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F.E.A.R.
Duration/Variety: 4
Gameplay: 5
Story/Pacing: 3
Visual Quality: 6
Sound Quality: 8
Impression: 9
4.9
This was a review I thought would be easy to write.
Back when FEAR for the PC first came out, I played the demo and I was pleasantly surprised by the game- I liked the theme, the genre and most of all I recognized some of the things that I always talk about (equality between players and AI, games that respond to how you play them, and good glue between animations and behaviors for the AI).
I vowed then to play the entire game.
And that I did. And I must say that I was a little under-whelmed by the game I thought I'd like.
Let me get the good things out of the way. I like the way the AI moves (I doubt you could find someone that doesn't), I like the good variety of vaulting and obstacle negotiation animations that they employ to move around the world. I thought the weapons had a nice balance to them, maybe a little bit on the "much too strong" side, as the challenge was really trivial, and never for a minute will you feel like you are struggling for resources. The game difficulty was very well balanced, and I never felt that any one section of it was unnecessarily difficult (mind you, I did not finish the game, I stopped just shy of the end). The game had a decent length, if not a little bit too much, seeing as the variety is non-existent.
All right. Now for what I thought was not so good.
First and most important, while I felt that the AI was doing a good job negotiating the environment, the environment design itself was very bad. All encounters started with one way into a room, and one way out of a room. While this is not a problem by itself, the level design does not allow you to observe the environment that you will fight in before you are actually engaged. Often times, I would get attacked in a corridor entering a room complex, and I would have to stay in that one corridor and kill the enemies as they would peek around the corner. Only after I would kill everyone would I notice that the complex of rooms had a lot of ways to traverse them, and I would be sorry that I was stuck in the initial funnel for the entirety of the fight. But running out into the open is a much worse idea - so I think the level designers messed this up by hurrying to present the challenge to the player, and not designing the spaces in such a way that you notice avenues of advance and obvious flank positions ahead of time.
I said the AI was animating very good, but it was moving very frantically and unintelligently. I have been accused of the same thing in the past, and I must say I see people's point. Enemies don't seem to move because it makes combat sense to move, but because some internal timer in their heads goes off (which is probably what is happening anyway). Their movements often have no purpose - they will move just to change position, and many times for a worse position with regards to the player. This makes their environment interaction "dance" quickly lose its magic and becomes a little funny. Later in the game the player does not feel challenged at all, except from the enemies that suck a lot of bullets before they go down. And there aren't very many of those.
Finally, and people have said it before - the unrelenting office scenery is death on the player's spirit. After so many offices, I just don't feel like going back to that game - so it gets a big minus in the variety department. If only they would vary the enemy types more, that may have diluted the sense of repetition. As it stands, this game gets old really quickly.
The all-present player funneling through the levels will take any desire to replay portions of the game and squeeze it out of you. This is a game that, although its AI is in the 21st century, its level design is firmly set in the 20th. Early 90ties to be exact :)
The story is very generic and really not very well told. The apparitions of the little child and the villain get old really quickly - this is not something that will get you going unless you are 12 years old and have not played many games nor watched a lot of movies. Alas, I will have to wait more for a game with an engaging storyline.
All in all, I liked this game more than I like most other games. It will be filed under good game mechanics set firmly in bad level design - that's a big club.
And that I did. And I must say that I was a little under-whelmed by the game I thought I'd like.
Let me get the good things out of the way. I like the way the AI moves (I doubt you could find someone that doesn't), I like the good variety of vaulting and obstacle negotiation animations that they employ to move around the world. I thought the weapons had a nice balance to them, maybe a little bit on the "much too strong" side, as the challenge was really trivial, and never for a minute will you feel like you are struggling for resources. The game difficulty was very well balanced, and I never felt that any one section of it was unnecessarily difficult (mind you, I did not finish the game, I stopped just shy of the end). The game had a decent length, if not a little bit too much, seeing as the variety is non-existent.
All right. Now for what I thought was not so good.
First and most important, while I felt that the AI was doing a good job negotiating the environment, the environment design itself was very bad. All encounters started with one way into a room, and one way out of a room. While this is not a problem by itself, the level design does not allow you to observe the environment that you will fight in before you are actually engaged. Often times, I would get attacked in a corridor entering a room complex, and I would have to stay in that one corridor and kill the enemies as they would peek around the corner. Only after I would kill everyone would I notice that the complex of rooms had a lot of ways to traverse them, and I would be sorry that I was stuck in the initial funnel for the entirety of the fight. But running out into the open is a much worse idea - so I think the level designers messed this up by hurrying to present the challenge to the player, and not designing the spaces in such a way that you notice avenues of advance and obvious flank positions ahead of time.
I said the AI was animating very good, but it was moving very frantically and unintelligently. I have been accused of the same thing in the past, and I must say I see people's point. Enemies don't seem to move because it makes combat sense to move, but because some internal timer in their heads goes off (which is probably what is happening anyway). Their movements often have no purpose - they will move just to change position, and many times for a worse position with regards to the player. This makes their environment interaction "dance" quickly lose its magic and becomes a little funny. Later in the game the player does not feel challenged at all, except from the enemies that suck a lot of bullets before they go down. And there aren't very many of those.
Finally, and people have said it before - the unrelenting office scenery is death on the player's spirit. After so many offices, I just don't feel like going back to that game - so it gets a big minus in the variety department. If only they would vary the enemy types more, that may have diluted the sense of repetition. As it stands, this game gets old really quickly.
The all-present player funneling through the levels will take any desire to replay portions of the game and squeeze it out of you. This is a game that, although its AI is in the 21st century, its level design is firmly set in the 20th. Early 90ties to be exact :)
The story is very generic and really not very well told. The apparitions of the little child and the villain get old really quickly - this is not something that will get you going unless you are 12 years old and have not played many games nor watched a lot of movies. Alas, I will have to wait more for a game with an engaging storyline.
All in all, I liked this game more than I like most other games. It will be filed under good game mechanics set firmly in bad level design - that's a big club.