Fear the FEAR!

OK, so I make bad puns - at least I'm not a-feared of doing so! (doh!)

Well, I finished the base FEAR game. I haven't done the expansion but for a bit I'm not gonna either.

And with no further delay, here are my thoughts!

So where to begin...

I am about to make an important distinction here - this game's engine is pretty. But they drag it down by having a 90% lackluster environment.

The details:

First of all, they have depth of field, both in cinematics and when you are using a scope. In fact one scope has to "adjust" in and out as you move from o far to a near target or vise versa. And it looks nice.

Even better, the engine has real-time volumetric lighting effects!! For those who don't understand what a volumetric light is, it is when you actually see light streaming in from somewhere, usually due to dust. And just for further illustration, here is a screenshot:



You can see the light streaming in and they use this effect in plenty of places appropriately. It looks good with a side order of "not slowing things down too much" which is a must.

Speaking of lights, they are dynamic too. Sometimes the building you are in might tremble and the lights go swinging around and they cast their glow on the walls and floors. It's pretty awesome. Not only that, but your weapons get lit appropriately too:



Then, just when I thought I had seen it all, I come across water! And the light reflection off water... O.M.G. It would be hard to top it. It's animated and the animation told me immediately before I could ever see the actual water "there's water over there". A still picture can't really do it justice, but even the still look pretty, so feast your eyes!



For all the light's yummy goodness, it has some serious flaws too. There are two main issues with it. First, there is texture popping, both in physical textures and in lighting itself. First, physical textures:



In the first image, you can see some weird red texture just jutting out. It's not supposed to be there at all. That is a down-ramp in to a parking garage. In the second, if you look near the center, you see two white stripes for the edge of the ledge below but where they cross, the textures compete with each other for z-buffer, causing them to "animate" improperly and "pop" and just generally look bad. While this doesn't happen on large textures (thankfully) it does happen enough to be distracting in some areas. And once you start noticing it, it gets worse.

Now, two more images:



You will notice they are essentially the same image but I just move slightly left and right. And you will notice that there is light streaming on to the floor in one and not in the other.

Which brings me to my next point because I think it's the cause of when you see even these oddities.

Lights get off-screen-culled out of the picture. Off-screen-culling (sometimes "occluded" instead of "culled") is a mathematical process by which the game figures out that since you can't see something (because it's off screen) the game doesn't waste time drawing it (off-screen of course). But the problem with including light is that basically if you are looking in their direction, you see their glow and their shadows, but if you turn around, POOF they are gone, along with their lighting and their shadows. And for the record, I was running the game on "maximum" for the lighting effects which is listed as (draw all lights, all the time).

Bad game engine, bad! No doughnut.

Finally, to come full circle - most of the environment in this game is lack-luster. Each stage has a spot where the lighting is cool (wait till you see lighting through frosted glass!!) but they could have added more diversity and really gone to play with it!

But given everything I'd say game engine is uber.

Speaking of diversity, this is perhaps one of the game's two largest flaws. Most of the game takes place in three buildings. And when it doesn't, you are actually in a run down back-alley. I was so sick of one of the buildings that I actually almost stopped playing. I was SO glad when I got to leave. Come on Sierra, mix it up a little! You spend about 50% of the game (possibly more) in the same office building.

And it's an office building. Been there, done that, got a paycheck to prove it. Don't need that much office in my games.

OK so letting that go, the AI is the second greatest reason I kept going. (Story line, believe it or not was the first.) The AI is complex and impressive. Here is how impressive: I was being shot at, so I was ducked behind a pillar. A second mob (Internet lingo for a hostile) was on the other side of crates from me and "lost me" (my respect for the game includes the fact that mobs are NOT omniscient) and then called over the comm to the other "I lost him!". At which point the other replies back "He's behind those crates!" and the response of "Roger!" and a subsequent running around the crates to find me.

Wow. I don't want to look at the code that can pull off that level of sophistication in an FPS. Just wow.

Mobs will use team tactics, including flushing you out with grenades, attempting to flank you, using suppressing fire to let team mates move from cover to cover, running around to shoot you in the back. It feels like you are playing against an intelligent being.

And the icing on the cake - the game IS NOT CHEAP ABOUT MOBS! Even in the end of the game, where most designers lose focus on core values, the mobs are not cheap, the most obvious of which would be spawning mobs behind you as you cross a threshold or flip a switch. I am pretty sure it happens not even once the whole game (excluding nightmares, which I think is only fair to do).

Even the times that a mob crashes through a wall (rarely), they do it in front of you and they give you warning signs.

