F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Comments by Kieron Gillen

confirmed no buy, bang!

Finally a proper review as the demo was crap imo

The review doesn't read like a 5 score game.

Remember EG gave the first game 9/10. and by the sounds of things not much has changed in this follow up, if thats worth halving the score then all games bar the first the series should be under 5/10 aswell.

Gillenlol

Bollocks. I was looking forward to this for ages. Good job I bought Chrono Trigger instead.

"I found myself thinking the back-handed compliment, "Well, at least I haven't done a gun-turret bit yet." Then, predictably, one turned up. Every time I started a new level I ended up wondering whether this one would be the moving-platform-train-bit. Surely it would arrive eventually? And it did."

I'm not going to buy this game but this raises an eyebrow. EG has - recently - highly reviewed many games that have exactly those bits.

Zing!

Demo pushed me from an instabuy onto the fence, and this confirms it. Money well saved. Monolith are now 2 for 2 this generation when it comes to fucking up good games with bad sequels.

right, so worse than files? i don't think so.

Really, oh well

EG =! KG. Not a hive mind. No.

"The close-combat flying kicks have been excised" - they were in the demo! How silly.

This sounds like something to pick up once the price has gone down. Plenty of other games to get in the mean time, thankfully.

"The close-combat flying kicks have been excised" - they were in the demo! How silly.

I noticed that too >_

"The close-combat flying kicks have been excised, reduced to the standard weapon-bash"

Oh dear. Not only are the flying kicks in, but also the melee slide, and the jumping roundhouse.

" I may be belabouring the point, but it's the core mechanic's solidness which makes FEAR 2 impossible to condemn"

5/10!

I will copy what I wrote on the IGN Board:
"I don't think I will be picking this game up unfortunately. I enjoyed the first F.E.A.R on PC which I played at a friends house but when I got the same game on the Xbox 360 it was lacking.

My PC is not very powerfull so it was always X360 or nothing and I guess in this case in will be nothing, which is a shame as I was looking forward to this game right up until the demo which I honestly thought was EXACTLY the same as the original F.E.A.R albeit with slightly more intresting enviroments and SLIGHTLY better graphics.

Shame that the developers could not deliver, perhaps I will rent it one day when it is dirt cheap but not worth spending £39.99 on if I am not sure it will be decent or not.
Anon_642"

Well, seeing as the first game was horribly overrated by Eurogamer, I guess the sequel is getting a bit of the blame left over from the first review.

"" I may be belabouring the point, but it's the core mechanic's solidness which makes FEAR 2 impossible to condemn"

5/10!" I don't think 5/10 is condemnation really. Read EG's scoring policy, 5 is marked as "not as disaster" whereas its only at 4/10 they talk about "getting into the realms of poor"

There are kicks in this game, but not as good as in the first one.

They were my primary weapon!

Jeez, did the reviewer get kicked in the nuts by his girlfriend while opening a letter from his landlord saying he's getting evicted, just before he wrote the review? Maybe you shouldn't write reviews until you've been out for a few pints, won money at the local casino and got the number of the hottest chic in the nightclub. 5/10 lol.

Oh dear. With the first FEAR, I could appreciate the mechanics of the AI and gameplay, but couldn't get past how unremittingly dull the level design was. I played the demo of this and liked that it wasn't all offices, but once I got into a mech suit it just felt like any other shooter. And I couldn't see what the hell was going on half of the time. One for the inevitable '£9.99 at play.com' list then, I think.

edge gave it 8/10, higher than killzone.who to believe?

Well, It's still a buy for me, I even thought the demo was worth more than 5/10 lol. Best 15 minutes of FPS gaming I've had for a while, especially considering the deluge of over-hyped garbage that came out at the end of last year :)

I rather liked the demo, and it felt quite similar to FEAR 1 (which is a good thing in my eyes). Is this a case of more of the same with no improvement, or is it remarkably worse than the first? If it's the former I'll still be picking it up.

Must say the demo scared me shitless and thought this would get higher. I don't actually mind, but it will be interesting to read the forthcoming Resident Evil 5 review. 5/10 because it follows the previous formula: small houses, windows, zombies, tunnels, slow turning... ?

And there's me hoping it would be good enough to help put enough money Monolith's way, for them to make NOLF 3, oh well 'sigh'

Props to Kieron for the use of belabouring. That's probably the most bedazzling word to befall here for a while.

Can't say I'm all that surprised at the overall verdict, though. Downloaded the demo for this the other day. Five minutes in, I started dozing off. Now I just fire it up to combat the insomnia.

im sorry, but that review is pretty much BS tbh.

5/10 is the score you should have given the first version of this game instead of wasting my money by wanking an 8 or 9 all over it, or whatever it was.

@nardop, STKD - Have you guys played it then? What did you think? What is that you disagree with in this review in particular?

yes

I thought the FEAR2 demo was ok, with excellent sound design, ok visuals and a bit of style in the ghosts and visions, right up until the ping of the Killzone2 download complete sounded. Comparing the two side by side, and FEAR2 is definitely relegated to the bargain bin. Unless the demo was very different to the final game, the AI was shocking (running brainlessly backwards and forwards between 2 or 3 cover points is about it), little scenery interaction (I spent 5 minutes last night just shooting tables and chairs and barrels and tittatin KZ2 just to see how it reacted) and corridor after corridor after corridor. I resumed the reason I didn't know why I was shooting the other soldiers was demo-itus, but obviously not. Sure KZ2 is a little generic, but it does everything so well that it covers any (deliberate) lack of innovation, which ruthlessly highlights lesser games with neither innovation or KZ2's polish.

On the PS3 at least, Killzone has changed the game, and other FPSs are going to have their work cut out keeping up. Which is excellent news - a real kick upm the ar$e for a genre that has stagnated so badly recently.

