better known as F.E.A.R., developed by Monolith Productions and published by Vivendi

Universal through Sierra Entertainment in 2005.

This Windows PC version may have released over a dozen years ago, but back then it was

setting the computer gaming world on fire, look at these quotes!

The hype was real when this launched in ‘05.

I remember being floored by the E3 demos, with it appearing to be a mix of the John

Woo-inspired bullet time spectacle seen in games like Max Payne mixed with the gory atmospheric

spookiness of Doom 3.

That sounded good to me as-is, plus I was enjoying the mid-2000s trend of stringy-haired

ghost girls in horror movies, so F.E.A.R. seemed liked a fitting mix of my preferred

pop culture trends.

Inside the box you got the game itself on a quintet of CD-ROM discs in sleeves, as well

as a 33-page instruction booklet diving into gameplay basics, along with a description

of items and weaponry without spoiling every detail.

Additionally there was a Director’s Edition release, which included a DVD-ROM version

of the game that also packed a documentary video, interviews and roundtable discussions,

and a spoof by Rooster Teeth titled P.A.N.I.C.S.

Furthermore it came with this sweet comic book by Dark Horse Comics, acting as a brief

narrative prequel.

And in later years, F.E.A.R. came to Xbox 360 and PS3 as well, but from here on out

we’ll be sticking with the PC original.

After some company logo animations that have become oddly nostalgic, you’re greeted by

the main menu, with its eerie ambiance and video clips showing the upcoming chaos.

Before that though it’s best practice to hop into the graphics options and see what’s

up, because in 2005 this was a PC benchmarking staple.

F.E.A.R. makes use of what was then the latest LithTech game engine

known as the Jupiter Extended Engine.

Its combination of DirectX 9 rendering, Shader Model 2 support, Havok Game Dynamics, particle

physics, and a slew of other tech meant F.E.A.R. looked cutting edge on a capable PC.

And getting decent numbers at the end of the built-in benchmark was a point of pride indeed.

Once you’re finished ogling numbers the single player mode awaits!

F.E.A.R. then plays an M.O.V.I.E., beginning with teeny tiny text describing how the US

Army formed the F.E.A.R. team to respond to “paranormal threats to national security,”

but personally I feel it was to have another clever acronym under their belt.

After this you get a pretty excellent intro cinematic showing the possession of one Paxton

Fettel, and how, with the help of a creepy ghost girl in a red dress, he’s escaped

from his cell and taken control of a battalion of cloned soldiers using mind control.

Cuz video games.

To top it off, the man has some particular culinary preferences.

[CHOMP CHOMP]

Oh yeah F.E.A.R. can get a bit graphic, so uh, you’ve been warned and stuff.

Anyway, since there’s a telepathic cannibal weirdo on the loose, the First Encounter Assault

Recon team is brought in to clean up.

You take control of the voiceless protagonist known simply as Point Man: the new guy on

the team that was hired one week prior for his exceptional reflexes.

["You've seen his training results. His reflexes are totally off the charts."]

[“I think he can handle himself!”]

Maybe they should’ve done more research though, since you immediately black out and

start having visions.

["What's the first thing you remember?"]

["Where are you taking him?!"]

["You will be a god among men."]

["Wake up, Mr. Freeman."]

Oh well I’m sure everything is fine.

Once you arrive on-scene and step out of the car you’re provided a peaceful little tutorial

level that guides you by the hand, calmly showing you how to break pieces of wood and

work with a fellow soldier until oh noooo, “Mister Point Man, I don’t feel so good.”

Before long though you stop tripping balls and eventually run across some of Fettel’s

recent happy meal leftovers.

Then it’s this radical helicopter arrival scene where you drop into the level with your

disposable military buddies.

Man these guys are great, I’m sure we’ll be friends foreve-NOPE.

[creepy noises, silent skeletons]

Welp, pack it up boys, tutorial’s over.

And so is the rest of your squad for that matter, thanks to the psionic abilities of

a creepy girl named Alma.

