F.E.A.R (

2005

) ½

Another day, another middling game from the early 2000s that makes contemporary offerings look like they were assembled by small, mentally disabled, children. Indeed, playing through the campaign for the first time filled me with a growing sense of distress alongside all the fun I was having. How was it possible that a genre like FPS, which has remained ubiquitous and popular ever since we used to call them Doom-clones, could have stagnated to such a degree? How is a random game from two decades ago that was, at the time, a moderately successful mid-budget release, this much better than current offerings with massive budgets and huge teams? Has the industry really degraded to such an extent in such a short amount of time? When did we go from this to Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus [2017] and Call of Duty: WW2 [2017]?

Even funnier than the obvious technical superiority of this wizened old game, is that it, seemingly by accident, is better at such modern values as diversity and representation. There are not many characters in FEAR, but the most memorable among them is Jin Sun-Kwon, a Korean chick who assists the player character at various points throughout the game. Were you to listen to groups like Sweet Baby Inc., Black Girl Gamers, or any number of other collections of diversity consultants, they would tell you that the games of yesteryear were bereft of any positive depiction of women or minorities. That the only women who existed in games were there to offer eye candy and nothing more. Yet here we have a non-white female character who is portrayed as competent, without being sexualized in the slightest (she wears the same military fatigues as all the boys). Notice how no fuss was raised over this character at the time of release or in any of the intervening sequels. Games were, by and large, better at diversity when they did not employ a class of political activists devoted to that goal.

That said, offering up positive representation for women and minorities is obviously not the concern of FEAR's development team. No, they were focused on constantly fine-tuning, and carefully adjusting the game's combat. Their efforts are well worth it too, as FEAR can boast some of the most engrossing shootouts ever to grace the FPS genre.

If FEAR has a significant weakness it is the lack of enemy variety. For almost the entire campaign you will be fighting the same handful of Replica soldiers, kitted out with the same equipment (always either the assault rifle, the sub-machine gun, or the shotgun). Occasionally the game will send a heavy trooper with thick armor and a nail gun after you, which is a nice change of pace but it will be a long time before you see any novel enemy types like the Assassin, the Mech, or the flying drone. Indeed, even after these types show up you will only be dealing with them in special moments, and seldom in any significant numbers. There are also non-replica security forces that turn up occasionally, but aside from being hostile to the odd Replica they encounter, they are exactly the same. Towards the end of the campaign, Replica soldiers will start packing exotic weapons like Particle Accelerators and Repeating Cannons, but even then they are uncommon.

This lack of enemy variety is made up for by the fact that the enemies themselves have a large variety of behaviors and tactics that they can employ, that make for different scenarios even when you replay the exact same encounter multiple times in a row. Open fire on a room of enemies once and then the enemies may respond by suppressing your position and sending a guy towards your hiding spot. They might opt instead to flush you out of cover with a grenade. They may even double back and try to sneak up behind you if there is an available route. Compared to the usual FPS enemies who I've grown accustomed to just marching around a corner only to join the growing pile of corpses there, this is incredible versatility. It creates the impression of fighting living, thinking enemies that are capable of assessing the situation they are in and responding accordingly. I remember being shocked when I saw enemies vaulting over obstacles to get a clear line of sight on me and crawling under barriers in order to flank me from behind.

Enemy reflexes and tactics are good enough that the game would be damn near unplayable if it didn't give the player ample opportunity to cheat. In addition to the usual quick saves and infinite continues, FEAR also lets the player slow down time with a bullet-time ability that was all the rage in early 2000s shooters thanks to the popularity of The Matrix (1999). This gives you the ability to engage multiple enemies before they even know you're there, as well as making it easy to disengage and slip away when you become overwhelmed. It also slows down the sound effects, as each gunshot, explosion, and clink of shattered glass becomes distinct rather than a part of the cacophonous roar. I'm especially fond of the little whirling sounds it makes when your focus meter runs out and time snaps back to normal.

The other advantage the player has over the villainous NPCs is information. FEAR does not crowd your ears with a lot of unnecessary noise or action. There are no friendly NPCs constantly yelling at you to turn the next switch, advance to a new position, or secure the Godamn Burger Town. Other than the noise of explosions, gunfire, and shattered glass, the only sound in combat is the occasional radio communications of the enemy combatants. Each one of these radio communications tells you something. Occasionally it will be the enemies revealing their next action, for instance, whether they are going to flush you out with a grenade or if they are going to move in to flank your position. Other times they will report the number of casualties they have suffered, which can be helpful in telling you just how many you killed in the last exchange of fire as it can be unclear when engaging enemies at long range. If only one enemy survives they will request reinforcements over the radio, those reinforcements will never arrive but it tells you that there is only one enemy left to deal with and to plan accordingly.

