Yep, in 2023 I'm reviewing a 2005 game.
Back when I was in college I first knew of this game, a few years after 2005 and man, I must say I was amazed. I played it so many times that my gameplay became robotic, cleaning every room from enemies in Matrix style.
Then I grew up and never played a single game (besides online chess) for many years until this year, 2023. Man, what can I say? The nostalgia factor, plus the virtues of the game itself made me an addict for a few months. Then I went to learn more about the series and found that it died after three major releases.
I saw that F.E.A.R. 2 was a mild remake from the original and I was sad reading about that. As a series it had so much to offer to reduce it to a regurgitation of a single idea.
Even though I own F.E.A.R. 2 and 3, I've never been able to play them, I'm just not interested.
That's how a purist I am on the first installment.
I will give you a review, plus some of my own ideas on how it could be better, for any other reboot, just like Hollywood likes to depend upon heavily for the last ten years.
I warn it has some spoilers.
The good
F.E.A.R. is appealing on its own merits, especially the A.I. help make the game feel realistic.
The game also shows an effort to keep it fresh after many repetitive levels. At the most part it succeeds, killing replica soldiers in slow motion is pretty neat, especially in difficult fights.
About difficult fights, grenades are a blessing. They are so much fun. Throw it directly to the enemy and it explodes, dismembering the enemy or even make it explode like a piñata to a pile of organs and blood. I sometimes feel bad about them, being created for the sole purpose of being a mindless cannon fodder.
The gameplay is simple, intuitive and pretty action oriented. I love the surprises and most of the game just fine. It's no wonder why F.E.A.R. is a classic.
Your team is pretty neat. Holiday and Kim are interesting, and I like the innuendo of a relationship between you and Kim, to give at least a bit of personality to Point Man, the mute.
The bad
I don't like the story.
I get the premise. Alma gets curious about Point Man, and Point man slowly learns he's her son. But there's not much else on this relationship. Zero dialogue. Zero purpose. Zero impact on the outcome. Point Man simply carries out his original orders, to eliminate Paxton Fettel, like a mindless cannon fodder, but one with a superpower.
Again, zero dialogue. I get videogames don't shine for their storytelling, but not saying a single word in an extreme and complicated mission is simply absurd.
Excessive voice messages. This is kinda good for game replays as you can skip most of the storytelling and focus on the action, so assuming we care, they're kinda excessive, especially how slow they are. The recording states the name of the caller, and then the caller again identifies themselves.
Also being a pretty large weapons company with very few weapons to show.
Without tricks, using the heavier weapons is not fun. The ammo lasts very little. For the particle gun, for instance, I drop it, pick the new one and then pick my original gun, so I get a ton more bullets instead of the mere 5 you get when simply picking the dead man's gun. I made a little game of my own, doing this for the dropped guns but not when they're in an armory or placed for pickup. At least that way I'm not always full of ammo.
In relation with the smaller guns it's ridiculous. With the machine gun, the G2A2 rifle, the penetrator and the shotgun I do get full of ammo quickly so when I am full stacked I drop the gun and restart the count. Having limited supply helps the game feel more exciting. However it's ironic that when the supply is really limited, it's limited fun, like with the particle gun and the rocket launcher.
Finally, the last level The Vault is pretty boring. The fun quickly fades during Lapdog as you fight a lot of badly armed mall cops. The last level suffers of being too abstract. You are helpless watching Harlan Wade free Alma, and then you just make the whole facility explode in an attempt to prevent Alma's escape, but as expected, it's fruitless. For being the final level, it's pretty easy and anticlimactic.
The ugly
Some locations are just too unexciting or overused.
The warehouse plus water treatment plant is endless and in a good part, unexciting.
Armacham is more of a corporate mini-city than a company. The saga has its ups and downs. I love the Alice Wade mission, but bore myself to death with Unauthorized Personnel (except the ending). vI made this part more fun for myself as to not shoot down a single turret.
They introduce many characters through the many voice messages but you get to know only four, and some of them are already dying as you first see them so you hardly even remember their name.
I would have loved to see the nasty Ian Hives meet his destiny. Maybe I have when I meet nameless dead scientist in Bio-Research, but that's kinda far from his office.
I would have liked to have more interaction-based action. Like when saving Aldus Bishop or Alice Wade, some high-stakes action, even timed, so one or two of my choices had any effect on the final outcome or later learn that I actually saved a nasty character.
The replicas yelling out everything they're doing is stupid.
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