From this point onward your visions continue with increasingly disturbing visuals flashing

before your eyes as you walk through each level.

[shrill, unsettling noises]

[NIC CAGE]

Finally though, you’ve been through enough and are

ready to shoot some mind-controlled soldiers in the face.

Cue the bullet time montage!

[slowed sound effects, classical music]

Dude yes. As effective and unsettling as the horror elements can be,

it’s the feel of the combat that really made F.E.A.R. stand out from the rest.

And the first key component of this is the slow-motion mechanic, explained in-universe

as Point Man having exceptionally high reflexes.

It’s also a legit life-saver in most situations, with plenty of encounters and enemy types

that will handily overwhelm you with both attack speed and sheer volume of ammunition.

Bullet time or reflex time or whatever you wanna call it is as much about difficulty

balancing as it is an easy sales gimmick for the marketing team to get off on, everybody wins!

Then there’s the arsenal at your disposal, which kicks off with a very Hard Boiled akimbo

pistol option, followed by the requisite submachine gun, an incredibly satisfying pump action

shotgun, assault rifles in both fully-automatic and burst firing configurations, a rocket

launcher that lobs multiple missiles with every press of the trigger, and several types

of grenades and explosives for fragging the crap out of everything.

Each of these are mighty pleasing to use, especially that shotgun with its ability to

reduce clones to a fine red mist.

But for the most part it’s a loadout pretty typical for a special forces-focused FPS game

in the mid-2000s.

It’s the remaining weapons where F.E.A.R. really cements itself into memory, starting

with the legendary HV Penetrator.

This is one of my favorite game weapons ever, it’s a military-grade nail gun essentially,

firing chunky metallic cylinders at stupidly high speeds.

This results in some gleeful piercing action, allowing you to staple dudes to the wall for

an extra dosage of overkill.

After this you have the Type-7 Particle Weapon, one of F.E.A.R.’s more absurd options that

is immediately deadly to darn near everyone.

A single shot typically evaporates armor and flesh alike, instantly reducing weaker enemies

to blood and bone.

One of the more tense levels in the game features a whole section where most guys are equipped

with a particle gun themselves, making for quite an anxiety-ridden firefight when everyone

can deal so much damage to everyone else.

And finally there’s the MP-50 Repeating Cannon, an absurd 20mm semi-automatic weapon

that shoots exploding ammo from a substantial 50-round magazine.

It’s a late-game item so you don’t get to do a ton with it, but I’m glad it exists nonetheless.

However, all these wouldn’t be nearly as fun if the baddies themselves weren’t enjoyable

to dispatch, and thankfully they’re outfitted with what I recall as the most advanced artificial

intelligence of its day.

It’s still impressive man, the way these guys move, communicate, flank, regroup, defend,

and generally outmaneuver you throughout the campaign is fantastic.

After all this time I’m still surprised at what each squad is capable of doing during

any given battle, with them shouting tactics and expletives in equal measure.

Every single encounter ends up being a unique event, with any number of variables determining

whether they go high, go low, flank from behind, throw down cover, blast through barriers,

flush you out with explosives, and generally incite unpredictable mayhem that still manages

feel like an intelligent, trained group of soldiers.

So whenever you do manage to get the drop on them and hear something like this

[“ohh fuuu*kk!”]

then you know you’ve done something right.

Partially to thank for these moments are the thoughtfully-built levels and carefully-displayed

lighting, with no shortage of opportunities to remain stealthy and track down enemies

using only shadows on a wall and positional audio cues.

It’s no Splinter Cell or Metal Gear, but it gets the job done.

And the levels themselves are just complicated enough without being overwhelming, consisting

of interconnected rooms and pathways, with an occasional valve puzzle or bit of machinery

to manipulate in order to progress to the next section.

So you get ample opportunity to approach groups of enemies in interesting ways, and there

are plenty of rooms off the beaten path hiding ammo, medkits, armor, and upgrades for your

health and reflexes.

