F.E.A.R. (PC)

AI

Normally I’d talk about the graphics and so on at this point but I feel compelled to break tradition and talk about the AI. Because in F.E.A.R as well as the level designs/challenges from finding your way around you’re going to encounter the AI enemies and for once they are not dumb.

F.E.A.R AI will:

• Hound you relentlessly.
• Team up and work together.
• Use cover and concealment, making cover from certain objects.
• Use advanced tactics, suppressive fire and retreating fire.
• Peek out from around corners, over objects; fire wildly and inaccurately when panicked.
• Spot things in the environment that are out of place, flashlights and listen to sounds.
• Use hand to hand if you get too close.
• Flank you, toss grenades and retreat when injured.
• React to damage in different/sometimes amusing ways (hopping when shot in the foot).
• Try to work with you in the case of allied forces.
• Use the environment, leap and vault rails/objects etc.
• Inform allies of their status and hold minor conversations.

F.E.A.R.AI will not:

• Love you.
• Be your friend.
• Make you a cup of tea.
• Run blindly into hails of bullets unless it’s wearing heavy assault armour.
• (Most of the time) Make stupid tactical errors.
• Fall for obvious traps.
• Run into walls; get stuck with dodgy path finding.

F.E.A.R AI takes AI to the next level; it uses the environment/team-mates to its advantage, reacts to situations differently every time and provides a challenge even on the lower difficulty settings. It will flank you, throw grenades to smoke you out and even sacrifice one unit to get you into a vulnerable position if it has to.

This is one game that I will play again just so I can see differences in battle tactics and try it on the hardest difficulty possible. I have, to be honest, been waiting for another game with AI like this since Far Cry, and in my opinion F.E.A.R’s AI is even better.

Graphics

You’re going to need a powerful rig to get the best out of F.E.A.R because this is one of the first of the next-gen games that truly uses a lot of the twiddles of the new cards. It has advanced shaders/systems coming out of its bits and bytes, throwing up some gorgeous slick visuals and even comes with a test cinematic so you can see what settings will look like without having to play the game. I love that; every game should have something akin so you don’t have to wait for aeons to find its going to run like a flicker-book.

F.E.A.R needs those graphical effects, especially in the lights/shadows. The game excels at creepy because the darkness feels real, the shadows are excellent and the lighting provides the kind of effects you’re used to seeing in games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

The textures are not all that complex and the shaders either, but it doesn’t need to be since the action is going to have you screaming and running around putting holes in the nice scenery. Yep, F.E.A.R has pretty nice decals, I only wish the blood/bullet holes actually stuck around a lot longer. Every weapon affects the environment differently and they leave big pock-marks depending on the calibre or type of the weapon. A small pistol will leave nice little holes, a shotgun leaves a spread, and one of the heavy cannons blows huge chunks out of the walls.

F.E.A.R also brims with nice little eye-candy touches that compliment the solid gameplay, even if you do set everything to minimal the game is that good you won’t be worrying about the levels of detail when you’re following the story and battling the adaptive AI. But for those of you with the rigs to run it, you’re in for a treat when things start kicking off, especially if you use slow mo time. There’s a great blur effect and all the bullets/shells/effects get brighter/trails and so on, you feel like you stepped into a war being filmed in Bullet Time.

So with good solid textures, effective graphics and lighting/shadow effects F.E.A.R provides a competent level of visual delight.

Level Design

Some of the critiques I have heard about F.E.A.R is that while it is visually appealing, it lacks a certain clutter in a lot of the levels that makes it appear sparse. The levels are not as detailed as they could have been and so on, in some cases, on some levels this is true and it’s not going to out insane Doom 3 or even Half Life 2 in the fiddly/detailed/twiddly level department. The latter is insanely detailed in the terms of levels and the former pretty much pulls out all the stops. But F.E.A.R doesn’t need that level of detail, not considering the setting and the fact that you’re not going to stop to admire the individual pixels/polys making up a stairwell.

What drives F.E.A.R is the coherent and competent story, which the environments are perfectly suited to. There are some pretty puzzling ways on and you’re going to need to look around for ducts and alternate routes, there are no insane jumping puzzles or parts like the Zen level from Half Life thankfully. Every environment and level actually looks as though it’s from the setting, a bright sparse office area leading to a hidden lab. Or a dingy twisted broken down building full of damaged floors and broken passages.

Most of your time in F.E.A.R will be spent in claustrophobic settings however and if you love the outdoors, you’re not going to be doing much of that in this game. I liked the level design and the puzzles later on are fairly easy but they work within the context of the story, especially in the last few levels where your adrenaline levels will be going through the roof.

There are also some nice scripted moments that will use the environment and again in the context of the story, they work perfectly and you’re not left wondering – why did that happen and why am I actually here now? There are a few barren levels where something more could have been done, but that may well have overloaded the game and the story.

Models/Animations

There’s not much that I can say about the models in the game, they are really well made and they have a very good level of detail. The enemy types are a bit repetitive but since you’re up against a force of soldiers known as Replicas, that’s not surprising really. Everything else is done well and I have no major gripes or further comments on anything that stands out, apart from your own character that has a physical presence in the world. As for animations, these are excellent and the enemy forces have lots of things that they do, based on the situation. I love the animation for their vaulting and some will even dive or combat roll out of the way, again pulled off with nary a frame missed or out of sync.

These animators are top notch and they have produced good solid animations throughout from combat, idle and cinematic animations to weapon animations and ambient/environmental animations.

Physics

There’s an adequate level of physics in the game, ragdoll and impact based. There’s even one or two environmental puzzles based on the physics system. They’re not brain-churners by any means and we’ve seen that type of thing before.

Sound

You need good sounds in a game that works from atmospherics, one that tries to bring a fusion between shooter and supernatural. In F.E.A.R you have a nice number of flashy visual effects which are complimented by a regiment of aural effects. From the weapon sounds to the ambient/environmental sounds/effects the game doesn’t push the sound envelope beyond what we have heard before – what it delivers is however good quality audio and meaty sound effects.