New Review Posted: F.E.A.R.

Daniel Weissenberger · 02-08-2006, 06:59 PM

Hias Wrba reivews F.E.A.R. and finds himself decided un-sacred... of the game's quality!

"The outline of last year's hit first-person-shooter (FPS) F.E.A.R. (short for First Encounter Assault Recon) reads like a poignant satire on the immature state of big budget videogame development. The player takes the part of a new member of said recon unit which specializes in encountering and assaulting varied paranormal phenomena. It's a fourteen-year-old boy's ultimate gaming fantasy come true: testosterone-drenched yet tactical shoot-outs plus creepy stuff his parents wouldn't want him exposed to. The Exorcist meets Counterstrike. A perfect marketing scheme launched with deadly precision at the dedicated target demographic. F.E.A.R. would be all too easy to mock if it weren't for one little problem: it's a very good game."

The review continues here.

Mike Doolittle · 02-08-2006, 07:21 PM

I gotta say, I'm really diggin' the new guy's writing.

Space Harrier · 02-09-2006, 04:28 AM

Agreed. I had a real blast playing through this one. The AI was the best I've ever seen- My best memory of the game is being shocked when I was actually FLANKED by the enemy and shot in the back. I didn't even mind that I got killed- I was just amazed it happened.

All this helps me overlook the lack of inspiration in the story and visuals... almost. See, if this game was made by anyone but Monolith, I'd let it slide, but their previous games (NOLF, Tron) had so much personality that it's a shame that FEAR ended up being so generic and drab.

Hypatia93 · 02-09-2006, 02:47 PM

Hias, what ethnicity are you? And I know I asked you this before, but would you mind spelling your name phonetically for an ignorant American? (You could even use spelling auf Deutsch, b/c I took a /lot/ of it /way/ back in the day, and it is definitely phonetic.

)

Anyway, great review!

It's titles like this one that bumms me out though. (Actually, I'd been watching this game for a while despite the fact I have no comp at home currently.) Bumms me in the sense that I don't have a high-end pc to play it on. (And besides, when I do get one with this year's tax return, I'm going to get a laptop, and it would be /impossible/ to get a laptop that would run F.E.A.R. *le sigh*)

But tell me, and tell me your honest opinion. Do you think this title could be ported over to the X360 without loosing anything or without loosing much? Remember, when HL2 was ported to the Xbox, it was a disaster (in many peoples' minds).

P.S. I watched a wee bit of Little Otik with a friend last night, sort of as a preview. Didn't even get to any cannibal log baby parts. It was definitely weird, and it was definitely cool. I (we) can hardly wait to watch the whole thing.

GC_Hias · 02-09-2006, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hypatia93

Hias, what ethnicity are you? And I know I asked you this before, but would you mind spelling your name phonetically for an ignorant American? (You could even use spelling auf Deutsch, b/c I took a /lot/ of it /way/ back in the day, and it is definitely phonetic.

)

I'm a quarter czech and three quarters german. Last name is, as you can imagine of czech origin (it means willow - i got a build-in Buffy reference!) and pronounced sth. like: wirr-bar

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hypatia93

(And besides, when I do get one with this year's tax return, I'm going to get a laptop, and it would be /impossible/ to get a laptop that would run F.E.A.R. *le sigh*)

believe it or not i played it for the most part on my laptop and only referred to a friends standalone one session to check what the engine is capable of with all the settings maxed out. Otherwise i was fine with my fujitsu-siemens.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hypatia93

But tell me, and tell me your honest opinion. Do you think this title could be ported over to the X360 without loosing anything or without loosing much? Remember, when HL2 was ported to the Xbox, it was a disaster (in many peoples' minds).

Seriously I don't know. In general I prefer playing shooters with a mouse since the widened target areas in console ports ruin a lot of the initial satifaction imo. But apart from that we shall wait and see...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hypatia93

P.S. I watched a wee bit of Little Otik with a friend last night, sort of as a preview. Didn't even get to any cannibal log baby parts. It was definitely weird, and it was definitely cool. I (we) can hardly wait to watch the whole thing.