Well done and bravo!

While I am on this topic, I do have to point out the other major flaw though. You will fight the same foe (generic soldiers) for 80% of the game.

Variety is the spice of life. I could really use some. Which is ultimately why I'm not dying to play the expansion. I am not ready for more of the same.

Let's see, what else...

Bullet holes are displacement maps. I am of mixed opinion on this. In the middle of a featureless wall, they look great. But if any overlap, they have a tendency to texture pop, if there is a texture background or they are near an edge, you can see that they move around as you move around (they aren't fixed in location) and if one ends up at an edge of a wall, you can clearly see they are a displacement map, not a physical removal of geometry and it stands out. Yes it would be hard to actually remove geometry, but if they at least knocked out edges of walls, perhaps not even the middles, it would help. It got so bad I just stopped looking, intentionally.

Another bad thing is inventory management, mainly with weapons. You can only carry three for starters. After playing, I can honestly say it should be at least four because of the value of the big guns, the need for a long range weapon, the need for a short range weapon and the fact they switch up what ammo is prevalent level by level. But worse, when you drop a weapon (because you have emptied it - more on why in a moment) - if that was the weapon in the middle of the list, YOU CAN NO LONGER SCROLL TO SWAP BETWEEN WEAPONS! - Luckily, dropping the third weapon too and then picking it back up puts it in slot 2 and fixes this, but eww.

When you find a new weapon - if you already have one equipped, you get half the ammo of if you didn't have it equipped. So for the weapons I like, I found myself unrealistically dropping my weapon each time I saw another so that I could grab it with 100% ammo (not 50%) and then picking up the one I dropped (which dropped weapons remember their ammo count when you drop them).

That's bad design.

Also, I wish that all guns started at a full clip, but as you killed your foes, any shots they fired were depleted from the weapon, that would make the immersion factor even more and the reward for quickly neutralizing foes even more rewarding. (Get more ammo.)

Regarding one of the characters in the game, the game pulls one of my classic "no no"s of plot design. Some day I'll make a list so I can link to it, but suffice to say that you get ripped off on a wholesome level with one of the antagonists.

Back to what's good. Slow motion not only looks super cool, it has well-placed story line value, it works really well with the sound and makes sniping more sensible.

Oh yeah, they have slow motion you can trigger pretty much whenever, it just has to recharge after. The slow motion I used throughout the game. And unlike another game I've played in the past, I don't find it to be annoying and cheap. In some places you just plain have to use it, especially if you are running on hard difficulty.

Did I mention it looks nice?


When you take damage, if it nearly kills you, but leaves you alive, your difficulty rating determines a minimum life level and you will slowly regen back to that level. This is a god send and even more fairness in my opinion. It makes receiving a clipping blow at near death an immediate risk without being a level-killer. I wish more FPS's did this.

The story line takes itself seriously. This is the number one reason I kept playing. It grips you right off, leaves questions that it answers in nibblets throughout, and plays up the "creepy" factor well. In fact, had it not been so gripping, I would have stopped due to the creepy factor cause I'm a wimp when it comes to creepy. I've avoided Silent Hill for that reason. But the way the story is told, in flashbacks, nightmare sequences, comm buzzes, phone messages - it gives the game a suspense/thriller aspect that when coupled with first person is GREAT!

The ending is also pretty cool. I'd say about 10% WTF, 10% rolling eyes sarcastically, and 80% awesome.

The story line has a few plot holes though. I'd rather not go in to it, because I don't like giving stuff away whenever I can avoid it, but there be plot holes, yo. Not major gaping ones, but there are.

Don't let that stop you though - the game really delivers. The story becomes more and more compelling as you play and that's a good thing. =)

There is no shortage of blood or language in this game. The intense amount of blood is appropriate for the environment. Here is one of the more tame versions in fact:



It gets much more gruesome than that. Much more. And it enhances the story and the environment.

This is a Mature 17+ game by the way. And they utilize it. (THANK YOU!)

I even like the fact that when you snipe an enemy team member, the other people in the squad run for cover and sometimes yell out "shit!" or "fuck!" or even as they throw grenades, the occasional "die mother fucker!"

Thanks for not being ashamed to treat me like an adult. I really appreciate it.

So what does all this add up to?

I highly recommend a play through.

And the following was completely unnecessary, but I'll forgive them.



(Note, as I reach the end of the article I just realized all the images I uploaded were BMPs. If you are on dial up I apologize for the excessive file sizes when you click in to images and will make sure not to repeat this blunder)