#fear game

I'd heard a lot about the F.E.A.R franchise, and it seemed up my alley - as a big Resident Evil fan, a survival horror-esque FPS seemed perfect for me, however I wish I had looked into how people generally felt about the sequels.

The first game I enjoyed quite a bit - it's not anything super amazing in my opinion, but it's a pretty decent shooter with plenty of exploration and stealth. The horror elements are mild but somewhat effective in their subtlety, and the game is generally just fun - same can be said for the expansions, all though playing them one after another did feel like a bit of a slog.

The second game is takes a pretty quick turn off the deep end. The game is obsessed with trying to seem like proper horror, and it just seems a bit ridiculous. Frequent attempts to shock the player destroy any atmosphere the game may have built, which the first game managed to do fairly successfully. Lore documents also become more frequent but far less interesting, a trend that was felt across genres. Most of the time it's just telling you what you already knew from playing the first game, or just vaguely paying attention whilst playing this one.

The third game is the worst in many ways, although I ended up enjoying it more than the previous. The game is a bald faced attempt to turn the franchise into Warner's own Call of Duty clone, but at least that was different to what I'd been playing for so long at that point. After the second game the third felt like a breathe of fresh air - not being set at the same time as the first game and at least initially in a different place was very nice, and the fact it's extremely short helps a lot too.

The game is a decent enough CoD clone - but it is a travesty that's what they turned the games into. The idea that F.E.A.R 3 could ever compete with CoD is insane to me, it's just not a compatible franchise - not only is it an insult to the very idea of creative integrity, it's just a plain bad idea. CoD and Battlefield players are not generally going to be interested in a game called F.E.A.R.

The narrative elements of the game bug me a lot too - done away with now are any written story notes, CoD pl;ayers won't read anything - instead the story is told through painfully slow sections where the player is forced to walk through empty areas while listening to meaningless monologues. This was a trend in many games for a while, an attempt to seem deep and artsy without understanding any of the reasons why you might put these kinds of things in a game. Thankfully the trend seems to have died out now, but it lasted throughout most of the 2010s at least.

Overall I would recommend the first F.E.A.R games, maybe even the expansions - but I'd probably skip the sequels if you care about your own mental well being.

F.E.A.R: Significance: 1/3 Grade: B

F.E.A.R Extraction Point: Significance: 1/3 Grade: C

F.E.A.R Perseus Mandate: Significance: 1/3 Grade: C

F.E.A.R 2 Project Origin: Significance: 1/3 Grade: D