Since we all were forced to spend a lot of time at home this year, I used it to catch up with some classic games, which I started at one point, but never finished. F.E.A.R was on my list for quite a while. The original title was released back in 2005, and I remember getting a new GPU and soon afterwards playing that game, because this game was some kind of benchmark (two years before Crysis was released) and it pushed my GeForce 7800 GS to its limits.
I played it for a while, got stuck in an office complex, lost interest and stopped playing. Since I know that F.E.A.R. is a great game, it is kind of a shame that I never played more than the first few levels. Not only did I finish the game this time, I also played both expansions.
One thing, which is more obvious in retrospect than it was at the time of its original release is, how much F.E.A.R. captures the early to mid 2000s. Just the idea of having a Matrix-style bullet time, combined with a horror story about a creepy little girl (as seen in The Ring for example) scream early 2000s like Chester on Linkin Park's Crawling. Seriously, the only thing it's missing for early 2000s style perfection is a Nu-Metal soundtrack.
Personally, I really love this era of gaming. Mostly of course, because it was the time when I was young and had a lot of time to play games :) But I think it is also because this time was the sweet spot, where games were developing games was already very professional, but not as commercialized as it is nowadays. Games of that era very already very polished, but it still feels like the developers had a lot of creative freedom and were making games, they would like to play instead of what market research tells them to make. These days, this kind of creative freedom is very rare in AAA games. Luckily indie games fill that niche, but budgets and therefore production value is much lower compared to that era of games.
I could go on and on about this, but almost exactly three years ago I already wrote, why I love 2007. One addition to what I wrote there: 2007 was not only a great year for gaming, but also a pivotal one. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare pretty much defined how first-person shooters looked like for the next decade. Not only in terms of gameplay, multiplayer focus or story-telling, but also in terms of production and how games are made.
Anyway, lets go back to F.E.A.R. It was developed by Monolith Productions who already established a reputation for themselves with games like Blood, Aliens versus Predator 2 and especially No One Lives Forever. They also released some more obscure titles like Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Tron 2.0 or Condemned: Criminal Origins (that one was actually released one year after F.E.A.R, using the same engine). Tron 2.0 and Condemned are also two titles I started playing at one point, but never finished (although in Tron 2.0 it was due to a bug, which kept crashing the game), after finishing F.E.A.R. I guess Condemned has to be next.
It always seems, that Monolith made very good games, but they never reached the superstar status that id Software or Epic Games had during that time. They also developed their own engines and until F.E.A.R. they were always quite good. F.E.A.R.s engine was just spectacular. Even today, 15 years after its original release, it still looks very good and aged very gracefully. That's something you can't say about a lot of games from the early 2000s.
This also holds for other parts of the game: the sound design is great, all weapons go boom and feel very impactful, when shooting enemies or tearing debris from the walls. Especially when using bullet time. Also, the enemy AI is top-notch and hast till this day probably the smartest enemies in any firs-person shooter (at least in any FPS I played). To sum up, the combat is great, one of the best in any FPS ever. Since you spend a lot of time in combat, it is important that they got that part right and oh boy, how right they got it.
After the general things, let me talk about F.E.A.R and its expansions. F.E.A.R. was released at a time before DLCs, meaning that its expansions were shipped on a disc, which made them more expansive than the typical DLC, but it also provided much more content. The second expansion, Perseus Mandate was even a standalone expansion, meaning that you didn't need the original F.E.A.R. to play the game.
F.E.A.R.
The acronym F.E.A.R. stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, a special military unit of which you are part of as point man. The purpose of this unit is combating paranormal threats (or something). To be honest the story isn't the biggest strength of the game, although it has some interesting moments, it is mostly just serviceable, giving some background for setting the mood and the occasional horror moment. It's mostly told through audio logs and radio communication from your unit. Sometimes also through scripted sequences, but those are unfortunately easy to miss, if you are not directly looking at them. The story itself is not bad, but the way it is told could be improved, since I didn't find it too engaging.
Don't get me wrong, generally I don't care too much about the story, I'm mostly about the gameplay, especially in an FPS (that happens when you play a lot of old-school shooter). Sometimes too much story can actually even get in the way of the game(play) and stop the flow of the game. Fortunately this is not the case here and the story doesn't interrupt anything. Although I can understand if some people wanted a more fledged out story, since it has a lot of potential, which is not fully utilized.
A second point of criticism is, that the game can be very repetitive. Since the combat is great, I don't mind that too much either, but the enemies and locations hardly vary. You are going to fight through a lot of offices buildings, warehouses or locations which feel like they are offices or warehouses. In there you are going to fight a lot of people who are replicas (cloned soldiers) or people who look like replicas (well, except the mech, that's quite different). Sometimes you are going to fight a heavy armoured guy, some quick assassin or even a mech. All of them are indeed a niche change and challenge, but still not the biggest variation on the basic enemy type. I also understand, why it is this way: in a quasi-realistic scenario, you don't have much room for crazy enemies or locations. With that in mind, Monolith really made a lot out of that premise.