It takes a while before the log baby is introduced... but then it's gonna get even weirder and cooler

David Stone · 02-09-2006, 03:21 PM

Last question: Hee-as or Hi-as?

GC_Hias · 02-09-2006, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bassbeast

Last question: Hee-as or Hi-as?

Definitly hee-as!

David Stone · 02-09-2006, 03:28 PM

Interesting, because my name may be spelled D-A-V-I-D (now that I'm doing reviews, people know my real name) but it's pronounced Flooberwacky.

GC_Hias · 02-09-2006, 03:35 PM

is that flu bear wee key --- or more like David

David Stone · 02-09-2006, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GC_Hias

is that flu bear wee key --- or more like David

Well, you'd THINK more like "flu bear wee key", but it's more like quaz-lootle-pastry.

Alright, this is too silly, even for me.

Great review though!

GC_Hias · 02-09-2006, 06:11 PM

alright. no more silly tonight.
and thanks!

EnduroGamer · 02-09-2006, 07:12 PM

Hypatia, FEAR could definitely come out sparkling on the X360, but it would lose a lot going to the Xbox.

It really is a graphical feast for the eyes.

Oh, and you could totally get a PC or laptop to run it without totally busting the bank. Even if you have to run it on "High" instead of "max", it would look good. And the game comes with a very cool feature that plays through a test video and reports back the low, average, and max framerates and the % of frames in certain ranges. This was excellent for tweaking the settings. It also has a very satisfactory auto-detect feature to give you the best settings. Between the two, I decided to go slightly above the auto-detect settings and take a minor framerate dip to get better AA.

Mike Doolittle · 02-09-2006, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hypatia93

Bumms me in the sense that I don't have a high-end pc to play it on. (And besides, when I do get one with this year's tax return, I'm going to get a laptop, and it would be /impossible/ to get a laptop that would run F.E.A.R. *le sigh*)

Well, not if you got an Alienware laptop...

Actually, you know, the funny thing about those really mega-high end PCs like Alienware with all this super-advanced technology, is that games today don't take advantage of all that stuff. Most PCs people have, as long as you have a decent amount of RAM and a fairly recent graphics card, can run most games just fine. Maybe not with *every* setting turned to max, but fine nonetheless. Why would a PC developer release a game that required an Alienware-like beast to be played with respectable settings? That'd be kind of limiting the market.

Quote:

But tell me, and tell me your honest opinion. Do you think this title could be ported over to the X360 without loosing anything or without loosing much? Remember, when HL2 was ported to the Xbox, it was a disaster (in many peoples' minds).

The 360 is, for now, comparable to or slightly ahead of the most advanced PCs (like the Alienware ones with dual cores and SLI), so FEAR would get to it no problem. Xbox though? Nah. It's getting dated.

And btw, I haven't heard a single person say HL2 was a disaster of a port. Quite the opposite really. Anyone who's said that is in a negligable minority.

shun · 02-09-2006, 09:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by littledoc

And btw, I haven't heard a single person say HL2 was a disaster of a port. Quite the opposite really. Anyone who's said that is in a negligable minority.

But it does look significantly uglier than the PC version. And you do know how soon people starts complaining upon seeing things that are not quite an eye-candy now, don't you?

EnduroGamer · 02-10-2006, 06:33 PM

Got to disagree with you, LD.

Granted I don't have the newest ultimate 7800s or the comparable Radeon, but with a Dual Core 3.2 Ghz, 2gigs of RAM, and two Geforce 6800's (one notch below the 7800s), I CAN NOT run FEAR with everything maxed without having too low of a framerate. Even with this setup, I still have to drop the Antialiaasing and anisotropic filtering down a small bit.

The X360 is comparable to medium-high gaming PC, but the highest of the high-end PCs are as powerful if not more so. And if they aren't today, they will be within a month or two. Granted, that's also $3k compared to $400, but still.

The RAM and cpu control a lot of things, but when it comes to the AA and other specialty features that make the games extra pretty, it's solely on the videocards.