If I have hanged myself by the end of this review don’t be too shocked because F.3.A.R is shit. I found it hard to think how a game that stemmed from one of the best shooters ever made has turned out so poor. Its gradually gotten worse as the years went on I think. I mean F.E.A.R back in 2005 was excellent, one of the best. Project Origin was a little rough around the edges (and the middle come to think of it) but it was acceptable and now this. This miserable, degrading, unworthy of my time piece of crap.
F.3.A.R takes off where...something ends. I'm not quite sure how long after the shocking finale to Project Origin it does start but all we know is this. You are point man and after killing your brother Paxton Fettel in the first game and finding out that Alma is the daughter of Harlan Wade and your mother you are taken into custody sometime after them expansions I'm still yet to play. Anyway, then you hear from your brother, now coming back from the grave that Alma is pregnant from raping Becket at the end of Project Origin. You two decide to reluctantly team up to take down what remains of Armacham and track down Alma, Paxton little knowing that you wish to kill Alma and the baby. Now excuse me for putting a downer on an otherwise good story but its all got a bit Jeremy Kyle. I mean, mother rapes army commando, gets pregnant and now her two telepathic sons have travelled through the wasteland that oddly resembles the South Ammerica level from MW2 and the suburban areas from Homefront to find her and start again as a proper family however one of the sons intends of fucking everything up and murdering them all. Its all a bit...human in an odd sense of the word. It seems too down to earth for F.E.A.R, I mean the first one had no fucking story then the second one was just backstory for Alma now when they decide to put one in its all a bit...shit. Admittedly I do like the story but it just feels a but odd with what the game is. There is one odd point in the story about half way through the game, its the ending. The game is roughly 3-4 hours long and for a game that is meant to tie up all loose ends and finish a trilogy, it leaves it on a fucking cliffhanger of sorts. People complain about games like Mass Effect and Half-Life 2 having odd endings but come on F.3.A.R...this is just being childish.
Anyway off the topic of story and move onto the gameplay. gunshot sound effect If your wondering what that was it was me splattering my brains against a wall. F.3.A.R takes the 'modified' gunplay from F.E.A.R 2, you know the one that defeated the object of having slow-mo and makes it plain stupid. You now have regular need for the slow-mo function but it only lasts as long as in F.E.A.R 2 but takes as long to recharge as in F.E.A.R 1 making it something that might as well not be used. Enemies have had the AI stripped from them and replaced with tourists who just stand and look at things for a while before reacting and worst of all, how dare they even think of doing this let alone actually doing it. Removing the health bar in favour of regenerating health. This means no matter how much damage you take, you can always hide behind a wall and lick your wounds for a few seconds like jumping back up and going Rambo again. Enemies now take ridiculous amounts of bullets to die too, it was OK in F.E.A.R because you were never put into big firefights until the end of the game when you knew what you were doing and how to do it. From the word go in F.3.A.R you are dumped into 20 man plus gunfights with puny amounts of slow-mo and very little ammo. However the reason behind this is F.3.A.R is a co-op game, one person can play as Point man and the other as Fettel. Now don’t get me wrong, co-op is great in games, look at Halo. But when a game is made for 2 people then with only 1 player in mind it becomes a bit silly. Fettel can possess people and make them explode into a cloud of blood but in solo play, there is no Fettel to be seen, not even a AI one. Meaning you have to take on all 20+ guards all on your bill. Its never hard, I died 4 times on one section and that was it but F.3.A.R is rather easy because of the regenerating health gimmick. The game is not challenging, it is frustrating, slow and easy.
The graphics to F.3.A.R are perhaps the one thing I can give praise to. The game looks magnificent, at points I wouldn’t blame you for mistaking the graphics for live action footage, especially in cut scenes. Plus I was running this, as I always do on my 2 year old Acer Aspire 7551 laptop. Yeah it was on lowest settings but being mistaken for live action on low is a remarkable achievement. Its smooth and well lit, as well as textures constantly varying between areas. The one complaint I have is motion blur, why oh why oh why. I meant its not even implemented properly and there is no option to turn the fucker off. It blurs when you walk for fucks sake! The only times I experienced frame rate problems were large gunfights in open areas and sometimes on the odd set piece but nothing major. The sound is as good as always and thank fuck for them actually making the voices on the comm-links audible this time.
I am going to end my review here as there is only so much that you can take the piss out of a game for being so bad. The F.E.A.R series has declined rapidly in quality and I wont be sad to see it gone now. F.3.A.R combines the worst elements of the series and mixes them with some awkward and stupid new ones. I can proudly say that Monolith weren't responsible for this abomination but instead some people I have never heard of and hope never to hear of again called Day 1 Studios. It is sad to have seen one of the best shooters in years turn into this smouldering train wreck of a trilogy. Do you remember me saying in the other reviews of the levels being copy and pasted from each other, that’s acceptable to the copy and paste here. Isn’t taking levels from other games stealing? Anyway, I'm going to have a stiff drink and go back to the expansions for F.E.A.R, hopefully they will help me forget the atrocities that I saw in the final chapter for this once great series.
F.3.A.R – 4/10
-It's Not F.EA.R
