F.E.A.R - That's right - F.E.A.R.

Boring personal story

Yeah, well, I mean the gamer makes the experience which makes the game. 3 years ago John Fu bought this game for me for graduation (I think it was graduation anyway). He and I and a few others played it. One of the guys was flat hilarious and for every cheap scare, he screamed and said, "Oh my god, F.E.A.R.!" For whatever reason, three years ago, I stopped playing this game at the second building. This time was different.

Actual talk on F.E.A.R.

The best parts of F.E.A.R. (god that's obnoxious to write) are when it makes you question what you're seeing and when the A.I. fucks you over with their super flanking skills.

The worst parts are the bland bland environments which are larger than life itself and impractical as shit. Also, the repetitive enter a room, get attacked by people random battle format gets overplayed like some shit. The puzzles are ok but, without a map, are some times unnecessarily difficult. The game is also slightly immature. The voice actors cuss at really inappropriate times and make inappropriate comments that make you wonder who you're really supposed to like in the game. Maybe that's just me, but I'm not a fan of an exec dismissing sexual harassment complaints as bullshit or your commanding officer calling a hostage an incessant bitch. There are also some technical issues like the Doppler effect and how you may be three floors underneath blood dripping from a ceiling but you can still hear it loud as day. Loading times. Volume control. No subtitles. Pauses in gameplay when something's about to happen. Off-kilter Scripted sequences.

The story goes both good and bad. First of all, I gotta make a comment about this "learn-as-you-go" thing that's come into fashion. It takes a lot of attention, and I wasn't always paying that hard of attention because it was late at night or the voice-mail thing was bothering me or I was looking at a poster or I just thought the concepts were lame. So, I looked up the Wikipedia article to see what I'd missed. John Fu and I ended up doing the same thing for Resistance 2. I would love to spend the time collecting all the intel in the game, but I really don't want to spend the time. Wikipedia's quicker.

So, a prominent defense contractor decides that creating a psychic commander to control its clone army is a good idea (WTF? A psychic commander?), and so they make a psychic commander, but...whoops...he goes nuts. That brings you (nameless, faceless character) in. The fact that you're nameless and faceless becomes important later and would have shocked me if Bioshock hadn't pulled the same trick years later and if I had played these games in chronological order. But, I feel like I'm giving too much away. The game is fucking scary. The villain is very well-characterized by the end. I'm excited for the latest one.

-early in the LBJ