F.E.A.R. Review (X360)

After scaring up sales on the PC for a year, F.E.A.R. has launched on the Xbox 360 and the result is a fantastic port that has more features and plays tighter than the PC original. It looks great, is packed with modes and features, and plays fantastically well, even when you consider all of the great Xbox and 360 shooters to come before it. The best part about F.E.A.R. is that it is genuinely scary and horror fans will absolutely love it.

Quick Hits

• Title: F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Publisher: Vivendi
• Developer: Day 1 / Monolith
• ESRB: “M” for Mature
• Genre: First-Person-Shooter, horror
• Pros: Solid FPS gameplay; very scary; great presentation; instant action and multiplayer are great
• Cons: Repetitive pattern of set pieces

Modes

F.E.A.R.’s single-player campaign puts you in control of a specialized soldier who is sent in to investigate a man named Paxton Fettel. You quickly learn that things are far worse than you had originally thought (and things are messed up from the beginning), and fighting your way through the horrors and enemy soldiers in order to find out the truth is the name of the game here.

The game also includes an Instant Action mode where you are dropped into pure combat situations without the horror elements. The gameplay in F.E.A.R. is great, and this mode really shows it off, but I think most fans are here for the horror.

You can also jump onto Xbox Live and tackle some multiplayer modes. Deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF – all of the standards are here. There are also plenty of options to customize the matches to play out however you like. The only issue is that after a match there is no postgame lobby and instead you are dumped out to the menu, so spending an evening playing with friends is made annoyingly difficult because you’ll have to form a new game and invite everyone in again.

The gameplay in F.E.A.R. is surprisingly solid and smooth. The core controls handle just like every other Xbox 360 FPS, and the game moves at a very fast and consistent pace. Unique gameplay features include the ability to lean around corners by pressing right or left on the D-pad, and you can also slow down time for brief periods. This slo-mo ability is particularly useful when taking on a lot of enemies at once.

One aspect that is very impressive is the AI. We came into a situation where there was a loading dock full of enemies and there were two ways to get out to them, a set of doors or a big garage door. I thought I would be smart and intentionally open the door, let the enemies see me, and then lay back in wait for them to walk through the door and meet their end. They didn’t do that. Instead, they went around to the garage door and came up behind me. These aren’t the stupid, predictable enemies of every other FPS you have ever played, and the game is filled with situations like this where the AI will surprise you.

My one complaint about the game is that it becomes fairly predictable after a while. After a big combat sequence, there is always either a puzzle or a horror sequence or both. You know as soon as combat is over that something is going to jump out and say boo or you’ll start hallucinating or that creepy little girl Alma is going to start coming after you, and when you can prepare for it and predict it, it loses some of its impact. I’m not saying it isn’t one of the scariest games ever, I’m just saying it is sort of repetitive.

Graphically, F.E.A.R. is a very good looking game. It runs smoothly, and features some very nice particle, explosion, and lighting effects to really immerse you into the experience. The characters and enemies are very detailed and look great. The only drawback is not so much the graphics themselves but the game design. A lot of it takes place in empty offices and warehouses so there isn’t usually too much to look at in the environments. Which is a shame since everything else looks great.

The sound is also exceptionally well done. In any horror game, sound is one of the most vital aspects of drawing you in and then scaring you, and F.E.A.R. does a great job with it. One thing I’m not crazy about is the fact that enemies constantly chatter on their radios, so you know when combat is about to start when you hear the static and clicks of their radio, and you know combat is over and all of the enemies are dead when you can’t hear it anymore. This is just another aspect that makes it feel slightly predictable and repetitive.

F.E.A.R. is unquestionably one of the scariest games around, and presents you with a great mix of jump scares, disturbing imagery, and an overwhelming sense of dread that few other games can match. It looks and sounds great, plays amazingly well, and has enough single and multiplayer features to keep you busy for a long time to come. This is one of the best FPS games available for the Xbox 360, which really is saying something, so I highly recommend F.E.A.R. for at least a rental and more likely a purchase depending on how big of a horror fan you are.