The weapons you fight with are realistic and powerful but, like the settings and the enemies, not all that varied. You can choose among most of the standard FPS arsenal options, including the pistol, submachine gun, assault rifle, grenade, shotgun, particle weapon, rocket launcher, and mini-cannon. On occasion you get to commandeer a standing turret and mow down your opposition. There are no wimpy pea-shooters here. You may carry only three weapons at a time, so sometimes you have to drop one temporary to pick up another to use for a particular predicament. Reloading delays your blasting only for a short period of time. Ammunition, heath packs, and armor can be found in your surroundings so that you can keep pumping lead into your opponents.

Experiencing the combat is astounding. The realism level is well beyond anything I have ever seen in a first-person shooter: when you fire your weapons, pieces of surrounding walls crumble; smoke and dust clouds form; striking metal generates sparks; and enemies engage in acrobatic moves to avoid being hit and fall in realistically contorted positions if you manage to kill them. One of my favorite play sequences occurs when enemies are shooting you from windows in another building, and you try to pick them off as in a shooting gallery. Even close head-to-head melee fighting is really fun and works well, as your drop kick proves quite effective at short range. Because most of the battle settings contain multiple entrances and exits, the strategies for finding refuge or safe places from which to pick off adversaries become much more complicated.

A key feature of the combat in F.E.A.R. is the availability of slow motion. While this “Slo-Mo” capability has been incorporated in many past first person shooters, its implementation here is very solid. You get to see bullets move toward their targets, slicing through the air, and every little twitch of enemy targets as the projectiles strike them. Since this quick-reflex power is only available for a limited time span (this ability regenerates quickly after use), you have to use it quite strategically to reap its maximum value. When you face multiple foes at once, you can use it to pick off a few of your opponents before they have a chance to retaliate. If you examine areas carefully, you can find reflex boosters that accelerate your relative reaction time even more.

There are several puzzles in F.E.A.R., but they are clearly not the focus of attention. In the unusually designed areas, you often have to explore quite a bit to discover how to proceed: you may need to locate strategically placed ladders, for example. In one instance, you have to criss-cross an elevator shaft to find your way. The interactivity increases dramatically in the last sections of the game, where you activate a lot of truly nifty machines, and this is very satisfying. Often there are multiple directions you may go. But the frequent blocked passageways, allowing you to peer into a room you cannot get to directly, can make you hunt hard to find a side path to get to a desired spot. As you proceed, you can learn useful (and sometimes not-so-useful) information that can advance the storyline from nearby computer laptops, voicemail on phones, and radio broadcasts, but they are never as central to unraveling puzzles and making your way forward as the PDA was in Doom 3.