F.E.A.R.

I'm not sure why I bought the Humble WB Bundle. The Batman games hardly interest me. I guess I now have them ready if I ever want to play them, though. They are game-of-the-year editions and were of course really cheap too. So there is that at least.

The F.E.A.R. games did not seem exactly my type either. The last time I tried an fps horror game combo, it did not go so well -- I could not bring myself to finish Doom 3. The threshold to launch the game to be chain jump-scared once more just grew too high.

However, I had no trouble finishing F.E.A.R. -- or First Encounter Assault Recon (I guess the acronym came first). I think that was because in F.E.A.R. the jump-scares rarely, if ever, are actual threats (though I did shoot at the apparitions before I got used to them), while in Doom 3, sometimes it is just a plain scare and sometimes an actual demon coming from the wall to kill you. You never know.

F.E.A.R. does have a pretty oppressive atmosphere, though. The game's visuals are bleak and sharp-edged. It kind of reminded me of Deus Ex in that regard. At least the character models and particle effects are better looking, which is expected from a newer game. And I did like how messy places end up after a firefight with blood and bullet decals everywhere. But on the audio side the game again does not have much to show. And the enemy variation is quite poor.

I would compare F.E.A.R.'s gameplay to what Mass Effect 3 would be if you played a soldier Shepard without squad mates, Adrenaline Rush and Frag Grenade as your only powers. And of course with first person perspective and no hard cover use. It gets pretty tedious when that is all there is to it. F.E.A.R.'s around 11 hours of playtime felt quite long.

I played on the hardest, Extreme, difficulty. It makes enemies more accurate and do more damage. Sure enough, my armor was at 0 most of the time. Med kits are plenty, however, and I very rarely had to reload a save. Your health also regenerates below some point but the threshold at Extreme is so low that it might as well not be there.

I think the most difficult parts were the stupid hallucination segments where you are in darkness with nothing but flames around, and these ghostly, hard-to-see enemies jump at you, doing silly amounts of damage if they are successful at hitting you.

I have seen praise for the game's AI but I do not know what I should compare it to to make it seem that impressive. It does do its job but particularly smart it definitely was not. And the flanking thing never happened because F.E.A.R. is basically one long corridor that only occasionally splits in two for a few meters.

There seemed to be some kind of odd damage bonus when attacking unaware enemies. It appeared to affect only the first enemy even if you engaged with slow motion on and the second guy had not even turned towards you yet. The first guy would drop from couple assault rifle headshots but then the second would take more. Or one headshot with the Penetrator would kill the first but not the second guy.

Another unique thing going for F.E.A.R. are its pretty cool special melee attacks. I do not think the game even explains them. You are left to discover them on your own. They are quite a valid option to use in melee range as all the kick attacks kill the standard enemies in one hit. But as you have to get close to use them in the first place, their actual usefulness is limited.

F.E.A.R.'s weakest part is the story. It is bland and there is too little of it to keep you interested the whole length. It also does not help at all that the protagonist, "Point Man", has no character whatsoever. I can only wonder how much would change if he had voice-acting. The game might have to be shorter but that might not be for the worse. I also saw the game's little plot twist coming almost from the start. Why would Fettel and Alma haunt Point Man if he was not related to them.

But yeah, F.E.A.R. was not too much to my liking.