The use of bullet time is limited, so it doesn't make F.E.A.R too easy. Especially on the higher difficulties it can be quite challenging. The same is also true for its expansions. Even though the points above are a bit more critical, the original F.E.A.R. is an excellent game and I have to recommend it to everybody who likes first-person shooters.
F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point
Extraction Point is the first expansion, and it was released a little less than a year after the original F.E.A.R. It wasn't developed by Monolith, but by TimeGate Studios. It seamlessly continues the story of the original (which is actually great, since the story ended on a kind of cliffhanger). But apart from that, it is more F.E.A.R. and that is great. It adds five new enemy types and three new weapons and some new locations, some of them addressing lack of variety. It was quite well-received and if you liked the base game, there is no reason not to play it.
F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate
Perseus Mandate was released in 2007. As mentioned above, it didn't require the original F.E.A.R. but still was perceived as of cash grab of some sorts, and it seemed like people lost the interest in F.E.A.R., giving what other games were also released in 2007, it is kind of understandable, why this expansion wasn't as successful as its predecessor. A lot of people also disliked that the game makes less use of the lightning and thus calling it an "uglier" F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate breaks with some conventions, like you are not playing as the same guy as in the previous games. Unlike the other games, you aren't alone all the time, sometimes you fight with your squad mates and like the enemies, their AI is quite good, and it's fun fighting side by side with them (something which wasn't usual at the time). It also adds five new weapons, six new enemy types and even a new faction. The new faction is a nice addition and personally, I found the story much more engaging this time. Unfortunately the story doesn't really resolve anything: the new faction is introduced and given some background, but their exact motivations are never revealed, only hinted at. I have the feeling that the developer wanted to set something up for other upcoming games, but that never happened which is a pity.
Personally I liked Perseus Mandate more than Extraction Point. I know that only a few people share the same opinion. Don't get me wrong, Extraction Point is also a great expansion, but it is really just "more F.E.A.R.", while Perseus Mandate tries adding something new to the game. Anyway, as with Extraction Point if you liked F.E.A.R. there is no reason not to play Perseus Mandate. Since you can't buy F.E.A.R. without its expansions, you'll have them anyway, if you buy F.E.A.R. on GOG.
Sequels and Current State of the Franchise
Developer Monolith Productions and publisher Sierra Entertainment didn't end their business relation on good terms. I think that's the reason why TimeGate Studios was developing the expansions. Sierra had the rights to the name F.E.A.R. and wanted to develop F.E.A.R. 2, so did Monolith, but they had the rights to the contents of the game. Originally Monolith's F.E.A.R. 2 was called Project Origin, but in a lucky turn of fate, Monolith (or actually Monolith's parent company Warner Bros. Interactive) got the rights for the name F.E.A.R. when Sierra's parent company Vivendi merged with Activision and had no use for the name. So Monolith's game was allowed to be called F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. Also, Monolith discarded the story of the expansions and continued with the story on their own, rendering the events in these games meaningless.
Confusing legal stuff aside, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin was released in 2009, but wasn't as good as the original. F.E.A.R. 3 was again developed by a different studio (Day 1 Studios, which is nowadays known as Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore), it was released in 2011 and got an even worse reception than F.E.A.R. 2. It is rather uncommon in gaming that games of a franchise decline over time. Usually the first game sets the basic foundation and the subsequent games improve on that. For F.E.A.R. this wasn't the case, and it is unfortunately one of the few series which declined over time. I haven't played the sequels myself, but looking at reviews, it seems like I didn't miss much.
Now we come to the sad part of this post: the current state of F.E.A.R. The last sign of life was F.E.A.R. Online, a free-to-play multiplayer game. It's always a surprise, when a publisher decides to turn a game, which is mostly known for its singleplayer into a free-to-play online multiplayer game. The original F.E.A.R. also had multiplayer and even released this part for free (not free-to-play, since this wasn't a thing back in 2006), called F.E.A.R. Combat. It is one of the few competitive multiplayer games I was playing for a while, and it was really fun. A pity that it never got more traction, it had a lot of going for it, and it was one of the first (and to this day, few) multiplayer games to have bullet time. F.E.A.R. Online had co-op missions to accommodate people who prefer the singleplayer experience. But it didn't really help, since it was a generic, low-quality free-to-play shooter with the name F.E.A.R. slapped onto it. One of the saddest fates a once beloved shooter franchise can have.
While it looks like we won't see any new F.E.A.R. game soon (or maybe at all), there are some indie developers, who try to fill that void: Trepang2 is heavily inspired by F.E.A.R. I played the demo and I can highly recommend it, if you like F.E.A.R. or if you like early 2000s shooter in general. Since we had a renaissance of 1990ies FPS (aka Boomer Shooters), it might be only a matter of time until we get a renaissance of early 2000s FPS. I would very much look forward to that.
