F.E.A.R.

Recently just finished F.E.A.R., which, according to the Steam page, is one of the greatest FPS's of all time.

But guess what? It's not.

It's a decent enough game I suppose, as FPS's go. The story goes like this: You're a new member to the First Encounter Assault Recon squad (get it? F.E.A.R.?) who deal with paranormal threats. Your first mission (which ends up being the entirety of the game) is against a powerful telepath who has taken control of an army of cloned soldiers who don't think for themselves.

And in just that summary I can point out so many problems.... Problem 1, the name. I get the feeling they came up with F.E.A.R. as an acronym first, then tried to figure out what it stood for. You can't really do assault AND recon on the first encounter...

But the bigger issue is that you're a member of a squad that deals with paranormal threats. But what do you fight for the entire game? Soldiers. Dudes with guns. Enemies that could come right out of Call of Duty Modern Warfare or somesuch. "An army of cloned soldiers" is seriously the most dangerous paranormal threat these developers could come up with? LAAAAME.

The actual gameplay is typical FPS fare. There's a bunch of weapons, most of which are pretty similar. You've got at least 4 semi-automatic weapons which are only marginally different from each other, crappy pistols nobody ever uses (though they're actually not that bad, but ammo is kind of rare), and a couple of special weapons like the plasma gun, triple-rocket-launcher and autocannon. But all the weapons are the same in the sense that you point and shoot. You've also got a fair variety of hand-to-hand moves, which you'll almost never use because going into melee will get you shot, and even if you do it only takes 1 punch to drop a normal guy anyhow. Finally, you can slow time, because THAT's never been done in a video game before.

Probably the most unique aspect of the gameplay is that you can only carry 3 weapons, and while that's restrictive it's also kind of interesting, as it forces you to choose what you really want to keep. Also, when you look down you can see your feet. More FPS's need to do this.

The best part of the game are the creepy moments and the atmosphere. Throughout the game you'll experience some pretty weird instances as your character's mind is psychically assaulted. The atmosphere is also pretty great; the game is literally dark, and more than once you'll find skeletons lying in pools of blood with bloody footprints leading towards the only direction you can go.

Unfortunately the whole experience is marred once you remember that the only enemies you'll be facing are the friggin' soldiers. Note to developers: soldiers do not make for a great survival horror experience.

The expansions (made by a different developer) are actually better than the main game, if only because they have more creepy moments. Unfortunately, neither one counts in the main series timeline. Still, if you liked the first game enough to play through it, then you might as well play the expansions too.

Bottom line: F.E.A.R. is not a bad game, but very mediocre. You'd get more of a horror experience playing Bioshock, and that's saying something. And as a straight up action FPS, it's only "okay". It's certainly not "one of the greatest blablablablah".

I haven't played the sequel yet, but I've heard it's better. I sure hope so.