Glorious Escapism Roleplay

Rahkshi500 · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 3230 Location: Unknown

First Encounter Assault Recon.

It's been a while since I've played this game. It was the second game I ever got for the 360(first being The Darkness). I lost it several years ago but now I got a new one earlier for my birthday. Just beat it last night so I'll give my thoughts on it. I'm only going by the first game because I haven't played the sequels yet.

F.E.A.R. is a horror-themed first person shooter game about the unknown super soldier called the Point Man who is the new member of the special task force F.E.A.R. His first mission is to hunt down and capture an escaped psychic named Paxton Fettel, who was part of a program by the high-tech company, Armacham Technology Corporation, to create an army of cloned super soldiers, known as the Replica Army, all controlled by a single psychic commander. Fettel broke out his cell and took the Replica Army with him on a hidden agenda in mind. As Point Man hunts down Fettel, he begins encounter paranormal activity and hidden secrets within Armacham.

Pros:

-Similar yet different gameplay. I think since Halo that many first person shooter games started using the standard gameplay seen today, with the capacity to carry only two weapons, regenerative health, and a single melee attack. F.E.A.R. does that but takes it a little step up. You can carry up to three weapons, carry multiple types of explosives, and you can punch and kick. You don't have regenerating health, but you do have medkits and you can carry a lot. This, combined with Point Man's reflexes(aka Slow-Mode), can lead to many fun ideas to kill your enemies.

-Smart AI. For a game containing an army of mooks, the Replica Army are surprisingly tough. While they are easy to take down, they can still hurt you back just as hard. Thank god for medkits.

-Interesting environments. You have a water treatment plant, the Armacham regional headquarters, an abandoned neighborhood, and an underground research facility. Yeah, there are not a lot of areas in the game, but the ones that are in the game are very long and show you a lot of it.

X

Middle Ground:

-Weird Physics. This is something can work in your favor as well as working against you. Most commonly is when fighting the enemy grunts. Some weapons, especially the shotgun, would take several shots to kill a grunt and other times just one shot can make them explode into blood. Since you have melee, you can kill a grunt by sneaking on them and hit or kick them or slide kick into them and they'll die. It's both cool and strangely confusing.

X

Cons:

-Sensitive controls. It can take time to get use to it but times you might slide off to the side sometimes. It's a little frustrating to climb up ladders when you're in water.

-Hit Detection. It tends to be off. It's best to use melee on your enemies when you're in slow-motion or when you're sneaking up on them. Otherwise if you're in their faces and trying to melee them, it would take a lot of hitting and sometimes it doesn't even affect them while they're smacking your health away. Same problem when breaking open locks with melee to conserve ammo. Shooting works fine though.

-Horror aspect. For a game that has ghosts and mind-screws, it doesn't hold up. I wasn't scared by it, even during my first time playing it. The game focuses too much on action and shooting that given the fact that the ghosts can disappear just by shooting them only once, any attempt from the game to scare you ends up becoming an afterthought.

X

I'll trying getting F.E.A.R. Files from one of my local video game stores when I get the chance.
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Rabukurafuto · Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 4:04 am Post subject:

This entire time I thought you had the sequels for some reason. All right, I was quite mistaken.

Interesting environments are good for this type of game. I should try it.
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Rahkshi500 · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 3230 Location: Unknown

Armacham HQ is my favorite environment in the game, followed by the abandoned neighborhood.
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Feral Dragon · Joined: 09 Dec 2010 Posts: 249 Location: Norwich

F.E.A.R 2 is just as good as the first. Different character and story arc, but still a top game of its' type.

It's my favourite of the three.
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Rahkshi500 · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 3230 Location: Unknown

I just got F.E.A.R. Files today, but I'll play it later.
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"Yes, I want your love. GIVE IT TO ME!"

Rabukurafuto · Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 9:25 pm Post subject:

I haven't played for a few days. I should return to it after finishing this story.

I want to say I do find parts of F.E.A.R. scary, but more when nothing is happening. Walking through completely empty areas scare me more than the dangerous moments.
_________________

Where others are blind, I am futurely inclined
And you too could see, if you was widdle ol' me!

Rahkshi500 · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 3230 Location: Unknown

A case of the trope Nothing Is Scarier, right?
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Rabukurafuto · Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2011 5:30 am Post subject:

I suppose so. The dark areas with flickering lights and the silence except for your footsteps and the things you knock down are very eerie.
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Where others are blind, I am futurely inclined
And you too could see, if you was widdle ol' me!

Selrahc · Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2011 5:57 am Post subject:

I always hated the silent parts of the game. I can't see what happens, only to get ambushed by two or three bad guys. Bleh.

But the game is sprctacular nevertheless.
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Rahkshi500 · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 3230 Location: Unknown

I've completed F.E.A.R. Files and I was quite pleased with it. Most of the problems that were in the first game are still in Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. One other problem I had with them was that they're too much ambiguous compared to the first game and given that the Vivendi timeline is non-canon, you're not gonna get answers on them. However, it does a lot of things right. The new weapons are awesome, the new enemies are more challenging, and they manage to make the horror aspect work better than the first game.
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Rabukurafuto · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 3:07 am Post subject:

That sounds good, Rahkshi.
_________________

Where others are blind, I am futurely inclined
And you too could see, if you was widdle ol' me!

Rahkshi500 · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 3230 Location: Unknown

I think you'll like them when to you get to play them.
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"Yes, I want your love. GIVE IT TO ME!"

Rahkshi500 · Joined: 07 Jul 2010 Posts: 3230 Location: Unknown

I finished F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin and I have to say that I'm not really satisfied with it. Admittedly I did like how you can now have up to 4 weapons, I did like Beckett's story and how he got the reflex powers, and it was awesomely epic to control a Power Armor, but there were many things I didn't like.

While the controls were slightly fixed, they were still slippery and melee was almost useless to use. The lighting and graphic were improved, but what I liked about the first game and expansion packs was that it was quite colorful despite the darkness throughout the game and the darkness helped made everything so atmospheric. In this game, the colors were really dimmed down; most the colors I saw throughout the game were disgusting yellow and dull grey.

The game was shorter, and probably the worse aspect to me was that the lighting and the visions were so bright and so distorted that it gave me a headache whenever I played it.

Overall, while I should enjoy the pros of this game, the cons keep getting in the way and it prevents me from enjoying it. I only hope that I enjoy F.E.A.R. 3 more when/if I get to play it.
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"Yes, I want your love. GIVE IT TO ME!"

Rabukurafuto · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 9:40 pm Post subject:

How, that is rather negative. I heard similar things about F.E.A.R. 3 from people who liked F.E.A.R. 2 though. But F.E.A.R. 3 had John Carpenter work on it, and I would imagine that would be a good thing.
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Where others are blind, I am futurely inclined
And you too could see, if you was widdle ol' me!

Feral Dragon · Joined: 09 Dec 2010 Posts: 249 Location: Norwich

I thought it would be as well, but elements that can be considered 'scary' just aren't, when compared to the predecessors. It's more weird than anything. The driving force behind the plot is freaky, to be blunt.
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