Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: November 28, 2005

First-person shooters generally emphasize intense combat action, but they often neglect other play elements, including the sense of atmosphere. Only a few try to foster a real sense of terror, including Doom 3 and Clive Barker’s Undying. Now Monolith has released through Vivendi Universal Games F.E.A.R., an offering that attempts to bring back the sense of suspense and horror. As you progress, unexpected momentary appearances of ghosts or visions attempt to frighten you. When you scour seemingly empty settings, you could become wary that something could jump out at any moment, especially surprise enemy attacks out of the shadows. Sometimes you may feel so jolted that you literally recoil out of your computer chair. In particular, a bizarre and disorienting little girl is repeatedly disarming. Your inability to keep your flashlight lit for long periods of time can heighten the suspense even further. In this haunted environment, sometimes you may lose your ability to distinguish fantasy form reality. So can F.E.A.R. actually succeed in transplanting to players the dreaded emotion signified by its title?

F.E.A.R. stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, a top secret military unit specializing in the paranormal. You assume the role of the newest member of this group, and you seek to apprehend Paxton Fettel, a victim of the Armacham Technology Corporation’s classified research experiment who has for inexplicable reasons gone crazy and assembled an army of cloned soldiers to wreak havoc. What originally appears to be a simple capture eventually turns into something a whole lot more complicated. This plot is more than adequate to frame the action, but it is not all that innovative and does not contain a lot of depth and is not all that fleshed out as you proceed through the game, and by the end a lot of key questions remain unanswered.

While the physical settings are detailed and intriguing, they lack variety. The dominant theme is techno-industrial, with an indoor urban flair. In many ways, what you see is reminiscent of the levels in Doom 3 and Area 51. The similarity in physical environments across levels and across rooms can make it easy to get lost, as over time everything begins to look alike; you need to do a lot of looking around, which more than occasionally is rewarded by hidden treasures. This problem is compounded by the similarity in mission objectives as you proceed, with the goal often simply being “find Fettel.” There is no inherent reason why there could not have been more diversity among the eleven “intervals” (as they are called here) in the gameplay.

In a parallel fashion, compared to other first-person shooters, there are not many different types of enemies. It is indeed a real treat when you meet something other than the run-of-the-mill clones, which you encounter seemingly endlessly either alone or in small packs; there are no cases where you face swarms of enemies in huge Serious-Sam-like attacks. The few special enemy types require very different combat approaches. One foe has a ton of armor and takes lots of direct hits — even a grenade will not stop it — and another is cloaked until it shoots you. A third adversary is huge with a massive lethal arsenal. Later on, you face powerful flying attack drones and even spirit foes. A couple of times a truck tries to run you over. Even though foes’ wily nature poses a real challenge, some greater variety here would have really helped.