Review: FEAR 2

I said I wasn't going to talk about FEAR 2, but then I thought I should talk about it because even bad games need to be talked about.

So here is my talking about why this is a game you should not play.

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Monolith, oh Monolith. They stumbled onto something great with the original FEAR. Influenced by Japanese horror, stole Matrix's Bullet-time, packed in a decent shooter, they had a recipe for something exciting. Shooting enemies in slow motion and every once in awhile being freaked by a little girl with overtly long hair was pretty fun. But then after the tenth non-descript corridor, and the billionth faceless drone enemy, it got boring. I didn't even finish the game.

So here we are with the sequel, and Monolith try shaking up the formula by letting us play in environments other than offices; such as schools, underground labs, the subway, and even open outside in the city. But the thing is, they never hide the illusion of a corridor well enough; eventually I still felt like I was being shuttled from A to B. But that's not the worst thing about the level design. It was that, although we were being subjected to "familiar" locales such as a school, I got the feeling whoever built these places are lousy architects.

Schools and hospitals shouldn't be winding labyrinths. I would imagine they'd be rather straight-forward, easily accessible, and uniform on all levels. Instead, it was all over the place, unnecessary rooms, stupidly long corridors, and mega complexes that would have been unrealistic to build in the real world - it broke the illusion of immersion and was just an excuse for Monolith to unnecessarily prolong the game.


This ties to the next bad thing. Most of the game was about finding keys in these mazes, unlocking doors so that we could get to the next part. There was no real plot development. It's just: shit hit the fan real bad, and we have to go from one place to the next just because, and then only realize towards the end that we should have gotten rid of the evil child-woman in the first place, so that there won't be no more shit.

Okay, so there's this other woman you and your squad are supposed to protect, she's the one causing all this shit in the first place, but there are these black ops folk who are out to get her. On top of that, evil child-woman wants to kill everybody and have sex with you. Got that? If not, it doesn't really matter because as long as you know how to shoot and which is the slow-down-time button, you can get through it just fine without doing your head in too much.

Monolith also does a mega pet peeve of mine (which I wrote about awhile back here): and that is starting you off with a squad of friends who are destined to die horrible deaths instantly, thereby leaving you hopelessly alone. Why give us friends who are of no use and will die anyway? And why don't you succumb to the hypnotic powers of the evil child-woman in the same way the others do? And why can't I stop my friends from dying? You have to stand there and watch them degrade into a heap of dead. At least Monolith made them a little cool before they died. I give them a gold star for that.


But let's talk about gameplay because this is a game after all. Well, as a game, it was too easy. Slow-motion just makes me overpowered. Granted, when I didn't have it, the enemies had a good fighting chance, especially as they were rather accurate shots, but the slow-motion power rarely runs out long enough for the baddies to overwhelm.

Why do all shooters nowadays feel the need to put in some extra gimmick ability so that it doesn't become just "another stupid shooter"? Gimmicks unless implemented and designed with the utmost care, STILL makes it a stupid shooter. Singularity had the same problem pretty much.

How's the shooting though? It's decent enough. The devs have much experience with the first FEAR, its expansions, as well as Condemned. But it still felt too floaty, not enough kick. Even the shotgun felt like a peashooter to be honest. Just because things died in slow-motion and blood, guts got everywhere, doesn't make the violence punchy. And after you've exploded the fiftieth head with a sniper rifle, you are kind of anesthetized to the gore effects. Oh, and I forgot to mention that like the first game, you're shooting a bunch of faceless drones again. And Monolith throws so many at you that I just get sick of the lack of variety.

Here's the crap icing on the crap cake though, and the last I shall talk about FEAR 2 because unfortunately, other than shiny graphics, this game has no redeemable qualities. The ending is utter drivel too, with not even a final boss fight to cap the absurd narrative that deliberately sets up for a third part (which is in the works, boys and girls).


So yes, the last crap thing about the game: it's not scary. FEAR 1 was spooky and a fresh experience for us, seeing this little girl screw with your mind. Frightening hallucinations, corpses, apparitions, pools of blood. There's less of that in this game, and what there is, it just looks like a big farce. Strange tentacled things coming out of the ground to take my friends away? Not scary. Glimpses of ghostly white things floating about? Not scary. Unfortunately, it feels like Monolith didn't make any attempt to pull out all the stops with the psychological fear. Not even a little pee in my pants. A shame as they got it right before with Condemned.

Also, evil child-woman likes to jump out at you when she feels like it. When she does though, I'm more annoyed than scared as there are these quick-time button-mashing that ensue to free yourself from her grasp. The only time it ever got creepy was when making your way through the underground lab with these wall-crawlers that can attack you from anywhere, anytime. But a little slow-motion handled that problem too. Ergo not scary anymore.

Unfortunately, Monolith is already hard at work with FEAR 3. God knows why they haven't realized how brain-dead this IP has gotten. Apparently, they plan to shake up the game once more by adding cooperative play. So now a friend can be bored alongside you.

You know what Monolith SHOULD do? Heard or seen the horror shaky-cam movie series Rec (and its sequel)? Also remade by Hollywood into a film called Quarantine? Well, I love that series like mad and although Monolith have done poorly with FEAR, I believe the devs do one thing well and that is create freaky atmosphere. So to redeem themselves from this charade, they should do a game tie-in for Rec.


Its got almost the same things as FEAR anyway. Corridors, scary possessed little girls, squads destined to die horribly, and shooting. Just take out the slow-motion, add zombies and make it freakishly claustrophobic. I'd pay good money to play THAT. Although it's got most of the same things as FEAR, why Rec the Game would be BETTER is because Monolith won't be writing the script (ooh, burn).

Also the horror of Rec derives from how close you are to the nightmare, how helpless the soldiers/survivors feel, and most importantly how under-informed the audience is about the mystery. FEAR 3 needs to do all that if it wants a fighting chance. But I don't see that happening when Monolith is aiming for something more bombastic and a second player thrown into the mix.

Oh yeah, so that sex thing I bolded earlier. You totally were not imagining it. It's like the p*nis flashing at the end of Fight Club. I really meant what I wrote. Why did I write that? Because at the end of the game, evil child-woman has sex with you and you impregnate her with evil new child. Gross? Totally. So that's why there's FEAR 3. Annoyed face.