Well, I was planning on doing a review every week, but this game kind of snuck up on me. Like, it just came out without me realizing it, but then, I wasn't really paying attention to this game before it was released. But, a week later after it was released, I decided to give it a try just to give my opinion of the game, even though I already knew what to think before I even played it as I heard someone say it was "uninspired". Uninspired you say? That describes just about every other FPS coming out these days. Ok, maybe that's a bit unfair, because all the FPSs are actually inspired. They're inspired by Call of Duty.
I guess I should say I haven't really played any of the previous F.E.A.R games. I played the demo for F.E.A.R 2 before playing this one just to see if I was missing out on anything. Well, I'm not missing out on much. All of the things I did in the 20 minutes on the second game, I got to do in the 6 hours of the third game. Shoot down bad guys in slow motion, control a big mecha-suit and blow shit up, and go through areas where the lights flicker on and off. I was about to say that the story doesn't make any sense, but I'll let it slide because I haven't played any of the previous games.
This game starts off with you just going through corridors and just shooting bad guys. Get use to that, because that's pretty much all you do through the rest of the game. Ok, sure, you get to control a big giant robotic suit through a couple of sections, and those are the parts when the game actually becomes a little fun. But then, you go back on the ground doing some cover based shooting.
Oh, speaking of cover based shooting, there's this function where you walk up to a wall, push a button, and you'll hug up against it so you can peak out of corners or peak over cover to take some shots and go back down. This is pretty useless, because it all remains in first person, and all of this could have been accomplished just by pushing the crouch button. And not is doing that a bit more efficient, but it during the many times when a grenade is tossed at you, you can just get up and run. If you're using the cover system while trying to run away from a grenade, you're probably going to get blown up more often. Seriously, when a grenade was near me, my first instinct was to run, but if you're in cover, you kind of stick to the wall a couple of seconds before you finally get out of cover so you can run, but by that time, the grenade would have blown up. You could probably push the cover button to get out of cover a little more quickly, but that requires an extra second of thinking time, to which by the time you get out of cover, you'll be dead. So, I got through the whole game just fine without using the cover function, which begs the question why they put it there in the first place.
This game kind of gets frustrating as well. I lost count on how many times they stuck me in this area with respawning enemies, and there was nothing I could do except fend off all of the enemies until they stopped respawning so I could finally get on to the next area, where I have to deal with more respawning enemies. But it didn't get too much in the way, as I got through the game without much of a problem. The times I got stuck, I just took a break for a while and then came back to the game, and then I beat the section after a couple of more tries. It just gets tiring though. There are times when the game puts you up against a really powerful enemy where all you can really do is constantly shoot at him until he finally decides to die. He can also teleport, which is kind of cool, it kept me looking around trying to figure out where he would appear next, but then he dies after a while, so, it all just boiled down to hitting him enough times. Then the game puts you up against two of these guys at one point, and that's just a little unfair, because now I was kind of spinning around in circles trying to shoot down one guy while the other guy was shooting at me. I finally got past these parts after a few tries, so it's not that frustrating, it just gets annoying when they keep putting you up against these guys.
The sad part about this game is that it's not even scary. And that's pretty bad for a horror game....well, at least I think it's a horror game. There are times when the lights flicker and some spooky looking girl gives you this kind of death look. And then there's this guy that randomly appears, grabs you, shakes you down for your lunch money, and then runs off and disappears. After these parts, it's just more shooting though. There are times when I thought this game was starting to figure it out when you caught glimpses of something grabbing people and slipping by. I thought "Cool, I wonder what it's going to be!". A whole minute later that something appears and then I take it down with a couple of shots which just brings a big "Is that it?" The game well spawn more enemies like that at you, so really, it was just a fancy way to introduce more enemies. It's sad, because they do this twice, and it falls flat when you find out what it is a whole minute later and you can kill them a little more easily then the normal guys you fight.
To be honest, this isn't a bad game though. During the times when it isn't pretending to be a horror game, it is fun to slow down time a shoot someone's head off and seeing it explode. When I wasn't slowing time down, it was just a standard cover based shooting game with nothing really special about it. You can replay missions as this one guy with powers where you can shoot stuff out of your hands and possess enemies, and it was all pretty cool. But you have to play every level in order to play each one as him, so it kind of lost it's awesomeness.
