F.E.A.R. Extraction Point Review

By Tom Bramwell Published 6 November, 2006

Don't be afraid.

Version tested: PC

What an interesting idea! Remember where F.E.A.R. left off? With the First Encounter Assault Recon team flying away from the mushroom cloud that buried the corpse of Paxton Fettel, apparently about to be thrown back into the rubble as Alma crawled threateningly into the cabin? Well it turns out it was all a misunderstanding. She just wanted to come round for tea. So after going home and having a warm bath, everyone turns up again refreshed and sets out on a new mission, laughing and dancing with Alma, off to investigate another paranormal siege under different conditions, exploring other areas of the horror story spectrum in the process.

Reader, reader! Wake up! Time to go to school!

'F.E.A.R. Extraction Point' Screenshot 1

F.E.A.R, but with wheelchairs!

Were you dozing? I'm sorry - I was just explaining how, in Extraction Point, the chopper went down, you woke up in the rubble, it was night again instead of day, and you were thrust into another trek through the broken city of the first game, off to reach a hopefully safer extraction point in a hospital on the other side of town. The Replica soldiers are back, Alma's back, there are a couple of new guns and some invisible enemies scampering about, and Paxton Fettel's making no apologies. "I know this doesn't make sense. Nothing much does any more," he says, as he comes back to life in the first five minutes. It's alright, Pax - we knew what to expect.

We knew, because single-player first-person shooter expansion packs are always, always, always more of the same. Quake had Scourge of Armagon and Quake 2 had The Reckoning; Half-Life had Opposing Force and Blue Shift; Medal of Honor had Breakthrough and Call of Duty had United Offensive. Half-Life 2 is sort of an exception, but even Episode One was structurally similar, carrying on Half-Life 2's tactic of reinventing itself at intervals to keep the player engaged.

And this is okay. I buy them and I'm rarely disappointed. Extraction Point has lots of corridors, warehouses and industrial bits; lots of slow-mo gunplay separated only slightly from the battles of the main game, with the same excellent AI and well-weighted mechanics; a vaguely palatable extension of the original plot, and not a lot else. And so TimeGate Studios - drafted in to continue where Monolith left off - delivers half a dozen enjoyable hours of the same.

F.E.A.R. hasn't aged a huge amount, graphically, because it looked really nice in the first place (although it's a shame there's still no official widescreen mode). In terms of what you get, it's a monomaniacal sort of shooter, with one big trick that it loves pulling because it knows you'll never get bored of it.

'F.E.A.R. Extraction Point' Screenshot 2

It still looks great played on the best settings.

That of course is the slow-mo gunfights. As you waltz into a new area you hear the crackling radio voice of a Replica troop, and spin in his direction crashing the base of your left palm into the Ctrl (Slow-Mo) and Shift (Zoom) keys as you do, directing a stream of gunfire into his leaden frame. As the game moves through the gears, you'll need to switch weapons to tackle tougher enemies (the Penetrator being better for the armoured troops, while the shotgun or the assault rifle's best for grunts, and the new chaingun's better for pretending you're Jesse Ventura in Predator), practice restraint as you marshal the slow-mo meter, which recharges slowly and needs to be put to good use, and try and avoid over-exposure.

F.E.A.R's enemies are extremely potent, obliterating you in seconds if you try to tackle them in the open without the Ctrl-crutch, and they're not stupid either, moving ably through the deliberately open and maze-like settings, coordinating and generally only worse off than you because they can't meddle with time the way you can. The new, semi-visible enemies and giant mechs of the first game's latter stages make things difficult, forcing you to be even more careful and conservative, and the chances are you'll be fast friends with the quick-save key, and not to the game's detriment either - played out efficiently, a well-managed quick-loaded action sequence is engaging, balletic and not a small bit stylish.

