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FEAR 2: Project Origin is the long awaited sequel to 2005's FEAR, one of my top shooters of the year. FEAR was a stylish mesh of horror and brutal intense combat. It easily drew a lot of influences from Asia- the horror sequences were clearly a tribute to many J-Horrors and the action was heavily inspired by the stunts and choreography from John Woo films, most notably Hard Boiled. The story was really cool, and exceeded my expectations as I had expected the supernatural ghost girl, Alma, to be nothing more than a device to add the "horror" element as well as please J-Horror fans, but the story actually made Alma an important figure and despite being a "villain," I guess, I actually felt kinda sorry for her. While FEAR was a great game, it wasn't without flaws. The variety in enemies was pathetic (Even when you got to the Security Guards, they all looked the same which didn't make sense since only the Replicant Soldiers were meant to be clones.), some of the scares were cliched, the levels were sometimes repetitious and confusing, and the ending offered no real conclusion to the story. What made FEAR good though was the atmosphere, story, graphics (for the time), intense gun fights and the extremely intelligent AI. Now that FEAR 2 is here, lets dig in to it and see if it lives up to the high standards of its predecessor.
In short, the answer is no. In long however, while it is not as good or as memorable as its predecessor, it is by no means a bad game or not worth your time, in fact the gunplay and overall game play is just as furious and intense as its predecessor. The AI is still smart. The effects are still brutal and satisfying. Everything about the gameplay mechanics are solid. It's the story and atmosphere departments that are lacking. The story just doesn't feel like a proper continuation. In fact, it feels like an expansion pack, it just details the aftermath but it never progresses the mystery and such that made FEAR's story so intriguing. In fact I think that the name "Project Origin" isn't exactly fair, the game barely has anything to do with Project Origin other than what we learned of Origin in the first game. The story is just weak, flimsy, and overall probably the biggest disappointment of the package, and the game feels derivative and stripped without it because it means that the spooky happenings and strange events have absolutely no meaning or point.
Another blow is the atmosphere. I'm not an easy person to scare, and save for a few jump out moments and such, FEAR didn't exactly scare me, but it was still creepy and unsettling. The atmosphere was rich and it oozed out from every corner and corridor. FEAR 2 had a couple "creepy" moments but it was never consistent. The atmosphere is just... gone. Once again it makes the game feel stripped of what made its predecessor unique. Most of the "scare" scenes are now just cliches, pretty much. Sure, FEAR had cliched moments, pretty much ANYTHING that tries the J-Horror with creepy children route is going to feel cliched (To J-Horror fans: I'm sorry, but the genre is just as cliched and bland over there as it is here. I'm tired of JHorror movies following in the footsteps of Ju-On and Ringu with all their silly little ghost children and whatnot.) but FEAR broke it up with its atmosphere, here, the cliches are all that exist. To its credit, the sound design can be creepy when the spectral anomalies come in and it becomes a little unsettling when these buggers appear out of finely detailed rifts. Some of the creatures can be a bit creepy too, but they don't really feel like they fit in. I assumed that maybe these strange creatures would've been an after-effect of Project Origin or at the VERY least mutations from the explosion at the end of the first game and the beginning of this game (Yeah, it begins BEFORE #1 ends.) but instead they're just... well.... THERE, and it would be nice to have at least a HINT of what they are and where the hell they came from. At least its nice to have more than only 3-4 enemy types.
The Graphics in FEAR 2 are solid. They aren't anything to write home about, certainly not up to par with games like FarCry 2 and Dead Space, but they are detailed and the effects sometimes distract you from the somewhat poor texture quality in the environments. The effects, just like in the first game, are cinematic and make guns feel all the more satisfying to fire. If you are a fan of gore like me, it feels extremely satisfying to enter a heated gunfight and when the dust settles, the world is literally torn up and there's blood spattered all over the place, sometimes accompanied by a few severed limbs. It's also pretty brutal and cool to shoot those guys with the explosive tanks on their backs, taking out an entire chunk of their body leaving nothing but about a quarter of their body and a bloody skeleton. There's something about the brutality of this game that is very cathartic. Don't think that my love and glee over the gore is a reflection of what I am like in person (Trust me, I've only hit one person in my entire life, I've never been violent, and also when it comes to real life gore, I get queasy, but the fake stuff in movies and games doesn't bother me... well..... because its fake of course
), it's just good for relieving stress and it makes the game a little more intense though sometimes it can affect the atmosphe- wait, I'm going back to the first game.
The sound design is decent as well for the most part, though I feel that some of the gun fire could be a bit better. Some guns sound a bit weak, especially in comparison to the loud and harsh sounding guns from the first game that actually helped the guns feel like you were really holding them and that there was a real impact going around. The music, some gun effects, and many others are still very well designed though.