It all leads to an experience that lends itself to a surprising amount of quiet moments.

It’s you, a flashlight, and dark winding hallways for the most part.

You don’t even have to go in guns blazing all the time, as you have a variety of unarmed

combat options.

The Amazing Point Man is apparently adept at martial arts too, serving up bicycle kicks,

sliding takedowns, rapid punches, pistol whips, and sweeping kick attacks.

Melee often ends up getting you killed if you’re not careful so I don’t always recommend

it, but it’s a neat option and further adds to the full body presence going on.

Yeah, F.E.A.R. was one of the first FPS games I experienced with such a believable feeling

of existing as a physical thing in a virtual world.

Not only can you look down and see your own feet and legs and stuff, but when you’re

knocked down you actually see your character push himself up off the ground.

That blew my mind a little back then.

And every time you pass by a light source you can see your own shadows in real time,

reminding you that you’re basically as vulnerable as everyone else.

And man do you feel vulnerable, especially during sections where control is taken away

from you in order to provide some haunted house scares.

Beyond the aforementioned Nic Cage faces flashing on-screen, you’re constantly running into

spots where the lights start flickering, apparitions appear for just long enough to make you wonder

if you actually saw them, and controls are either slowed down or taken away from you

entirely so various disturbing things can happen.

Things that are probably not real but you can still die so it still gets under your skin.

[creepy crying and ghost noises and such]

And then there are ladders, which, heh, you know I think the opportunity to make players

pee themselves is half the reason they were designed this way.

To climb a ladder you press a key to be locked onto the ladder, resulting in limited movements

and camera angles.

While this means the classic FPS problem of accidentally falling off a ladder is solved,

it also means that sometimes HI THERE.

So yeah, F.E.A.R. contains its share of jump scares and scenes of supernatural carnage,

but a hefty amount of the horror stems from the constant threat of the unknown and unseen.

You aren’t sure what exactly Alma and Fettel are capable of, and the visions you experience

grow increasingly disturbing and physically threatening.

The whole campaign really does hold up in my opinion, with a thoroughly enjoyable romp

through dimly-lit warehouses, industrial zones, office buildings, science facilities, and

other various places that for whatever reason intrigue me.

Especially things like construction areas and office cubicles, I dunno, they simply

captivated me with their normalcy.

Just cinder blocks, spackled walls, computer monitors, and drink cans all over the place.

Most of this stuff can be destroyed in spectacular fashion as well, which makes the inevitable

battle in each new room a joy in terms of visuals alone.

It also goes with the tried and true method of first-person exploration-based narrative,

as popularized by games like System Shock and Half-Life.

Audio logs in the form of answering machine messages reveal tidbits of character backstory,

and Alienware-branded laptops perform a similar task, having intelligence operatives sift

through data and explain how things got so messed up.

All you really need to know is it’s a story of weird events happening to even weirder

people, with government entities performing morally questionable experiments leading to

unforeseen consequences.

And yes, the protagonist has a key role in all of this because it’s one of those

“chosen one” stories where you’re super awesome but oh noooo, amnesia.

Anyway I won’t spoil the story for those of you that haven’t played it, though I

will say it’s a great time for the 7 to 10 hours it lasts.

Even if it ends on a rather high-stakes cliffhanger moment.

I am not a big fan of those, but it didn’t detract from my overall satisfaction with

the game up to that point.

And besides, it wasn’t long before we got Extraction Point in 2006, an expansion that

picks up directly where the story left off.

This was followed up with F.E.A.R.

Gold, packing both the Director’s Edition of the base game and Extraction Point into

one package.

Even though it’s developed by Timegate Studios and not the original dev team, it’s still

a solid expansion to the story, providing another 6 or 7 hours of gameplay and introducing

several excellent new weapons: including the minigun, the Type-12 laser carbine rifle,

and throwable turrets that activate on sensing motion.

It also introduces some new features, like breakable crates full of valuable item drops,

and the ability to smash through doors using melee, something I always wanted to do in