Sound

The environmental sound is good, the spooky sounds work quite well and the game has the right kind of atmosphere. The problem that we encountered though...some of the distortion effects used in the game were a bit overbearing, they don’t happen often but they don’t really add to the tension either. Rather than being bothered by them, we were oddly annoyed. They’re not as bad as Shadows of the Damned though, which is a true distortion nightmare. Fear 3 has a pretty solid set of sounds for most of the weapons too.

Music

Fear 3 has a good solid soundtrack. It helps to really immerse you in the atmosphere the game’s trying to create. There aren’t any problems here, so moving on!

Dialogue

The story writing is pretty good, the script flows well and if you care about such things there aren’t any real hiccups with the dialogue. If you don’t care and you just want to shoot something, well, there’s lots of that.
Voice

The voice actors do a great job with their lines. Paxton is suitably menacing and Point Man, well, he remains silent as he did before which is a great touch. The rest of the cast are decent and there aren’t any real hum-dinger bad performances.

Co-Op Multiplayer

Fear 3, rather like The Cartel (from yesterday) is a game best played with a friend. Once you have a buddy as either Point Man or Fettel the tactical options go through the roof. You can hold a bad guy aloft with Paxton’s telekinesis and riddle him with bullets as Point Man. You can possess a bad guy and fight alongside your brother. You can work together as a finely honed machine, or try and outdo each other. You can share your psychic links with your co-op buddy or...steal them for yourself!

It’s a great facet to the game though, and co-op is excellent fun. There is good networking code too, so you don’t get any lag.

There are a few co-op modes too:

F**king RUN! – Your F.E.A.R. squad is being chased by Alma’s psychic wall of death. You have to push forwards, kill Armacham forces and stay one step ahead of the wall...if so much as one of you is lost to the wall, its game over. This was apparently inspired by John Carpenter’s: Prince of Darkness book cover. There are checkpoints thankfully, but they’re few and far between.

Contractions – Your F.E.A.R. squad is isolated. Armacham is closing in, Alma’s minions are around and Alma herself stalks the area. You have to work together to hold off the bad guys, collect weapons, rebuild barricades and as the paranormal fog thickens per round more dangerous monsters appear from the ether. There are 20 waves to survive and the game mode was inspired by John Carpenter’s: The Fog.

Adversarial Multiplayer

It’s fun, it’s frenetic and it’s lag free most of the time. Don’t let the small player numbers put you off, because the tight focus on these modes really does make for some personal horror gaming. 4 players can compete or co-operate in the various modes.

Soul Survivor – The team begins as a cooperative experience but it rapidly devolves into an adversarial. One of the players is corrupted by Alma and turned into one of her minions. The chosen player now has to corrupt the other team members. Once corrupted the corrupted side must help eliminate the squad members that remain. All of this goes on under constant Armacham assault and even Alma’s cult join in to help elevate the fun to more insane levels. The strongest player (the Soul Survivor) is the only one that can make it out alive once the time runs out. This is inspired by 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles, in which the survivors are taken one by one and turned against the remaining members.

Soul King – This mode is our favourite. Every player becomes a Spectre, a powerful ghost that can possess human enemies. Basically players then fight and possess enemy AI, collecting the souls of the dead. If you’re killed you lose half of your souls and the winner is the player with the biggest collection at the end of the match. It is simple, fun, effective and amusing all at once.

The End?

If you’re expecting an end, you’re going to get one. Fear 3 could have been a lot scarier if more care had been taken with the horror element. Sadly, it becomes a really solid first person shooter that’s fun when taken on that level. But as a Fear 3, we’re not sure if it’s worthy of the moniker. It does tie up the trilogy nicely though and we can’t ask for more than that. The multiplayer doesn’t feel tacked on and the Horde style Contractions mode is a blast...

Single player is over all too quickly and the ride is a bit of an anti-climax for the last few acts.

Co-op remains the best way to play the game with a nice twist at the end for a pair of co-op players.

All in all then, passable but it’s not going to light the gaming world on fire.