F.E.A.R. Comments by Tom Bramwell

7 days...

Jesus, that good? Might have to give it a try after all.

if only i had a half reasonable PC, this sounds well worth a look.

I've never liked anything Monolith have done. The demo for this didn't change that.

Purveyors of contrived, stodgily scripted shite, with piss poor netcode.

The fact that EG say it can't even compare to the woeful HL2 is the kiss of death tbh!

"Purveyors of contrived, stodgily scripted shite, with piss poor netcode"

Care to expand a little (on the stogily scripted stuff, I'm not too interested in their netcode)? Not picking on your comment BTW, just genuinely interested in your take on the demo.

I quite liked the demo. Old school shooting fun with an excellent spear gun variant (a shiny apple for the person who can remind me of which game first implemented the "pin people to walls" gun mechanic). Thanks heavens one of my housemates upgraded their PC circa HL2 into a costly behemoth games machine.

i'm enjoying it, but i don't rate it that highly...

while the effects are pretty, and the gunfights entertaining, it does get very repetitive and tedious as you plough further through the game.

i guess this is aimed more at the 'hardcore' fps fan who wants something to test their expensive computer on, and have lots of things to kill - which is all fine and dandy, but I have a feeling that I probably should have waited and bought Prey instead...

Purveyors of contrived, stodgily scripted shite, with piss poor netcode.

Blasphemy! No One Lives Forever, and to a lesser extent it's sequel, was a masterpiece in storytelling and comedy with very solid gameplay to boot.

9/10 for spending 10hrs walking down boring repetative corridors...please, been there,done that got the t-shirt.......

9/10 for graphics,sound,atmosphere...i agree, but for gameplay its a 6 or 7/10, its no different to that other borefest Doom 3

Rating does seem excessive. 9/10 for a corridor shooter that does nothing particuarly special except for some pretty graphics and bullet-time?

pc games 4 the win then?

I bought it today.

TBH - I wasn't convinced after playing the single-player demo... I thought it was a fairly average FPS with some blatant scripting... akin to the old "Boo" style of scary film where a sudden loud noise is supposed to be frightening... :-/

But all that changed when I played the multi-player demo - absolutely great fun! Nice meaty weapons, very nice level design (factory mp map) and fun game mechanics convinced me. Even if I still don't like the single-player game, I think the multi-player blasting will be worth the money for me.

Tom/Kieren/Ellie/raups - from an EG perspective, which do you find lamer?

"Better/Worse/As good as Halo then?"
or
"This review/score is wrong/sucks cos I liked/didnt like the game"

Doesn't run well on my PC.... but it did look good.

/waits for 360 version

How terrible that people are using the comments section to comment on reviews. What is the world coming to?

Better than Halo?

Surely not...

This one sounds very interesting indeed. Shame it's a PC game, really. :-)

First game where I pinned people to walls was Messiah but that's probably not THE first.

"Blasphemy! No One Lives Forever, and to a lesser extent it's sequel, was a masterpiece in storytelling and comedy with very solid gameplay to boot."

I second that. Just played through NOLF2 again recently. That tricyle chase never gets old. And the fight inside the trailer inside the typhoon (although showing its age graphically a little now) is still one of my favourite FPS set pieces ever. Some of the best ingame dialogue I've seen (actually NOLF 1 was quite a bit better) bested only by the Thief series off the top of my head.

I preferred a different game

Have they added a widescreen function since the demo? It really is unacceptable that you need to go hurting round config files and have to put up with stretched HUD/UI elements in this day and age.

Funny. I normally agree with Tom.

@BradlayLaw

Widescreen isn't quite as standard on PC games as consoles now though is it? I'm a little out of touch with the PC games market these days, but I would have thought most PC games don't support widescreen. Do they? I still get annoyed with console games that don't I'll admit.

@kangarootoo
I know quite a few people with widescreen monitors. I think the Dell 2005fpw/2405fpw have become quite popular of late - probably more so than people who have 7800 or X1000 graphics cards to run the game at full wack (and which are obviosuly supported). If you can hack a config file to make it work then surely it wouldn't be that much more work to add it as an ingame option. WoW and HL2 manage it very well.

Sounds like something they coded up but then didn't have time to test sufficiently to be confident of making it a user option. Its a pity I agree, but better the option is there for those inclined to tinker than it simply be absent.

Widescreen isn't an option on the Retail version :(

In fact the max res is only 1178, which seems a little low.

Do many console games support widescreen, is it some hidden option? I've found more PC games that work with widescreen res than console stuff. Actually, I don't think one of my console games runs in widescreen.

You don't need a 7800GTX to drive widescreen games, btw, I've had HL2 running beautifully at 1680x1050 on a widescreen notebook with an ATi Mobility 9700.

"The fact that EG say it can't even compare to the woeful HL2 is the kiss of death tbh!"

Not a big FPS fan, eh?

@PearOfAnguish

I wouldn't say most, but a fair few do. Not sure what consoles you have. My main one is currently an XB and if the XB is set to widescreen in its system prefs any game that supports it will pick it up (but not always tell the TV to switch modes, which was damn annoying when I lost the remote for a while).

Off the top of my head games that support WS in my collection are.

Burnout 2 onwards (I think, could just be 3 onwards).
Ghost Recon 2.
Farcry Insticts.
Farenheit.
Halo 2.
Band of Brothers.