The main thing that F.E.A.R. does well away from the gunplay is the eerie spook sequences - the little screams and flashes that make you jump, and the horrible lucid-dream bits where you're at the mercy of Paxton or Alma or some other disquieting force, blood filling the corridors and weapons useless. F.E.A.R. had lots of these and used them well; when you mount a ladder you turn around as you grab hold of it, rather than doing the silly FPS thing of moving down it apparently head-first, and the third or fourth time you did this Paxton materialised right in your face as you turned, and you almost fell off the ladder. Extraction Point has these bits too, and TimeGate has little trouble adapting to Monolith's lead.

'F.E.A.R. Extraction Point' Screenshot 3

Like Mark Hamill, ED 209 has always been a slave to his best role.

That said, it never quite works the same way for the obvious reason: F.E.A.R's a bit demystified now. If you finished the original game (and you'd have to be a bit silly to buy this if you didn't), then you already know what happened, who's who and why you're able to act like something out of the X-Files. Extraction Point has its own story, of course, and it's fine, but it suffers from the usual rule of expansion packs: they have to make excuses for their lack of plausibility.

Extraction Point also feels a bit contrived for another reason; we're not bored of the combat, which is the main reason it's fun, but the places the game takes you, the events that occur and the way the characters behave is rarely more than expected. New locations, like the church, just blend into the general dark, grey, industrial look of the thing, with little effort made to distinguish them. Only the hospital, reached toward the end of Extraction Point's new run of "Intervals", really offers anything different, and that's mainly because it's the revelation bit.

None of this will be a problem if you simply want a single-player first-person shooter expansion pack, of course. Extraction Point ticks all the boxes. But with everything including the multiplayer modes largely the same, you could achieve much the same effect just by playing the original game again. After all, it's been a year, and you've probably half-forgotten what the story was about anyway. Basically this is still worth a go if you're obsessed with what happened in F.E.A.R, and must know more, but otherwise you'd be better off buying an FPS you haven't played yet, or renting a few horror films instead. Anyway, go back to sleep.

7 / 10

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Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (47) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • #1 5 years ago

    Full game due out on 360 soon, though still haven't finished it on PC. Once you get past the slow mo it all went a bit meh for me.

    Meh for me, I like it :)

  • ccfb #2 5 years ago

    Spoilers! Ack!

  • asphaltcowboy #3 5 years ago

    /awaits smelly's arrival and his need to tell us how crap FEAR was...

  • Talha #4 5 years ago

    @asphaltcowboy: Only FEAR? For him, every FPS is crap!

    That said, I couldn't bring myself to finish FEAR, which is a shame. I gave up after I got lost in an office block for several hours, trying to find a way out, trying to find which hole or ladder I had missed, which door switch had escaped my attention, or which piece of tile I had not tredded 75 times before. Why? Because everything, everywhere looks the same in FEAR. It is always night so you simply don't know which directiion you are going, and when you stare out the window you see the same dimly lit landscape.

    So in end, I abandoned the idea of trying to progress in the game. Why bother at all? The story has been given away by thousands of websites, and there is (sorry) precious little to go on besides the gunfights.

  • HazyUK #5 5 years ago

    I also gave up half way through the game on PC. So I won't be getting it on 360.

  • Shadar #6 5 years ago

    Yeah, it's a shame an FPS has well-realized combat. In my opinion, this game is nearly as mechanically sound as Halo, except for the boring enemies and the somewhat generic weapons. The AI of the enemies and the carefully constructed arenas you fight them in, feels better than Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Far Cry and most everything else.

    I still think Half-Life 2 and Far Cry are better than FEAR, but there are really traces of true greatness in there.
    Edited by 1 at 06/11/06 @ 12:11

  • AtomicBanana #7 5 years ago

    I wanted to like fear, but it mostly just bored the crap out of me for the following reasons:

    1) the 'scary' sequences. 9 times out of 10, they weren't scary. Secondly, apart from right near the end, you could never be hurt by any of these encounters. For me this meant when the 'scary' bit came up, I'd think 'great, I can relax for a second'. I'd sorta stretch my arms, yawn, that sort of thing. Not be in any way scared.

