job at being scary than Doom 3 did, by a long shot. I was never scared in Doom 3, although I got startled a lot. FEAR gave me the dreads in a number of places.

[Solver]

My opinion on it, briefly was:

+ Awesome graphics, awesome special effects
+ Awesome AI, easily best ever in a FPS game
+ From the above two: amazing firefights
- Not scary enough. Creepy in a couple of places, but not scary due to all the paranormal stuff. Nowhere near as scary as Doom3. However, this is enirely subjective, as all scare-related things are.
- A disappointing story. It's interesting and has some potential for further development, but there are some gaping plotholes, plus, it's a bit too cliche.
- Very poor storytelling/storypacing. You never got to read any reports, you'd submit laptop files to the base and get parts of story narrated to you. Practically every plot point and twist there was, I guessed before it was revealed, and I'm not very good at predicting stories in general. The only part I didn't guess was, well, what was revealed in the very last flasback-vision, on a paper.
- Enemy variety. With all the fun there was with the soldiers, it was a bit disappointing that they were 95% of the enemies.

[DrSpike]

Still on my to-play list I'm afraid.

[Addled Platypus]

same here

[DaShi]

Solver's review is similar to other reviews I've read (plagarist! ) that made me decide not to get the game. At least until it's significantly cheaper. The ads made it look like a FPS dealing directly with scary paranormal challenges, which sounded cool.

How would anyone here compare it to System Shock 2?

[Quillan]

Looks better but more limited. SS2 had all the roleplaying aspects which FEAR doesn't have. It's purely a first person shooter.

[Solver]

Quillan sums it up. Just that FEAR looks much, much better. If you have the power to run it on highest settings (and that demands bleeding-edge hardware), it's simply gorgeous.

The scariness part... well, yes, FEAR does deal directly with the paranormal, the story's based on paranormal things, you get paranormal visions/things, etc. It just depends whether that scares you. It didn't scare me much because I get immersed in character. And so I sort of dismiss the paranormal stuff as something not really happening and as hallucinations. However, I can't dismiss hordes of hellish beasts doing weird things to a base like that, which is why Doom3 was scarier to me.

But it's all personal perspective.

[Quillan]

Going to jump off the subject for second, but in reference to System Shock 2, is anyone else anticipating Bioshock?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Quillan
Looks better but more limited. SS2 had all the roleplaying aspects which FEAR doesn't have. It's purely a first person shooter.

Plus SS2 was the scariest game evar!

[Alex]

i'd like to play FEAR, but my system will probably handle it very poorly or not handle it at all...

[Addled Platypus]

gotts love the use of team cover and fire

I rounded a container and had to reload the save