Zero Punctuation: FEAR 3

[CyricZ]

hey i was wondering, as a person who plays 50+ games a year, you must have a beast of a gamerscore, so maybe you mention it in an upcoming xp.

Don't forget that he:

A) Plays the games for a few days. Any attempt at hunting for the cheevies goes by the wayside given he's a bit contractually obligated to play enough of the game and crank out the review each week.

B) Only plays games on the 360 if it makes sense (ie. platformers). I'm just hazarding here, but I'm doubting that he plays many FPS's on the 360.

 

[Xman490]

Too bad for this that I recently got L4D2, which settles as my adrenaline-filled horror game niche. I'm guessing that the enemies here are rather slow, since you can OHKO them in the shins.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

Team Fortress 2's "socializing" player base these days has changed a bit.

"Stout Shako for 2 Refined!"

or

"I just got the game for free! How do you get items?"

 

[elitestranger1]

there needs to be more single player games
everything has multiplayer and if it doesn't the developer has to justify to the audience why. every interview has the question 'does it that mp?' and the guy has to put on a sorry face and say no.
well i don't want mp, paying for xbox live is a con and by time ive got the game at a cheapo price no one is online anyway.
also it hinders the single player content as its shorter, somtimes not as good as it could be and mp has no narative thread, so theres a lack of story.

i prefered the ps2 eara where we got a full game and story to experience and no dlc or mp to worry about.
if i were the same today we would have more games like alan wake / mass effect / batman

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Snip

What I guess they originally planned for the series and what I wished they did was not continue the Alma story after the first game at all. Remember, F.E.A.R. is the name of the paranormal government organization that the point man works at, and I think the plan was that each game would be a different "case" or threat the point man (or somebody else) would investigate/shoot in the face. That is what they were planning for the Halloween franchise (the point being that anything could happen on Halloween) but the only time they tried that was the terrible third movie, before going back to simple slasher series.

 

[wooty]

Like this weeks one, do admit that I lost interest in FEAR after the first game.

But lots of nice metaphors to pick of this review and use in my daily conversations now, many thanks Mr Croshaw.

 

[CorinthianRed]

It's not terrible, but I giggle when someone tries to tell me it's a horror game or that it's fun to play alone.
And I didn't think that robot sequence was THAT bad. I mean, I only have two broken stress clowns from it...

 

[deserteagleeye]

Maybe in the next sequel's box art you'll be faced with Alma's skin cells.

 

[Avatar Roku]

Well i never really got into the FEAR series and this game doesn't interest me either, were the previous FEARs any good?

Yes, FEAR 1 is fan tucking fastic, whereas FEAR 2 is complete shit. I've heard people reverse that though, so it's subjective, but FEAR 1 actually had scary bits (rather than the Alma-jumped-on-you-mash-b parts of FEAR 2), an amazing enemy AI (compared to the average-to-shit AI in FEAR 2), and an actual atmosphere. You see, in FEAR 1, you have only a vague idea what's going on, and piecing the story together with laptop files and voicemail messages was fascinating. In FEAR 2, by contrast, (despite Yahtzee bizzarly claiming otherwise, he's literally the first person I've heard say this), you know exactly what is happening, even if the characters don't, so the sense of wonder is gone.

Also, I just want to stress that last point: Yahtzee (yes, I'm going to be that guy), I don't know how you had so much trouble figuring out what happened. Assuming you found even a relatively small number of the laptops and voicemails, the story in the first FEAR got cleared up pretty easily.

Also, note on the game itself, the instant they switched from child Alma to teenage Alma (beginning of FEAR 2) was the instant that the horror went away for ever.

 

[GeorgW]

Really surprised that you liked it, but good points. The whole FEAR franchise is really weird to me.

 

[LobsterFeng]

I haven't seen a review this funny in a while. And that makes me happy.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Some great one-liners.

"Fear 3 is like an extremely judgemental Noah's Ark and has nothing but contempt for you if you can't produce a mating partner."

"...once I figured this out I was merrily gliding around on my back like a proactive hoar!"

 

[Mangue Surfer]

Funny review, but the game is worst than Yahtzee make it sounds.

 

[Aptspire]

I don't know about him, but I did like to possess enemies as Fettel, especially one of the commander, when their shield is down

 

[k-ossuburb]

Actually that seems like a decent challenge.

Can you make a first-person shooter scary? I think Condemned kind of did it, but that one part in Condemned 2 that had me swinging a claymore around in a museum and shooting arrows into a big can of fat bastard's open butt-flap kind of killed the mood for me (and my character a few times, because I was laughing so hard it was impossible to see what I was doing).

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

I actually liked the game quite a bit, but i suppose that's because i was playing with a friend of mine. He was the one who bought the game and was therefore Player 1 and had to play as Point Man, so i got to play as Fettel/Fettle(Unsure of spelling), which was great 'cause like Yahtzee said possessing enemies never gets old. Also there was that move to string enemies up in the air ad headshot them if you were in a bad position. Really took a lot of the stress(and scare out of it).

So yeah... not really scary in any way, but a good play if you think of it as a shooter where things go bump in the dark every now and then.

 

[daxterx2005]

Even before I started this review I knew we were going to get a "f-three-ar"