    2) There were what, 3 enemy models? The AI is pretty clever, but I don't want to see it used in the same squad of grunts throughout the entire game.

    3) I liked the slowmo/aiming mechanic but what I didn't like is having it forced upon me. What I mean is that sometimes, I'd like to have fun and take on these soldiers on even footing - that is without slomo or any other nonsense. As the review rightly says it's almost impossible. You HAVE to use slomo all the time to win fights. I'm sorry, but I just found having to do the same thing for whole game very, very boring.

    But this is just me isn't it? :(

  • Talha #8 5 years ago

    @AtomicBanana: Clearly this isn't just you. I would even go as far as to say that most reviews overrated the game slightly - I myself am one of those who didn't find the scary sequences THAT scary. After a while they devolved into formula. In fact - laugh if you want - I found the overall ambience of HL2 scarier.

  • AtomicBanana #9 5 years ago

    Don't get me wrong.. I did enjoy it.. for a while. But it just went on far too long without any new ideas in my opinion - and this pack doesn't seem to have addressed that in any meaningful sense.

  • Talha #10 5 years ago

    "I did enjoy it.. for a while"

    That pretty much sums up the experience of all of us posting here. In fact, most games struggle to keep the gamer engaged till the end - I guess that comes from more emphasis these days of getting games out the door rather than playtesting them in entirety.

  • Dr.Mott #11 5 years ago

    Thanks for telling me the ending, I was hoping to find that out for myself on 360. :(

  • Darren #12 5 years ago

    Did you have to reveal the ending of the game in the opening paragraph??? I was looking forward to playing this game for the first time later on this week on the 360 and only read the review to see how the expansion played in comparison to the original game! :x

  • Talha #13 5 years ago

    EG are in for a lot of flak! Go hide, folks!

  • dudefella #14 5 years ago

    FEAR was fun, but instantly forgettable. It was really one of those games I'd play for a while, my mind turned off, and quit it 45 minutes later, and 5 minutes afterwards I could be like 'what was I doing just now? Oh yeah, FEAR.' It wasn't really very scary imo, the story was mundane, the characterization and dialogue was utter hollywood B movie cheese, and as said, 90% of the environments looked the same. None of it bothered me much (though looking for that one airduct all the time was really silly and contrived) but none of it stood out either. The gunplay was fun enough to keep me coming back, but it was never completely immersive. Just mindless fun, distraction, time killing. That's what FEAR was, to me.

  • UncleLou #15 5 years ago

    For me it was the best first-person shooter since HL1, and one of the very, very few games that brought the genre forward. AI and shootouts in general set the bar higher for every following game in the genre.

  • Talha #16 5 years ago

    @UncleLou: I agree with all of those things especially in terms of AI, but.... erm....as you very well know, the sheer monotony and lack of ambition with the environments brought it all down for me. Yeah I know you are staring at your monitor blazing in fury at this, so please accept my apologies! ;-)

  • UncleLou #17 5 years ago

    Nah, I am not blazing in fury, I just think you're missing the point of the game. ;)

  • Salaman #18 5 years ago

    Why are you in here reading a review of an expansion pack if you haven't played the original game yet?
    Surely your asking for it?

    Although spoilific reviews are annoying I think here it's fair to assume that whoever is considering the expansion has played the first and it's hence not spoiling much really.

    Well clearly not then.
    :-/

  • Talha #19 5 years ago

    @Uncle: Well maybe. All I can say is that I did have a lot of fun while I played it, at least before the last two or three hours. Then again, I do not finish most of the games I buy, so maybe it is down to my limited attention span rather than the game itself.
    Edited by 1 at 06/11/06 @ 13:01

  • Salaman #20 5 years ago

    Hehe ... "if you're of a different opinion you're missing the point!"

    Well done UL. :-)
    Edited by 1 at 06/11/06 @ 13:02

  • absolutezero #21 5 years ago

    Lou the AI and shootouts might have been fantastic but thats not good enough when every other aspect feels like a late 90's game, for a game to be truely brilliant it needs more than great AI and particle effects.