The gameplay in Project Origin is great. Its the strongest point of the game, and rightfully so because if the gameplay was a bust, it wouldn't be fun to play and the game IS fun to play. The graphical and sound effects make combat once again have a frantic impact, and while the guns are a bit more generic than in the first game, there are still several weapons that are fun to use and the non-shooting gameplay mechanics from the first game are intact too, such as the "reflex time" and the ability to use some martial arts moves which are a step beyond just bashing things with your gun or fists. The controls are good, but then again its hard to really mess up the controls of an FPS on the PC (Consoles on the other hand can mess it up, though I haven't played the console version so I can't really judge.) although sometimes the controls don't respond, mostly when dealing with the martial arts. They seem harder to pull off than in the first game and sometimes the game will refuse to do them even though you are clearly pressing the right combo buttons. While on the topic of controls, I also want to know what happened to the ability to lean in and out of corners. I know it sounds silly, but that was actually a VERY useful ability in the first game because it made cover a bit more easy to use and shoot from. Maybe they took it out because having those extra buttons might not work on a console controller, but I still don't know why they couldn't include it in the PC edition because its not hard to add two extra buttons to the control set. The gameplay isn't the most varied, its still a first person shooter, but there are some extremely fun mech sequences that break it up occasionally although there are also some rather boring turret sequences. I'm not fond of turret sequences because they just feel lazy. Sitting there and shooting things remotely without being able to move and such just isn't that much fun, and FEAR 2 has at least 3 or 4 of these sequences. Look at the first game which only had one. The level design is a bit more varied as well, although you'll still see a lot of repetitious environments and the outdoor levels have a seemingly common modern problem of invisible barriers and barriers that can't be hopped due to rubble- and it makes the outdoor levels occasionally feel boxed in which ruins the illusion of the game for a minute or two.
The multiplayer is a minor disappointment, mostly because FEAR 1 had great multiplayer. The multiplayer in this game is still fun, but its nothing special. The first game managed to feel unique in its multiplayer due to the slow-mo varients as well as other things, and it feels dumbed down here to the bare basics of multiplayer shooting.
Overall, while not NEARLY as memorable as its predecessor, FEAR 2 is an above average shooter that, once you look past its flaws and disappointments, is another furiously fun shooter. If you lower your expectations a bit and ignore the disappointments, you can jump into Project Origin and have a blast.
Graphics: 8.5/10 (I would've just given them an 8, but I added the extra sub-points because the engine runs smoothly on modern computers and its a pet peeve of mine when graphic heavy games DONT SCALE or DONT RUN [Cough, CryEngine 2. Seriously, CryEngine 2 may look pretty but its one of the WORST engines EVER coded.]
Story: 3/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Multiplayer:7.0/10
Overall: 8.0/10
In short, the answer is no. In long however, while it is not as good or as memorable as its predecessor, it is by no means a bad game or not worth your time, in fact the gunplay and overall game play is just as furious and intense as its predecessor. The AI is still smart. The effects are still brutal and satisfying. Everything about the gameplay mechanics are solid. It's the story and atmosphere departments that are lacking. The story just doesn't feel like a proper continuation. In fact, it feels like an expansion pack, it just details the aftermath but it never progresses the mystery and such that made FEAR's story so intriguing. In fact I think that the name "Project Origin" isn't exactly fair, the game barely has anything to do with Project Origin other than what we learned of Origin in the first game. The story is just weak, flimsy, and overall probably the biggest disappointment of the package, and the game feels derivative and stripped without it because it means that the spooky happenings and strange events have absolutely no meaning or point.
Another blow is the atmosphere. I'm not an easy person to scare, and save for a few jump out moments and such, FEAR didn't exactly scare me, but it was still creepy and unsettling. The atmosphere was rich and it oozed out from every corner and corridor. FEAR 2 had a couple "creepy" moments but it was never consistent. The atmosphere is just... gone. Once again it makes the game feel stripped of what made its predecessor unique. Most of the "scare" scenes are now just cliches, pretty much. Sure, FEAR had cliched moments, pretty much ANYTHING that tries the J-Horror with creepy children route is going to feel cliched (To J-Horror fans: I'm sorry, but the genre is just as cliched and bland over there as it is here. I'm tired of JHorror movies following in the footsteps of Ju-On and Ringu with all their silly little ghost children and whatnot.) but FEAR broke it up with its atmosphere, here, the cliches are all that exist. To its credit, the sound design can be creepy when the spectral anomalies come in and it becomes a little unsettling when these buggers appear out of finely detailed rifts. Some of the creatures can be a bit creepy too, but they don't really feel like they fit in. I assumed that maybe these strange creatures would've been an after-effect of Project Origin or at the VERY least mutations from the explosion at the end of the first game and the beginning of this game (Yeah, it begins BEFORE #1 ends.) but instead they're just... well.... THERE, and it would be nice to have at least a HINT of what they are and where the hell they came from. At least its nice to have more than only 3-4 enemy types.