If you're someone who gets easily scared, and likes being scared by stuff like this, then I guess you can give this game a look. I've seen people who were actually scared by this game, so I guess it's just people like me who don't get scared too easily. If you really need to see what this game is like, then just rent it if you can. The thing is, there's really nothing bad about this game, but there's nothing really special about it either.
I guess I should say I haven't really played any of the previous F.E.A.R games. I played the demo for F.E.A.R 2 before playing this one just to see if I was missing out on anything. Well, I'm not missing out on much. All of the things I did in the 20 minutes on the second game, I got to do in the 6 hours of the third game. Shoot down bad guys in slow motion, control a big mecha-suit and blow shit up, and go through areas where the lights flicker on and off. I was about to say that the story doesn't make any sense, but I'll let it slide because I haven't played any of the previous games.
This game starts off with you just going through corridors and just shooting bad guys. Get use to that, because that's pretty much all you do through the rest of the game. Ok, sure, you get to control a big giant robotic suit through a couple of sections, and those are the parts when the game actually becomes a little fun. But then, you go back on the ground doing some cover based shooting.
Oh, speaking of cover based shooting, there's this function where you walk up to a wall, push a button, and you'll hug up against it so you can peak out of corners or peak over cover to take some shots and go back down. This is pretty useless, because it all remains in first person, and all of this could have been accomplished just by pushing the crouch button. And not is doing that a bit more efficient, but it during the many times when a grenade is tossed at you, you can just get up and run. If you're using the cover system while trying to run away from a grenade, you're probably going to get blown up more often. Seriously, when a grenade was near me, my first instinct was to run, but if you're in cover, you kind of stick to the wall a couple of seconds before you finally get out of cover so you can run, but by that time, the grenade would have blown up. You could probably push the cover button to get out of cover a little more quickly, but that requires an extra second of thinking time, to which by the time you get out of cover, you'll be dead. So, I got through the whole game just fine without using the cover function, which begs the question why they put it there in the first place.
This game kind of gets frustrating as well. I lost count on how many times they stuck me in this area with respawning enemies, and there was nothing I could do except fend off all of the enemies until they stopped respawning so I could finally get on to the next area, where I have to deal with more respawning enemies. But it didn't get too much in the way, as I got through the game without much of a problem. The times I got stuck, I just took a break for a while and then came back to the game, and then I beat the section after a couple of more tries. It just gets tiring though. There are times when the game puts you up against a really powerful enemy where all you can really do is constantly shoot at him until he finally decides to die. He can also teleport, which is kind of cool, it kept me looking around trying to figure out where he would appear next, but then he dies after a while, so, it all just boiled down to hitting him enough times. Then the game puts you up against two of these guys at one point, and that's just a little unfair, because now I was kind of spinning around in circles trying to shoot down one guy while the other guy was shooting at me. I finally got past these parts after a few tries, so it's not that frustrating, it just gets annoying when they keep putting you up against these guys.
The sad part about this game is that it's not even scary. And that's pretty bad for a horror game....well, at least I think it's a horror game. There are times when the lights flicker and some spooky looking girl gives you this kind of death look. And then there's this guy that randomly appears, grabs you, shakes you down for your lunch money, and then runs off and disappears. After these parts, it's just more shooting though. There are times when I thought this game was starting to figure it out when you caught glimpses of something grabbing people and slipping by. I thought "Cool, I wonder what it's going to be!". A whole minute later that something appears and then I take it down with a couple of shots which just brings a big "Is that it?" The game well spawn more enemies like that at you, so really, it was just a fancy way to introduce more enemies. It's sad, because they do this twice, and it falls flat when you find out what it is a whole minute later and you can kill them a little more easily then the normal guys you fight.
To be honest, this isn't a bad game though. During the times when it isn't pretending to be a horror game, it is fun to slow down time a shoot someone's head off and seeing it explode. When I wasn't slowing time down, it was just a standard cover based shooting game with nothing really special about it. You can replay missions as this one guy with powers where you can shoot stuff out of your hands and possess enemies, and it was all pretty cool. But you have to play every level in order to play each one as him, so it kind of lost it's awesomeness.
If you're someone who gets easily scared, and likes being scared by stuff like this, then I guess you can give this game a look. I've seen people who were actually scared by this game, so I guess it's just people like me who don't get scared too easily. If you really need to see what this game is like, then just rent it if you can. The thing is, there's really nothing bad about this game, but there's nothing really special about it either.