    Also I pretty much managed to plug my way through the game by running into a room, slow down, shoot, run out of room, re-charge slow-down, run back into room, repeat.

    Less said about the scares the better, I actually ended up laughing at alot of them, cliche Jap horror rip-offs that they were.

    *Jumpy bit!* *Men with guns* *Jumpy bit!*

  • UncleLou #22 5 years ago

    Heh. Mind, I always said I understand if people don't like the game, but I've really seen the levels only as a means to an end, namely to let the AI shine. Level design, as opposed to "setpiece design", is excellent in FEAR.

    Monolith have shown in the past that they can create fantastically original levels (namely in NOLF), but that wasn't what FEAR was about. They needed a simple environment they could exploit for the AI.

    Complaining about the lack of setpieces is a bit like complainign about a lack of setpieces in Tetris, in my opinion. Hence missing the point. ;)

  • redd #23 5 years ago

    i actually picked the original F.E.A.R. for PC (a bargain, couldnt resist) last friday, and blasted through it in the weekend. Pretty good FPS. Could have more varied environments, and could use more interesting encounters (like those with the ninja-like-stealthed-dudes), but still it has some of the most (if not THE most) intense and satisfying combat you'll find in an FPS.

  • nickthegun #24 5 years ago

    As has already been said:

    FUCKING SPOILER WARNING!!!!11!!!!!!!!11111111111!

    Still, thats one game to cross off the christmas list at least.....

  • UncleLou #25 5 years ago

    Lou the AI and shootouts might have been fantastic but thats not good enough when every other aspect feels like a late 90's game, for a game to be truely brilliant it needs more than great AI and particle effects.


    Nah, I disagree. Finally we have a game that brings the genre forward, and now people complain about the lack of setpieces (which are in 99% of all other FPS games).

    Personally, I found the lack of good AI in Half-Life 2 a lot more worrying than the lack of interesting levels in FEAR. HL2, while having fantastic design, felt a lot more dated to me than FEAR.

    The dream game would be a combination of the 2. Story and design of HL2, AI and combat of FEAR.
    Edited by 1 at 06/11/06 @ 13:12

  • absolutezero #26 5 years ago

    I never mentioned HL2 :p

    I also never mentioned Set-pieces, I just wanted more variety, to truely bring the genre forward FEAR would have had to have created a way to out-smart the AI instead of just blasting them with whatever comes to hand. That will make FPS games better, clever enemies and clever ways to subvert them. The only way to progress in FEAR was to move into an area and shot everything until dead, then move on.

    Basically FEAR got 2 things massively right, and neglected nearly everything else. If those 2 things struck a note with you then FEAR became great, like a big playground filled with guns, if you wanted something more than that then FEAR started lacking.

  • Talha #27 5 years ago

    @UncleLou: Sorry, I'd dare to disagree once again. The sloppy AI in HL2 did nothing to bore you or discourage you from continuing to plug away at the game. In fact you give the example of Tetris, and soldiers placed in HL2 were just like Tetris blocks. Their (non-existent) intelligence was not the main hurdle - rather hurdles were constructed through sheer numbers of them, and placement of various objects in the environment. For example, in the battle with the antlions while trying to make way through the desert on wooden beams, you hardly thought about how dumb the antlions were.

    On the other hand, the intelligence of AI in FEAR was ALL there was to it. I think here our disagreement is purely based on personal preference, so there will be no end to the discussion. But to your credit, you DO understand why many people (myself included) ended up abandoning the game, and that's fair enough.

  • UncleLou #28 5 years ago

    If those 2 things struck a note with you then FEAR became great, like a big playground filled with guns, if you wanted something more than that then FEAR started lacking.


    I can definitely agree with this.

    I'd also like to add that FEAR's levels become better in the second half of the game. Not a lot more varied, but it becomes one continouus journey (like in Half-Life 1) rather than seperate missions.

