To quote P.A.N.I.C.S. from Rooster Teeth, F.E.A.R. was a horror FPS that was filled "with poorly lit hallways. And doorways with no doors.”. The game had some memorable moments, even though most of those were involving a little girl in a red dress killing everyone, but it never had any memorable areas except for the very last level. The game also didn't really seem to focus much on both character and their voice actors. Sure, they were there and David Scully was in it, but there wasn't much emotion put into it. In fact F.E.A.R. felt like it was really only focusing on the graphics (For its time) and the combat, which also wasn't that amazing. F.E.A.R. was first released on the PC, and was then ported to console…and you could tell it was. The controls were both clumsy to use and when trying to use slow motion, lean around a corner, fire, throw a grenade and beat the hell out of someone in front of you all at the same time, you ended up with broken fingers. The next thing that F.E.A.R. tried at but never got was the concept of it being a horror game. It ended up feeling more like an average FPS with some flickering lights now and again, and a fair few encounters with Alma and Fettel, the guy you spend most of the game looking at his name in the objectives screen ("Find Fettel” is basically what you are told to do for at least half of the game). While there are a couple of times you may jump, there aren't any places that make you actually want to put down the game, turn on all the lights and then start watching Teletubbies so you feel ever so slightly less scared, a feat both Silent Hill and F.E.A.R. 2 pulled off quite marvellously.
F.E.A.R. 2 begins instead of having you listen to some guy insult you (F.E.A.R. 1), but waking up in a broken city, with the sky on FIRE! You then follow a very familiar looking girl towards a giant tree in the middle of a street. When you fall into the lake of fire around it, you wake up in an APC surrounded by heavily armed soldiers with guns that can fire three hundred rounds a second. Or rather, could. You then get insulted by one of the soldiers, who just so happens to be the insulting character from the first games' brother. Graphically, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is incredibly shiny, even though it doesn't show much off for the first fifteen minutes. But that's aright because later on, you will begin to hallucinate. You will see bloody pools, flashes of black things in corners and that damned little girl running around in front of you. The hallucinations are also incredibly well done. Instead of seeing a small plume of smoke you can watch for a while and then activate, the new little horrors occur without much warning, and when they do, it feels like you are walking through walls in DooM, where the screen seemed to tear out of the game and into reality (An interesting concept too).
The atmosphere of the game is possibly one of the best for an action horror. Most of the horror scenes are scripted, so once you play through the game a few times, things will seem much less scary. So if you like to be scared, don't play the game for a while. However, some will still send the hair on the back of your neck scampering away no matter how many times you play through it.
To move away from the horror and Alma for a while, let's talk about the action. We were told that F.E.A.R. was going to give us John Woo like action. Instead, what we got was more something like Halo, but on a slightly higher difficulty. The shooting didn't feel intense much, and it sure as hell wasn't as cinematic as Hardboiled, or epic like Face/Off. And with the addition of Bullet Time (Or Reflexes, as the game called it) it made running into a room with a shotgun much easier. F.E.A.R. 2 abandons that straight away and tries to do what COD4 had; a lot of people trying to kill you. At once. The AI has been improved significantly, so on higher difficulties, you will find yourself having to backtrack while three guys flank you, all fire at once and force you to retreat and re-think your tactics. The weapons haven't really changed much aside from the addition of a couple. There is a laser which can cut enemies in half and proximity mines that you can now attach to your enemies, watch them run into a group of more enemies and explode, sending blood, limbs and ammo raining down around you. The addition of enemies with exploding packs on their backs also adds to tactical thinking. Instead of going in and shooting him and blowing him up, you can wait for him to make his scripted rounds, walk near a few more soldiers and at least set them on fire. F.E.A.R. 2 also decided to let you wreak a little havoc by allowing you to pilot one of the giant mechs. Armed with two, tri-barrelled heavy chain guns, and the ability to fire four missiles at once makes you an incredibly formidable combatant, even though you get a total of fifteen or so minutes of the game to pilot of these beasties. And while you only get to use them for a short period of time, and they are far and few in-between Alma biting your left eyebrow off, you do get to duke it out with a couple of other mechs on the way. On higher difficulties, these can lead to some epic shoot-outs, (Although it will never beat Metal Gear Rex vs Metal Gear RAY in MGS4).
In summary, if you liked F.E.A.R., then you are going to have mixed feelings for this game. If you thought F.E.A.R. was good once and nothing afterwards, you will love this game. If you haven't played F.E.A.R. yet, then the plot will actually make sense.
Rating: 4/5 Scary Naked Ladies Scary naked lady, creepy little girl, violence and robots. Hmm…maybe the developers were originally from Japan?