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A guilty pleasure game for me for sure! So I technically have played a bit of this game on the PS3 back in the day but I remember just thinking it was too generic of a shooter, but my mom (god rest her soul) played a lot of it and she always told me it was a good game. Now with me playing through the FEAR trilogy, it was about time I gave this game a fair shake. I was also surprised to learn that this game was not made by Monolith but Day 1 studios which definitely shows in some of the artistic changes they made. So what did I think of it?
Visually, I didn’t like the game’s graphics at first thinking they were a bit of a downgrade but I came to like them over time. It goes back to the more gritty look of the first game over the second’s more stylized look and I think they did a good job with the visual level design. One of my favorite levels was one on a collapsed bridge where you have to travel through a crashed train and they find plenty of ways to make the carts blood soaked and full of corpses to fit the series tradition. The cutscenes have black bars on them to make it more cinematic I guess, but that extends to the direction of the cutscenes as well. In them you will often see both Point Man and Fettle as the camera will cut between them, but it’s kind of awkward since Point Man is once again a silent protagonist like in the first game, so Fettle might as well be talking to a brick wall.
The horror is again not the strongest I have seen in a video game, but they do have some solid payoffs in some of the sequences. You will continue to find blood soaked hallways and dead bodies lying around which often sparks your imagination into what happened to them.
Combat I have a lot to say on, so let’s start with the weapons. While we have the basic weapon lineup from the past games, they once again completely redesign the weapon models and even their utility. The assault rifle I found to be the most useful at taking out enemies quickly but the shotgun was very nerfed in this title. I don’t like its new design and it's very weak, as there were times I shot enemies at point blank range, blasting off half their face or limbs and yet they still came at me, taking another shot or two to put down. You can only carry two weapons this time, which I hate, as it's a downgrade from the first game’s 3 weapon limit and the second's 4 weapon limit. And you generally will be running low on ammo often, so it encourages you to constantly switch out weapons as needed. They also removed health packs from the game with it now just using Call of Duty’s infamous health regen system. Generally, I am not a fan of these two changes as it did make the combat feel more generic for one and just more tedious. The shooting on the other hand, is still top notch with excellent gunplay and mobility which kept it from being too overly grating. Plus the slo mo shooting never gets old for me.
Then there’s the enemies which are a bit hit or miss for me. Generally they are a lot more aggressive in this game vs the previous entries and the level design tends to opt for big arenas that you can’t get out of until all the enemies are dead. You will need to utilize cover a lot more as enemies will use them to hide and take pot shots at you. The soldiers are fine for the most part, sporting the reactive AI from past games. One of the soldier's I hate are these electrified soldiers that come in two variants. One is a big tall soldier that basically acts as a mini boss as you will often have to fight one or two of these guys at a time. They can travel through walls and pop out of them, so fighting them would be challenging at times. The other is the most annoying in that they teleport in enemy soldier’s endlessly to fight you while they will take pot shots at you from a distance behind cover, so you often have to prioritize taking them out but they have big health bars, so get used to shooting at them for a while until they finally go down. There are the mechs which I have never liked fighting, though there are the sections where you get to pilot one like in the second game, and they are once again very fun and a great power fantasy.
As for supernatural enemies, there are these very annoying demon dog enemies that chase you down and basically melee you till you're dead which is one of the enemy types that I hate having in a FPS game, as it just goes completely against the point of a cover based shooter. Oh and even worse, in the second mission you get introduced to these pale dudes who I guess are possessed by Alma (?) and they have dudes with bombs strap to their chests that will run at you before exploding. And you won’t just run into one or two per encounter. No, I’m talking like a dozen at a time which is just ludicrous. I hated fighting these guys and the only time I had fun fighting them was during my current second playthrough as Fettle where I can possess them and would kindly beat them to death with crowbar.
Then we get onto progression which is very different from the previous games. You no longer find health and reflex upgrades in the levels, rather you earn points by completing challenges in the levels so that you can rank up. Each rank gives you a set upgrade like faster health regen, more ammo to carry or reflex upgrades. This is probably where I had the most fun as it encouraged me to play as creatively as I could, getting headshots, killing enemies in a row with a certain weapon etc.. And the best part is when you go back to replay missions, you still keep your ranks and upgrades, so after a few hours you will be much better equipped in combat. The game was definitely designed with co-op in mind as you theoretically earn points as both Point Man and Fettle in the levels and it will stack both against each other at the end to give a score. And this even affects which of the 2 endings you get at the end of the game apparently. To be clear, I played through this game solo, but I can definitely see the appeal in co-op. In single player, you play through missions as Point Man and as you complete each mission, you unlock the ability to replay them as Fettle. What I did was playthrough the game as Point Man and now I’m currently doing a sort of new game plus as Fettle and that’s a fun way to do it actually.
As Fettle you don’t have the slo mo ability but the main power he has is possessing enemies which is a lot of fun. Obviously possessing soldier's is just going to be normal FPS gameplay, but possessing those pale dudes I mentioned earlier was fun as they use melee weapons as opposed to guns, so I was able to beat dudes with a crowbar. But I look forward to possessing the demon dogs (if possible?) or even the electrified soldiers so I can wreak some havoc on enemies.
Finally with regards to the story, it wasn’t anything to write home about but I did like how they linked the campaigns of FEAR 1 and 2 together and brought the whole Alma saga to a close. Again nothing amazing, but still decent.
And that’s it for my thoughts on this game. While I did complain a lot in this review I did still have a lot of fun with this game and while it is the weakest of the trilogy imo, it is still a very fun shooter that I recommend you play through at least once (but make sure to get some levels in as Fettle).