F.E.A.R demo out on Friday

Vivendi says that the single-player demo for First Encounter Assault and Recon [eh? Oh, F.E.A.R. - Ed] will be made available on Friday, August 5th. WOO!

This is good news for anybody who likes big, good-looking first-person shooters. Although the game's appeared much richer than the average blast-everything-in-sight-'em-up when we've seen it, its visuals are likely to be the thing that makes the biggest impression in the short term, with tons of smashing effects and Bullet-Time-but-in-a-first-person-shooter.

There'll be one level, we're told, which aims to give you a taste of all of that and the game's paranormal set-up - which sees a special-forces team called F.E.A.R. sent into an installation overrun by spooky uncommunicative men with big guns and then gradually exposed to various horrors. Apparently it's influenced by the likes of Ju-On (The Grudge), Ring, Dark Water and other dark Eastern horror.

The demo will be available at 6pm GMT on Friday, just in time for us to miss it, typically, but will certainly be worth checking out over the weekend. Expect the full game to ship this autumn on the PC and, for the benefit of Jack Thompson's people, it will be rated 18.