Creepy little girls, cannibal killers, and guns oh my!

One year ago, PC gamers were given a new meaning for the word "fear". F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) pushed PC's to new limits while managing to soil many of gaming chairs in the process. Winning many game of the year honors, gamers wondered if this would ever grace the console market. Well thanks to the Xbox 360 and soon to be PS3, gamers can now indulge in the experience that is F.E.A.R.

You are a member of F.E.A.R. and are sent in to investigate the whereabouts of a man called Paxton Fettel. To keep it spoiler free, let's just say he likes to eat people and is a very bad man. You are chosen because of your incredible reflexes and I assume the ability to slow things down with your bullet time effects. While the story is a bit on the lackluster side of uncovering any profound mysteries, the game lives on the fact that it is down right creepy. Only taking a back seat to the great Eternal Darkness for best sanity effects, F.E.A.R. will show you scenes of death, chaos, and even a living hell at times. Some of the scares are of the cheap jump variety, but the ones that work are the scares that you know are coming, just not when or how they will happen. With the scares more Silent Hill than Resident Evil, expect your psyche to be tested while you immerse yourself into the world of F.E.A.R.

To help get the scares across, F.E.A.R uses a remarkable graphics engine that takes advantage of the next generation platforms. Using strong textures, shaders, and a high polygon count, the world comes alive and is very believable. Using a version of the Doom 3 engine, you will appreciate the bump mapping and water effects that are incredible to say the least. Toss in destructible environments, including everything from bullet holes to destroying scaffolds and you will have much pleasure viewing the scenery and even more pleasure destroying it. The enemies for the most part are recon mercenaries that are controlled by Fettel by telekinesis and are out to take you and your F.E.A.R. counterparts down. They are designed very will and some have a bit of diversity to them. Toss in the old Havoc engine and you will be fragging those rag dolls until dawn. While the game is beautiful and the effects, especially the scares are done incredibly, I must note that there are a few glitches in the system visually. The game takes place in environments that rarely change appearance. You'll be going into lobbies, computer rooms, boiler rooms, and air ducts, but as beautiful as it all looks, it becomes quite repetitive after a while. This also holds true for the enemies. While you'll see some large armored enemies, stealth ninjas, and a few eerie baddies, the core of the enemies you fight are recon types that look identical. Not that any of this will take away from the experience, but if I must nitpick, these would be them.

Audio is just as compelling utilizing 5.1 surround systems quite well. This works well with the destructive theme of the game where explosions and gunshots can be heard around every corner. You'll get a chill up your spine when you hear whispers from behind you, bottles falling from shelves, creaks and groans, and let's not forget the eerie laugh of the little girl. The horror soundtrack adds to the frightening environment and provides that added punch to really set off the scares and action sequences.

PC to console ports can be hit or miss sometimes, but even with the lack of controller customization, the game play of F.E.A.R. is tight, responsive, and plays as well as any first person shooter this side of Halo. What really sets the game off is the remarkable A.I. of the enemies that will not only challenge your skill level, but reflexes and thought patterns as well. Enemies will duck, take cover, hop over obstacles to get in closer, cautiously wait patiently for you to make the first move, send other units around corners to seek you out, etc. The level of the A.I. in this game is near human level, especially on higher difficulty settings. Sometimes they can be too good, as it seems they never miss. Even if you have taken cover and peak around the corner, it is as if they know you are looking and hit you dead on. The best thing to do in those situations is run, gun, and use the bullet time effect and slow down your enemies so you can take crack shots at them.

The single player campaign will run around 10-15 hours and you will get plenty of scares, enemies, and high-powered weaponry throughout. Multiplayer on the other hand can only be done one way...online. No split screen, no system link, if you aren't online with a gold subscription, no online for you. Once you are there though, you can play with up to 16 gamers in a variety of multiplayer modes. While most of them are your basic FPS fodder, there is still plenty of enjoyment to be found online and will easily increase the game's longevity. The only downer is the setup, as once you've completed a set of rounds, the game kicks you back to the main online menu where you will have to create a new room, invite your friends back in, and bear with the load times in between doing so. This can become very trying and hopefully we will see an update in the future to resolve this issue. While online though, expect lag free gunplay and plenty of bloodshed to enjoy.

With technology moving at leaps and bounds, you would figure a game that is a year old would be old hat by now, but I guess that was just a sign of how ahead of its time F.E.A.R. was. I would have liked to see the recently released expansion pack for the 360, but maybe that is why we have the marketplace for such things. Overall, if you like FPS titles, you like your games pretty, and you like to be scared, then F.E.A.R. is right up your alley. Proceed with caution; you will wet yourself on this ride.