    Talha: not quite, I was missing a better AI in HL2 nearly all the time, and couldn't help thinking about how much better HL1 had been in that respect. Just like you missed more original levels in FEAR, probably, while I completely forgot about them in the shootouts. ;)

  • dudefella #29 5 years ago

    wow, an actual intelligent debate that didn't devolve into name-calling and nastiness. good show lads! this is how it's done, fanbois ;)

  • Killerbee #30 5 years ago

    I really enjoyed the original FEAR (though I agree the environments were a bit samey and they could have done with more outdoor stuff) but, as UncleLou says, the AI and combat was excellent throughout and the final few levels in particular were superb.
    But then again, it didn't leave me craving more - the story (cliff-hanger aside) wrapped everything up quite nicely - I don't necessarily want to play more levels of the same just because... it's a shame it seems (from the review) that they didn't take things on a stage further.
    So I will be getting this, but only when it hits the bargain bins for a sub-£10 price.

  • RedPanda #31 5 years ago

    Post deleted at 14:31:59 28-01-2012

  • haowan #32 5 years ago

    Haahahah, come ON it's not like:

    a) You weren't going to win at the end of FEAR
    b) That final cutscene as described is that inspired or original
    c) It gives away that much of the plot

    is it?

    Furthermore:

    d) You could easily skip a paragraph when you read "Remember where F.E.A.R. left off? With the".

  • nickthegun #33 5 years ago

    d) You could easily skip a paragraph when you read "Remember where F.E.A.R. left off? With the".

    Have you ever been able to resist looking into the forbidden closet of mystery? If someone posted a link with the title NAKED PICTURES OF HAOWANS MUM!!!11!1 you wouldnt be able to resist clicking on it.

    Unfortunately, human nature isnt an easy thing to beat....

  • haowan #34 5 years ago

    Quite, but I don't tend to blame my lack of willpower on others :)

  • nickthegun #35 5 years ago

    Hey, if its put in front of you, you will consume it, they know that by now, especially in a website of spoiler hungry nerds. For example:

    Spoilers Below for lost series 3
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    The Smoke Monster pretends to be Ekos brother then kills him but good.

    If you are reading this, dont feel angry with me. I just put the information there. I didnt make you read it.

  • AcidSnake #36 5 years ago

    The smoke monster?

    Am I glad I haven't watched that show then...

  • Ryuken #37 5 years ago

    @Killerbee: "...and the final few levels in particular were superb."

    I hope you don't mean *spoiler* that last half hour with all those flying zombies spawning out of nothing? */endspoiler* That was as lame and boring as the HL2 jumpy-platformy end part. The end in-game cutscenes were nice of course.

    At least EP has somewhat of a nice last fight, although that's all there's to it. I really saw nor heard anything new of/about the story, you just move to another place and lots of people die (in a very bloody and enjoyable way though) underway. That's my biggest disappointment, and the occasional return of the lame flying zombies of course.

    And I don't really feel that slow-mo is necessary all the time, how the hell would you otherwise survive for more than 5 seconds in F.E.A.R. multiplayer (which is completely free but sadly doesn't feature the new weapons)? Really, you'll get used to it very soon.
    Edited by 1 at 06/11/06 @ 16:35

  • smelly #38 5 years ago

    @Talha : Only generic ones which dont add anything to the genre.

    I quite liked half life 2...

    And I liked fps's when they were new and different, so doom, quake, duke nukem.. all good.

    I'll resist the urge on this one though.. :-)

  • Mugwum Verified Operations Director, Eurogamer Network #39 5 years ago

    First of all, I'm sorry if I spoiled the ending of FEAR for anyone, but I don't think I did really - a lot of what's cool about FEAR is finding out where the player-character comes into it. And, also, I kind of assumed anybody reading a review of the expansion pack would have played the first one.

    Second, it's definitely fair to say that if FEAR's techniques don't work for you, you will care even less for the expansion. But in the context of single-player FPS expansion reviews, you sort of have to assume that you're talking to people who /do/ already care about the original. Otherwise, why pay attention?