BTW: anyone else suffer a sound bug where every sound apart from the backgrond wind noise cuts out when you exit the underground train station? Happens every time for me, and nothing will sort it except a die and restart.

"Well, at least I haven't done a gun-turret bit yet." Then, predictably, one turned up. Every time I started a new level I ended up wondering whether this one would be the moving-platform-train-bit. Surely it would arrive eventually? And it did"

what, like in Killzone 2, where there is actually a turret sequence on board a fucking train! 9/10 for that one though, make up your minds...

The reviewer for this game had nothing to do with the KZ2 review, though? He's probably not even played the demo, in fact..

So far the reviews have been pretty good. IGN UK just gave it an 8.5.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/952/9525...

And VideoGamer just gave the game a 9/10.
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/projec...

All I can say is that I'm not letting one reviewer decide whether or not I buy a game. Especially a review that's inconsistent with the score (his review sounds like he's going to give it a 7 or so). Crapping all over an FPS game because it does all the right things perfectly but doesn't innovate is like bitching about a incredibly well made slasher flick because it sticks to the established rules. If it's well done, it can still be a lot of fun.

I don't need in innovation every time I fire up a movie or play a game. I just want something that's fun to watch or play and keeps me entertained.

This scored higher than Killzone 2 in the latest edition of Edge.


:/!

I purchased the original fear based on eurogamers review, traded it within a month, i just couldnt see what was so special about it. I might pick this up when its cheap later down the road if theres no other decent FPS down the line that is.

Shooters nowadays need to meet the bar which was raised by Halo 3. The problem is that's an extraordinarily high bar to reach.

If the full game is anything like the demo, then 5 seem to be a very generous score. Personally i think it felt as shallow and simple as the junk they call Gow and Cod. Fear 1 was a great game but with the sequel Monolith seem to have lost the magic and sold their souls.

"Shooters nowadays need to meet the bar which was raised by Halo 3. The problem is that's an extraordinarily high bar to reach"

O_o


Replace Halo 3 with Killzone 2=(y)

I loved the first game - really did love it - but I really couldn't get on with the demo for this.

Don't know exactly what it was, but the "feel" was all wrong and even the general combat just didn't grab me. It was almost like I was playing at a low framerate although my FPS was fine at around the 50 mark. The shotgun was about a quarter as much fun as that in the original, and by the time I got in the mech suit thing I was just thoroughly disappointed with the whole thing.

Perhaps the full game could have sucked me in if I gave it some time, but honestly this isn't something I'm going to buy now so I guess I'll never find out.

edit: talking about the PC, by the way.

"You explore an alternate part of the world as another FEAR team"

Thats just not true.

"The close-combat flying kicks have been excised, reduced to the standard weapon-bash"

Neither is that.

"FEAR 2 is guilty of the arrogance of videogame sequels which do little to reintroduce their plots"

Its a sequal...

I can always count on eurogamer for a pretty innacurate, worthless review :D
Think ill be picking this up on PC.

"FEAR 2 is guilty of the arrogance of videogame sequels which do little to reintroduce their plots"

This should read:

"Keiron Gillen is quilty of the arrogance of a former. Edge freelancer which is most unhelpful in determing whether this game is any good or not"

Read the review and my brain speaks 7 or 8, but 5 come on - traffic whoring if ever I saw it. Even Edgegave it an 8 Gillen!

More proof that EG has no fucking clue how to score. I've played this game already and can tell you it's definitely not a 5, just like Rise of the Argonauts wasn't a 3. But give them Killzone 2 which is a incredibly short game and they give it a 9, god what a bunch of snobs.

Oh dear. How on earth could he miss the flying kicks?

From the demo I played of this and the last FEAR game, it is my opinion that they are exactly the same, bar a difference in graphical quality.

On a side note, is anybody else fed up of audio/text logs dotted around levels? As a narrative device it is overused and from a gameplay perspective it forces the player to stop playing the game, usaully to read/listen to somebody's really inconsequential and banal writing/acting.

And also, not catching the flying kicks as being in the game is an obvious faux-pas Kieron. 5/10 however is not inconsistant with what you've written considering you believe the game to be highly formulaic in a lot of ways. Again, it leads back to a problem with a 10-point scoring system in which several reviewers give 7/10 scores to average games which in reality should technically be receiving 5s.

"Shooters nowadays need to meet the bar which was raised by Halo 3. The problem is that's an extraordinarily high bar to reach."

I think you're confusing yourself with the bar you raised for Halo 3.

n@

I'd hate to break this to you, EG gave Halo 3 a perfect 10/10 - Killzone 2 only got a 9/10

harsh. i've read more scathing reviews that got far better sores on this site.
confused :/
- add this to the rent b4 buy pile (just in case).

Halo 3 raised no bar whatsoever. Utter pish.

I just read d review of fear 2 by eurogamer. In d review i didnt find dat reviewer had any true problem wd game vch is fantastic infact n reviewed fairly by other sites. Isnt it cheap to give a game like fear 2 just 5 out of 10. They cant deteriorate gaming n media dat way. I hav usually seen d reviews 4m eurogamer r not so relevant both in terms of context n rating. They dont speak true gaming...fable 2 got 10 out of 10 despite its so many problems. Amazing na?

I just read d review of fear 2 by eurogamer. In d review i didnt find dat reviewer had any true problem wd game vch is fantastic infact n reviewed fairly by other sites. Isnt it cheap to give a game like fear 2 just 5 out of 10. They cant deteriorate gaming n media dat way. I hav usually seen d reviews 4m eurogamer r not so relevant both in terms of context n rating. They dont speak true gaming...fable 2 got 10 out of 10 despite its so many problems. Amazing na?

Ferose999, that is some of the worst English I have ever read.