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

i'm afraid of tom's sentences

"The art of punctuation is of infinite consequence in writing"

I thought it was the art of hyperbole :-)

Or you could just get a internet connection and play co-op...
But that sounds stupid, better to give the impression its impossible.

Do I have to translate 'side by side' for you? And my intention was not to give the impression of impossibility, just difficulty. The guy meant the ability to play co-op without hooking up to the internet. There is something to be said for playing with a human opponent right besides you - beats the internet for me at least.

Most people would say NOT having the missus sat at your side was a plus point for PC gaming...

Yeah good one.

Perhaps you could get two pc's. Hook them both up to a internet connection. Sit your wife in front of one, you in front of other and then.. and then. Nah this is sounding stupid again... I'll shutup.

Most people would say NOT having the missus AT ALL was a plus point for PC gaming... at least it frees up the money ;-)

Hehehe hadnt thought of that
/changes locks

I'm not sure I like the semi-colon in that sentence. I'd either get rid of it or get rid of 'as'.

Talha - I agree with you on the issue of the scores (Far Cry 8, Doom3 and this 9s) as making no sense. They are marking it on the graphics.

Krudster reviewed Far Cry on a crap PC (GF4Ti) and had to play at low settings - he slated it. Krudster plays Doom3 on a much better PC and its revolutionary 'monster-in-the-closet' gameplay gets a stella review!

You guys really worry about numbers too much. If its 8 or higher, its really good, so who gives a Jack Thompson if its 8, 9 or 10?

Well Furbs, may as well do away with the scores altogether if they are that pointless...

Wouldnt worry me in the slightest. Alot of people who only worry about an arbitary number and cant consider anything else would whine though.

Furbs: "This review/score is wrong/sucks cos I liked/didnt like the game"

The Halo thing, at least, has the saving distinction of being a running joke. We can hope that they don't actually mean it.

Re: Pinning people to walls. First time I remember doing it was with AvP1, which I believe was considerably before Messiah.

KG

A shiny apple is in the post to the usual address.

For the record, I like the review scores as they give me a ballpark idea of the game (I'm one of those idiots that scrolls to the end, checks the score, then reads the review), but I mentally apply a +/-2 to most review scores when comparing games side by side. And even then I read the text, AND probanly rent the game before buying.

Everyone has slightly different tastes and when I see one game with 9/10 and another with 7/10 I tend to think they are both worth looking at.

Furbs initial point about the scores not being the be all and end all was reasonable I think. MrAtheist you should know better than to dig out some old school "create an artificial extreme to undermine the original comment" debating technique ;)

Consistency Kanga, consistency. ;-)

Hooray for lunchbreaks! I have the game in my clammy paws & my costly behemoth games machine will be crunching on it come 6pm :)

dont get excited or you'll only be bored when you get home and get lost because all the scenery is the same

it is fun though .. just not in your face WOW OMG fun

"when you get home and get lost because all the scenery is the same"

Thats happens to me whilst I am ON my way home aaaall too frequently.

again, is hl2 coming for xbox on schedule? or at all?

qu4ke (the quake 2 remake) is fun on pc, they should have made it xbox1 too

Its still tagged as Nov 18th in most places. No word on any delays, but then not much publicity either. Maybe Valve/EA don't feel the need.

i like this simply cause it give me the heebie-jeebies.

films dont put the fear in me anymore, games do. All the blackness and and little hints of movement and the chilling sound design and little girls with long black face-obscuring hair.

give me more.

Any of those playing this seen any stuttering issues? One of my housemate's bought it and it runs smooth as you like on his bonkers fast PC. But he gets stuttering every so often.

My first thought was some delay in loading textures on and off the GFX card. The frame rate in between is around 40-60fps at 1024x768 with pretty much everything cranked up. Anyone experienced this in FEAR or other games? Any suggestions on fixes (besides turning down texture detail, which seems to help a bit)?

Is anyone having problems with the copy protection of FEAR ? The first time I started the game I had to actually try three times in order for the bloody thing to recognize / authenticate the DVD, and for my second go it took another two.

On a second note I probably have to upgrade my VGA to actually enjoy this :\

kangarootoo - I have some stuttering problems on a high-ish end system too... I was wondering if it might be slow HDD access? Might be worth defragging the hard drive if your friend hasn't done that recently.

I'm also currently running with most of the pure graphics options set to medium, but the effects set to max. Seems to preserve the overall look of the game pretty well while keeping the frame-rate high, even in the gunfights.

The game does pause for about a second when it saves a Checkpoint.

