F.E.A.R : Project Origin

Review from George, George and George - Monday, 16 March 2009 @ 5:13pm

Now F.E.A.R 2, the 2 part giving away it’s a sequel is of course… A sequel. I should have probably phrased that better.

Um, alright, so this F.E.A.R 2 game yeah? It’s continuing on from the first game. And in that fashion, I will give you a bit of background on the first.

In the original you play a poor soul from the team F.E.A.R, First Encounter Assault Recon Team. Your job is to basically stop a bunch of evil bastards from using a freakishly powerful physic girl’s genes to create an army of crazy strong psychic Replicate Soldiers.

Throughout the games endless levels of offices and storage containers you witness strong psychic visions, coupled with deadly supernatural events. The cause of these can be traced back to a little girl. Alma. The same girl on F.E.A.R 2’s cover art, and impressed in minds of gamers every time they’d walk down a dark hallway after playing the game. Alma of course possesses powerful psychic abilities, so powerful in fact, that I will again say the word powerful yet again.

The game itself scared the shit out of me on a few occasions and I was very happy when I finished it. I'll tell you the ending because I need to explain the second game. So be warned: Spoilers.

Alma's spirit is released and through a confusing cut scene you discover that who you’re playing as, is actually her son. Alma is heard to be crying and calling out for her son the moments after the cut scene. The game then ends shortly after that with a nuclear explosion. After the explosion it cuts to the lucky alive escaping in a Helicopter. Only then do you see Alma’s arm as she climbs into the helicopter. Game ends, with obvious room for Sequel.

In case you didn’t catch that, I’ve summed it up for you in five pictures.

You don't start off as the same character as most sequels do. Instead, you start the game off just before the original ending takes place. You're actually playing parallel to the events in the original F.E.A.R. Who you are playing as is Michael Becket, a lovely man who probably enjoys tennis.

Besides the occasional match, Becket has managed to haul himself into a mission. To find Mr. Aristide, the present of the company Armacham. Which is a large technology company that deals with the military and taps into the nuclear market.

Before you can dive into your first mission your thrown into a very fiery ominous apparitions from Alma. I wont give away what it was though, as I will none of the others. Various times through out F.E.A.R and F.E.A.R 2 you’re thrown into a supernatural state (I guess you could call it?) where you’re shown different events and perspectives. The best way to describe it is if you’d put a orange filter over a picture, and gone mental with the smudge tool in Photoshop. It’s both an aid and a set back in some situations in the game.

I''ll quickly mention there’s no real tutorial for this game, save if you look at the controls in the menu screen or the instruction booklet.

Straight after that you start your first mission. You set upon a seemingly deserted apartment building and wave your way through enemy soldiers and conveniently placed tables in front of doors. You see Alma a few times, and she does turn the smudge tool on a couple of times, and leads you to a window. From that window you see the nuclear explosion from the first game and you’re knocked out.

When you wake up you’re being operated on. After what I expect to be a highly traumatic experience for Becket, you wake up in an abandoned hospital to find out you were equipped with Hyper Reflexes. Which in the first game enabled you to slow down time, dodge bullets and throw grenades whilst jumping.

And this is pretty much where the game takes off. While the game originally revolved around arresting Aristide, you find yourself caught up in the mess Armacham had left after the explosion as you try to avoid Alma and rally with your Squad. The game does take some unexpected twists, thankfully, and in turn your mission changes to suit them.

For example: Ninjas out of nowhere

Keeping to the same level design as the original, you have various checkpoints you must reach before you can eventually move to a different location. For example, there are 12 chapters, and you spent 1/3 of those in the hospital and the rest between a school and the destroyed city. Actually that’s a shit example. Let me re do this.

For example, within the hospital level there are various chapters. Each chapter consists of getting from point A to B, while encountering enemies along the way and occasionally needing to find a key card to open a door. The further you are in the level, the harder the enemies are to fight. Unfortunately the further you are in the game doesn’t coincide with having objectives. This is fine if you enjoyed the original, but I myself, like having more to do than just fighting my way to a checkpoint. Your main objective is to usually rally with your Squad, or find a way out of where ever you are. I was really hoping there would be a sweet boss battle with a giant evil inanimate object. But alas, no real boss battles.

But that’s ok, I made up for the lack of objectives by breaking every breakable object in the game. And setting things on fire.

The levels are also nicely paced with enough time after you’ve culled some enemies to find some ammo and chillax before facing more. This actually goes through right to the end…though you get gradually used to the amount of enemies so chillax time goes from 1 minute to 3 seconds. Cover also lessens as the game goes on. This annoyed me, only because I wanted somewhere to hide. If you had used your brain and looked at cover before you shot something, this wouldn’t be a problem.

A pacifist enemy fighting with the power of dance.

As well as facing human enemies you're also chased by spiritual beings, angry particle ghosts, replicate soldiers and walking zombies who can revive the dead. I had trouble fighting the walking zombies as they take a lot of lead to the head before they die. All the other enemies in the game, although their origins are pretty spooky, aren’t. They really lacked the impact of the first game.

Playing the original F.E.A.R, I stopped halfway through the game to switch it to easy, as the enemies were too hard and freaky. Things would jump out of nowhere, when you expected something nothing would happen and when you had just reloaded after a battle you were suddenly attacked. Playing the game in surround sound meant cowering in your chair as you heard footsteps behind you

But… FEAR 2 lacked that for me. I powered the game up to the hardest and I found the enemies very predictable and not scary. This could be because I had already played the original. But I was almost unimpressed with it in this game.

The further you are in the game, the more flurecent the enemies become

Helping you through the game via radio is your Delta Squad plus a mysterious man who calls himself Snake Fist. Although my mental image of him was not only R+ and highly humorous , he is very helpful in situations and guides you through levels and objectives. There are a few other colourful personalities that you meet later in the game, including enemies right out of the Anime Gundam.

The game held up to what it promised, which was a successful sequel to the first. And I found that to be in game play and story. If you played the first I'd recommend picking up the second one.

I wanted to finish it only to watch (What all my friends who'd finished has told me.) quite a...Interesting ending. Hang on... Usually people finish games to watch the ending right? Well this was a PS3, not a 360. Which means I wasn't doing it just so I could get achievements. Otherwise, if I hadn't played the previous game, I would have given up five hours in.

So final thoughts.

Errrr,... nahhh, mahh ummm. It was alright. Graphics were top, story continued on well from the first, but lack of anything pushing you to keep playing, besides the ending cut scenes, was a tad vexing.

You can turn your lights back off, this is not as scary as the original.

Pros

While I do complain about the lack of things to do in the game, I’ll counter it with the length of the levels. I’ve always found F.E.A.R’s levels just the right length. They don’t drag on, and aren’t too short. Though it may be from point A to B, you’re always taken down elevators, through small holes blown into a wall, stairs ect.. To other unexplored parts of the level. Instead of continuously walking around a level.

Cons

The lack of objectives. It made the game short, and dull at times. Although point A to point B is implimented in almost every game, it seemed pointless and vexing at times. The game is also pretty short compared to most. Portal is a 4 hour game, Fear two is a 6 hour game.