Thats all I can think of offhand, but I would say the vast majority of the games I am playing currently. As I recall the PS2 has some setting in the system browser regarding screen size, but that might be a big fat lie.

"(a shiny apple for the person who can remind me of which game first implemented the "pin people to walls" gun mechanic)."

painkiller??

(and sorry if someones already said it)

"(a shiny apple for the person who can remind me of which game first implemented the "pin people to walls" gun mechanic)."

Didn't Mortyr do it? Maybe not the first but before Painkiller.

What system was this tested on (spec) ?

/Notices very large FEAR banner
/cynic

I'll probably pick it up when it goes down in price a little, I've started again on Far Cry and I'm enjoying how I'm already doing things differently to last time without really thinking about it. Shame FEAR doesn't seem to contain such sandbox methodology.

Release it on the 360, you know it makes sense...

Cheers Kanga, I hadn't actually looked in the Dashboard settings at all. Probably where I was going wrong.

i'm running it frighteningly well. on a rather shit pc..the settings it suggest work great.

Oh my, Xbox games look much nicer in widescreen, and there was a setting for 480p in there, too. Halo 2 is almost playable now.

I've never liked anything Monolith have done. The demo for this didn't change that.

Purveyors of contrived, stodgily scripted shite, with piss poor netcode.

The fact that EG say it can't even compare to the woeful HL2 is the kiss of death tbh!

You're becoming a troll lately, drumbaby. Go play some Devil May Cry.

The first game I ever played where you could pin people to walls was Messiah aswell, surely it must be the first?

Dammit EG do you have to put plot spoilers in your summary... I want to be surprised by the game not play expecting such and such an event.

You think he's become a troll recently, UncleLou?

I don't think I've everīread a non-trollish, non-fanboyish post by drumababy.

Were it not for its time manipulation though, it would suffer - and certainly can't compare to Half-Life 2's timelessness on that basis.

I can't quite agree with that sentence in the review. To be honest, I think the game works best without using slow-motion too much (though it's a bit too tough on the two harder difficulty levels). It then offers the by far best (and that includes the best AI) gunbattles I have yet seen in any shooter, in real time, so to speak. Playing it on a harder difficulty level with lots of slow motion almost turns it into a different game.

@ Pike - yes, he's often dangerously close to trolling, but when he has a good day he's able to make really good posts, and I like his enthusiasm for certain types of games, misguided as it is. :p

Mildly amusingly, the punctuation quotation has a misused semicolon.

Mildly amusingly, the punctuation quotation has a misused semicolon.

Indeed, I can barely contain my laughter.

"The art of punctuation is of infinite consequence in writing; as it contributes to the perspicuity, and consequently to the beauty, of every composition."

He must have a big monitor!

Purveyors of contrived, stodgily scripted shite, with piss poor netcode.

Blasphemy! No One Lives Forever, and to a lesser extent it's sequel, was a masterpiece in storytelling and comedy with very solid gameplay to boot.

Eraser, ur not wrong! Classics in every way.

Imagine a NOLF sequel with a graphics engine of this capability! If only they would port the originals!!

NOLF obviously had speargun impalings...

didnt the original avp have somekind of head impalation in predator mode..

I cant see what the problem is with scripted ai, if its done well. As long as the result is entertaining.

shogo was entirely scripted. Didnt stop it being fun.

I am being guilty of reveiwing the review here, but here goes: I think a 9 from EG it is disappointing. I agree that the game is great, and gets the effects and the atmosphere right. Many other things - level design, story, variety, some semblance of actually CARING what's going on - are sorely missing. On top of that it is a tad short. None of these things are fatal of course, but they sure cast a doubt over whether it's really worth a 9.

Call me a troll or whatever, but I can't get over the fact that Far Cry got an 8 from EG (one allegation against it being - it lacked style! loL!) while both Doom 3 and FEAR get 9s. And I am no technical person, but like Doom 3, I don't think the overall look of this game REALLY justifies the steep hardware requirements, being set solidly in samey corridors. No matter how many polygons those tables are pushing, or whether there are 35 different light sources at work, or there are ultra-high-res textures on the crates, it all adds up to very little, sorry.

Don't get me wrong, it is, all in all, a great game though, especially for us PC FPS-starved souls. It is not fair in my opinion to criticize a game because it is not revolutionary. It seems certainly better than Doom3 or its upcoming younger (twin) brother, Quake 4.

A very well written review, thanks guys. Also in due time (first one I read).

This is the one game I want a games PC for. Although the next-gen consoles might still be more tempting. There's an unforeseen bonus to playing console games: PC gaming is solitary, while I can play console games side by side with my wife (Box, Cube, PS).

@jlaakso: you have just invited a horde of PC gamers telling you that it IS possible for several people to play on a PC, if you install software Nutcase 1.2, connect two controllers via three wires through a hub into four USB ports, reconfigure the game's controls though its options and if they aren't there, its a small matter of either hacking the registry or installing the latest version of Horsedung 4.5, along with a 75 MB patch just released by the game dev..

And that is, if you remember to buy the two controllers first!!! You can even play foursome if two of you can use different areas of the keyboard without touching hands!!

EDIT: Note: This is not a 'PC gaming sucks' rant since I am a PC gamer myself - it is just a shield against possible replies to jlaakso's post!!!