A really nice game actually that runs well in 800x600 on my AMD 3K XP, and ATI 9800 PRO. Yes a bit old school shooterish but its good to play with just two hands needed on the keyboard at one time :)
As good if not better than HL2 imho, and fgs it is miles better than that tosh called Halo2 (did no one actually see that was an incredibly poor expansion pack to a good game?. Halo2 rant over).
FEAR is v.good and well worth £30. PS not seen any mention of it for 360.

My inital feeling on this was that, while the combat was great fun, the setting and story seemed pretty soul-less. But I did almost exactly what the review suggested and went back to play it from the start on a higher difficulty. And yes, once you're not so bothered about the story, it is rather superb...

I'm really liking the balance of the weapons at the moment. With the three slots I'm experimenting with combinations of long, medium and short range weapons, switching between them to pick off the hordes as they get closer and closer... It's great to save the slo-mo for the last few guys so you can take them out with the shotgun or the dual pistols - or even a kick. Slo-mo also works really well with jumping - had an excellent moment yesterday when I was on a balcony up above two guys, jumped over in slow motion with the pistols and basically landed on them firing, taking them out before I hit the ground... Can't argue with that :)

To the people who say these kinds of games are the same old same old with flashier graphics... well, yes. Maybe they're not too different from what we've played before, but perhaps some of us actually really LIKE flashy graphics?

Weird, it's pretty much the first game where the AI is much better than what was announced before. In fact, it's by far the best AI I've ever seen in an FPS. Pity that you're not having fun with it, though, you're missing a clear 9/10 game. ;)

Now wait a second, weren't you really underwhelmed by the demo? Why on earth did you buy the full game?

and with all that it gets a 9/10 because it is "fun"....?

never a good criteria for judging a game, that... ;)

kudos to the reviewer, Tom Bramwell. not only do i agree wholeheartedly with the review, but it's also something very rare in the plethora of game reviews on the net - intelligent and well-written. respect. in fact, i registered here based solely on this review and will keep a track on reviews by him.
oh, and fear is the first fps in a long time i've actually been impressed by.

The AI is impressive.

I look forward to the mod community producing some good single-player levels.

The AI is better than HL2 but the gunfights are still basically about seeing and shooting them before they see and shoot you.
After getting a copy of Halo for PC and feeling like I'm trying to out think my AI opponents rather than just outgun them the close quarters combat in FEAR seems a bit of a step back.
Maybe I need to up the difficulty settings a little bit.

So, who's up for remaking Deus Ex with this engine? Now THAT I'd like to see :)

Weapons still feel b0rked if you ask me. What a difference with the feeling of those of HL2 (one of the couple of things that game did right after all). The click-and-shoot outcome is a tiny bit too slow in FEAR.

AI is superb idd, feels like Far Cry in close quarters but with more effects.

ultra boring level design kills the mood. No actual storyline to hold the loevels together.

Great AI but that's it.

This game is officially Over-hyped.

Playing it (FEAR) through a second time at a harder difficulty setting and without using the slo-mo it's a very different and better game - I see what all the fuss is about now.

IMHO the slo-mo kind of gets in the way of the flow of play - I found myself hanging around waiting for it to charge up quite a bit and relying on it most of the time. The time taken in making the game look nice in slow motion isn't lost in full speed either - it feels very kinetc, exciting and brutal.

The most fun I've had since the Master Chief :)

kangaratoo - i experienced some stuttering issues with the game pausing to catch up when just looking around. my system is athlon 64 4000+, x800xt, 1gb ram. turning the settings down helped but made me feel like a loser, so i defragged the hard drive and installed another 2gb of ram. it is a lot better now but still not perfect. nowhere near as smooth as HL2.

Having completed the game a couple of hours ago, I thought I'd add some observations. Firstly, for their next game, could Monolith please look up the word "variety" in the dictionary. This problem applies to both scenery and enemies throughout the game (ok, the soldiers are clones, but that's no excuse for coming up with only around five different types of enemy - some of whom are only differentiated by the type of mask they wear). I got to the point where if I saw yet another office with one desk, a cabinet and a phone in it, I'd blow it up just to create some of said variety. Secondly, I'm amazed that the directors of "The Ring" haven't sued yet given the main character's obvious rip off of Samara (and the ending, but I'll say no more about that so as not to spoil it). That said, I thought the enemy AI and weapons, particularly the later ones, were well implemented and the game was atmospheric in a way that I've not experienced since HL2. Anyway, I'll keep an eye out for F.E.A.R. 2 and maybe try this one on a higher difficulty level as suggested above.

For those that asked, widescreen support is available in F.E.A.R.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1
1720

well i decided to buy this today, and i like it.
scary? well i have jumped quite a bit so far lol.

one thing i have noticed.
when you do have a firefight there are exits the guards use to sneak up behind you so the AI is good.

maybe thats why i'm jumping, getting my *ss pumped with lead.

i'm very impressed with it.