The Graphics in FEAR 2 are solid. They aren't anything to write home about, certainly not up to par with games like FarCry 2 and Dead Space, but they are detailed and the effects sometimes distract you from the somewhat poor texture quality in the environments. The effects, just like in the first game, are cinematic and make guns feel all the more satisfying to fire. If you are a fan of gore like me, it feels extremely satisfying to enter a heated gunfight and when the dust settles, the world is literally torn up and there's blood spattered all over the place, sometimes accompanied by a few severed limbs. It's also pretty brutal and cool to shoot those guys with the explosive tanks on their backs, taking out an entire chunk of their body leaving nothing but about a quarter of their body and a bloody skeleton. There's something about the brutality of this game that is very cathartic. Don't think that my love and glee over the gore is a reflection of what I am like in person (Trust me, I've only hit one person in my entire life, I've never been violent, and also when it comes to real life gore, I get queasy, but the fake stuff in movies and games doesn't bother me... well..... because its fake of course
), it's just good for relieving stress and it makes the game a little more intense though sometimes it can affect the atmosphe- wait, I'm going back to the first game. The sound design is decent as well for the most part, though I feel that some of the gun fire could be a bit better. Some guns sound a bit weak, especially in comparison to the loud and harsh sounding guns from the first game that actually helped the guns feel like you were really holding them and that there was a real impact going around. The music, some gun effects, and many others are still very well designed though.
The gameplay in Project Origin is great. Its the strongest point of the game, and rightfully so because if the gameplay was a bust, it wouldn't be fun to play and the game IS fun to play. The graphical and sound effects make combat once again have a frantic impact, and while the guns are a bit more generic than in the first game, there are still several weapons that are fun to use and the non-shooting gameplay mechanics from the first game are intact too, such as the "reflex time" and the ability to use some martial arts moves which are a step beyond just bashing things with your gun or fists. The controls are good, but then again its hard to really mess up the controls of an FPS on the PC (Consoles on the other hand can mess it up, though I haven't played the console version so I can't really judge.) although sometimes the controls don't respond, mostly when dealing with the martial arts. They seem harder to pull off than in the first game and sometimes the game will refuse to do them even though you are clearly pressing the right combo buttons. While on the topic of controls, I also want to know what happened to the ability to lean in and out of corners. I know it sounds silly, but that was actually a VERY useful ability in the first game because it made cover a bit more easy to use and shoot from. Maybe they took it out because having those extra buttons might not work on a console controller, but I still don't know why they couldn't include it in the PC edition because its not hard to add two extra buttons to the control set. The gameplay isn't the most varied, its still a first person shooter, but there are some extremely fun mech sequences that break it up occasionally although there are also some rather boring turret sequences. I'm not fond of turret sequences because they just feel lazy. Sitting there and shooting things remotely without being able to move and such just isn't that much fun, and FEAR 2 has at least 3 or 4 of these sequences. Look at the first game which only had one. The level design is a bit more varied as well, although you'll still see a lot of repetitious environments and the outdoor levels have a seemingly common modern problem of invisible barriers and barriers that can't be hopped due to rubble- and it makes the outdoor levels occasionally feel boxed in which ruins the illusion of the game for a minute or two.
The multiplayer is a minor disappointment, mostly because FEAR 1 had great multiplayer. The multiplayer in this game is still fun, but its nothing special. The first game managed to feel unique in its multiplayer due to the slow-mo varients as well as other things, and it feels dumbed down here to the bare basics of multiplayer shooting.
Overall, while not NEARLY as memorable as its predecessor, FEAR 2 is an above average shooter that, once you look past its flaws and disappointments, is another furiously fun shooter. If you lower your expectations a bit and ignore the disappointments, you can jump into Project Origin and have a blast.
Graphics: 8.5/10 (I would've just given them an 8, but I added the extra sub-points because the engine runs smoothly on modern computers and its a pet peeve of mine when graphic heavy games DONT SCALE or DONT RUN [Cough, CryEngine 2. Seriously, CryEngine 2 may look pretty but its one of the WORST engines EVER coded.]
Story: 3/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Multiplayer:7.0/10
Overall: 8.0/10
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