F.E.A.R. 3 Review
The F.E.A.R. series has always relied on two major factors as selling points: excellent enemy A.I. and plenty of "gotcha" scare moments. Neither of those show up much in F.E.A.R. 3. Instead, this F.E.A.R. is retooled to allow for cooperative gameplay across the full single-player campaign, and it sure looks pretty -- but it just isn't much for the scares anymore.
And hey, that's OK. I mean, it's a little weird for a game literally titled F.E.A.R. to not be that scary, but whatever -- F.E.A.R. 3 is still a pretty darn enjoyable first-person shooter, especially if you get someone to play with you (or if you delve into one of its rather innovative multiplayer modes). The campaign, though, follows all the standard FPS tropes: You start out escaping from a highly fortified insane asylum, and move on to a blighted cityscape in which you fight all sorts of psychic and physical phenomena. You can play as either the series' usual protagonist (the gun-totin', bullet-time-usin' "Point Man") or his brother (Paxton Fettel, an insane and very powerful psychic). And, if you've got a friend, you can co-op through the entire campaign. The Point Man is a very direct and traditional guns-'n'-grenades-style guy, while Fettel is mostly spectral, and aids the Point Man by psychokinetically throwing objects at enemies, teleporting, and even possessing the baddies' bodies.
The story continues where F.E.A.R. 2 left off, which is to say that it's so overwrought with angst-cum-horror tropes that it might as well be a Nirvana video directed by Wes Craven or something. It's not good, is what I'm saying, kids. Anyway, you spend most of your time fighting F.E.A.R.'s trademark A.I. soldiers who haven't had a particularly large A.I. upgrade since the original game. They still provide a decent challenge, but with F.E.A.R. 3's new, ubiquitous cover, gunfights become pretty formulaic: find a piece of cover, get behind it, pop up and bust some heads, get a grenade thrown at you, run to another piece of cover, boom, repeat. Gee, scary.
Where F.E.A.R. 3 excels is in its multiplayer, both via the aforementioned co-op single-player campaign (it's much better when you have a buddy with you to help tackle enemies and challenges) and the dedicated multiplayer modes. The developers certainly did a bang-up job of keeping things interesting. It's unfortunate, though obviously necessary, that the co-op mode doesn't feature any sections that you must cooperate through, as with Portal 2's separate (and incidentally awesome) two-player mode, but that's not a huge deal. F.E.A.R. 3's dedicated multiplayer modes, though, have some really nifty ideas built in. The first mode (called "F***ing Run") sees four players fighting through waves of enemies while a wall of psychic energy (which instantly kills whoever it touches) constantly pushes them onward. It's also got a "zombie" mode, where you and your team hole up and try to survive waves of zombies, the hook being that the level size continuously shrinks after each wave -- via an encroaching fog effect -- making it harder to run-and-gun. Finally, a three-on-one mode called Soul Survivor casts one player as a ghost who has to possess the level's A.I. enemies and kill the other players to win, while the others have to take out said enemies. Whichever mode you choose, it's pretty darn fun; the only gripe being that (certainly in the PC version, anyway) it's awfully hard to find other players to saddle up with.
Where F.E.A.R. 3 excels is in its multiplayer, both via the aforementioned co-op single-player campaign (it's much better when you have a buddy with you to help tackle enemies and challenges) and the dedicated multiplayer modes. The developers certainly did a bang-up job of keeping things interesting. It's unfortunate, though obviously necessary, that the co-op mode doesn't feature any sections that you must cooperate through, as with Portal 2's separate (and incidentally awesome) two-player mode, but that's not a huge deal. F.E.A.R. 3's dedicated multiplayer modes, though, have some really nifty ideas built in. The first mode (called "F***ing Run") sees four players fighting through waves of enemies while a wall of psychic energy (which instantly kills whoever it touches) constantly pushes them onward. It's also got a "zombie" mode, where you and your team hole up and try to survive waves of zombies, the hook being that the level size continuously shrinks after each wave -- via an encroaching fog effect -- making it harder to run-and-gun. Finally, a three-on-one mode called Soul Survivor casts one player as a ghost who has to possess the level's A.I. enemies and kill the other players to win, while the others have to take out said enemies. Whichever mode you choose, it's pretty darn fun; the only gripe being that (certainly in the PC version, anyway) it's awfully hard to find other players to saddle up with.
Aside from these few relatively minor negatives, F.E.A.R. 3 is a very solid shooter that covers a lot of the right bases -- I just wish the developers had put as much imagination and creativity into the single-player campaign as they did into coming up with new multiplayer modes. And, you know, actually made it a bit more scary.
Source: gamespy