    Those things aside, I really enjoyed playing the harder parts of FEAR on repeat because I enjoyed trying to outfox the smarter bits of the AI. It's definitely one of those games where if you play it in a straight line you'll probably come away really liking it, but if you like going back to games you'll enjoy it even more. Which is one of the reasons I'm quite excited about the "Instant Action" arcade-style mode (Sin Episodes-style too, I suppose). I like playing with FEAR; it'll be nice to do it some more even outside the plot bits.
    Edited by 2 at 06/11/06 @ 19:37

  • PhakeDC #40 5 years ago

    Killerbee, I couldn't agree with you more. I played FEAR, enjoyed it and then forgot all about it. But I must say it's still better than Doom 3, Quake 4 or Prey since I didn't bother to finish any of those (with the exception of Doom 3 because I played too far into it to quit)

  • smelly #41 5 years ago

    Oh, and for spoiler fans.. Echo died last week.

  • Talha #42 5 years ago

    @Smelly: My bad - I honestly didn't know (or otherwise forgot) that you didn't completely hate shooters. And of course we are completely agreed on the matter of HL2 and FEAR. All the same, UncleLou's comments have gotten me thinking about re-installing FEAR (original) and actually trying to finish the damned thing. Might as well get what I paid for!

    I urge you to do the same - at least try the demo. It is no masterpiece of immersive storytelling, but man, the firefights are best evah.

  • Mashum #43 5 years ago

    WTF? I'm 1/2 way though the second lost series!! Shortly after someone mentions that it might be a sensible debate two c**ts come along to ruin it - nice.
    --

    Anyway... it's a bit late to make this comment now but you can play fear without the slo-mo, at least in the original game. It does take a bit more patience. I preferred it that way and it means no more hanging around waiting for the slomo meter to fill up.
    Edited by 1 at 07/11/06 @ 08:48

  • Genji #44 5 years ago

    I found HL2 to be an absolute snoozefest right up until the end bit. Finished it, never played it again.

    I have played through FEAR 3 times, each on a higher difficulty than the last, and I am still not tired of it. I enjoyed every minute, except for the cheesy horror bits. I could've done without those.

  • GitSomE_UK #45 5 years ago

    Ummm seriously what was Lost all about? I couldn't be arsed with watching. It appeared to be a loooooong episode of the X Files, some referance to a smokey thing. I caught one episode where they were bleating on about whether to fix a knackered commodore computer to do with a countdown... WTF? Reminded me of when I worked in a PC chop shop years ago building who flung dung clones....boring.

    As for FEAR, like Doom 3 the later stages of the game had all the action IMO. Not Scary really, Doom 3 was scarier in the later stages iD have some really warped people working for them.

  • YourMessageHere #46 5 years ago

    FEAR was really good at the combat aspect, and I was really impressed at how it integrated the player into a fairly complex and interesting story (yeah, no oscars wanting, but what FPS that's not a halflife game has a better plot?). In a way the environments were too samey, but then again that just made it all feel like a coherent and credible storyline; a logical progression of events. HL2 did this but the combat was much less fun.
    This made a nice change from the usual "your mission is to go to this cool place for a gunfight, have a gunfight, then go to point X, wherupon you'll warp to the next level, which is a totally different cool place for a gunfight" business FPS games usually do. The familiarity of all the offices and car parks and stuff also helped, as I wanted to shoot them all the more =P

  • Dial999 #47 5 years ago

    Yup, played all thro FEAR in single player........its not scarey, the environments are too similar to be interesting, the light levels are always low (which is annoying after a while). That said, the AI was great, which helped to make the fire fights really enjoyable ; ) Oh, and the multiplayer is great, almost as good as GRAW online.

    Wouldn't get the expansion pack 'cause its just more of the same........been there done that

  • Verwandlung #48 5 years ago

    very good game, good expansion blah blah

    and when you want to get scared turn on the news.
    Edited by 1 at 30/11/06 @ 22:26