The smart enemies, the slick slow-mo, and the slow drip of information combine to create the illusion that you really are a genuine badass who is running and gunning your way through waves of capable soldiers. The enemies are smart and deadly, no doubt about it, but you are smarter and deadlier than them. This is an element of the power fantasy that so often gets ignored. A power fantasy just isn't fun if you know you are fighting hapless idiots. If there is no challenge, either real or illusory, then your accomplishments are rendered hollow and there is consequently no fantasy of competence and power. This is why playing games on baby mode so often makes them feel boring and pointless rather than empowering.

The game also makes some attempt at being a survival horror game as well as an FPS. Here, its results are a little mixed. Ammunition, health, and armor are always in short supply which adds tension to fights and also makes you excited whenever you happen upon a pickup. However, ammo is never in such short supply that combat becomes something you actively want to avoid, nor are there ways to avoid most encounters if you so desire. Moreover, the combat is so damn fun that it's hard to view the prospect of any encounter with much dread.

More effective are the generally dark and dingy environments that you must traverse armed with a flashlight that dies and needs to recharge if you keep it on for a minute at a time (First Encounter Assault Recon has apparently been hit with a wave of budget cuts that have rendered AA batteries an unobtainable luxury). Part of this is purely practical, you don't know where enemies might be lurking in the gloom, and if you haphazardly blunder into an ambush their automatic weapons will shred your health before you even get a chance to switch on your slow-mo cheats. However, there is also just the creepy feeling created by being alone in the dark. The tension is enhanced by periodic supernatural phenomena, like visions of a ghostly visage of Fettle, glimpses of a creepy little girl, or strange static crackles coming in over the radio.

That said, often times the player will miss these fleeting glimpses of creepy supernatural events as they are just not looking at the right place at the right time. FEAR trains you pretty quickly to check your corners when entering a new environment, and carefully look around for health, ammo, or armor pickups. As a result, I oftentimes completely missed these creepy little moments and was only alerted that something had happened by the shrill musical cue.

The story of FEAR follows a new operative at the eponymous First Encounter Assault Recon, a governmental task force assembled to deal with a growing rash of bizarre and paranormal threats. In this case, the menace is a rogue psychic commander named Paxton Fettle who has absconded from his holding cell and taken command of an entire battalion of replicas, soldiers that he can command directly through the power of his mind. Fettle's goals are unknown at the start, but he has already killed and is now in command of enough firepower to conquer a small country, so the government isn't exactly interested in sitting around to hear his demands. The only problem is that Fettle proves to be a slippery bastard, and you will spend the entire game chasing him from one environment to another. From industrial zones to office buildings to slums to the mysterious sci-fi facility where Armacham, the arms manufacturers who created the replica army, were conducting abhorrent experiments decades earlier.

The plot is pretty basic, Fettle is trying to discover the truth about his birth and the unethical experiments that Armacham conducted on his mother while Armacham is trying to cover things up from both Fettle and the government. Just what Armacham did, and why Fettle has gone berserk is played pretty close to the chest, explored only through periodic files that you find and your handler decodes for you. There is some mystery here, but honestly, it probably won't trouble the player very much while they engage in the game's combat. Indeed, the story only takes center stage when you reach the final level and learn the big twist where you learn that the player character is actually Fettle's long-lost brother and that the two are both children of a tortured and murdered psychic named Alma who has been reaching out from beyond the grave to have Fettle enact her terrible vengeance.

In addition to the, quite frankly ridiculous, twist the game undergoes a genre shift in the final mission. No longer are you battling Fettle's Replica commandos, instead you will be periodically attacked by Alma's psychic phantoms. The whole tone of the game switches to a much more traditional horror game as you desperately try to escape from the exploding facility. Switching to a full-on supernatural horror game for the final level when the preceding 8 hours or so has been a mostly conventional FPS is certainly a bold decision that I don't think many games would have the balls to commit to. However, if you're going to try an experiment that may or may not work I would much rather you shove it at the end of your excellent game than the start. At worst you get the alien planet ending to Half-Life [1998] and at best you get a stunning ending that flips the game's conventions and leaves you with an incredible last impression like the Granfaloon sequence from Inside [2016]. FEAR's final level falls between those two extremes, being a slightly odd but nonetheless engaging variation on the core gameplay.