$50, http://www.whatisfear.com, ESRB: MreviewsTESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
90 MA XIMUMPC JANUARY 2006
W
ith FEAR, Monolith has cooked
up another technically proficient
shooter that just can’t maintain
the pace it sets for itself in its early levels.
What starts out as an intensely creepy, J-
horror romp through an abandoned indus-
trial wasteland populated by the smartest
enemies we’ve ever fought finishes exactly
the same way. This might seem like a good
thing, but realize there’s virtually no variation
through the entire game.
Some would probably argue that the
enemy AI is so good, you don’t really need
variation. That the mere joy of fighting clever
enemies who behave more like real-life
humans than the idiotic drones common
to first-person shooters, is reward enough.
We’d probably agree if there were more than
six basic types of enemies in the game.
Sure, fighting soldiers that try to flank you,
provide cover to their buddies, and make
decent tactical decisions is refreshing, but
after eight hours of battling the exact same
opponents, in a perfectly linear environment,
it’s tough to remain enthusiastic.
Unfortunately, the actual firefights are
few and far between. A typical sequence
goes something like this: You travel through
industrial-looking tunnels for five to 10
minutes, absorbing the mostly repetitive
architecture. Enjoy a brief respite while the
game autosaves—the game freezes for two
or three seconds every time you save—and
brace yourself for the inevitable intense fire-fight that awaits you just around the corner.
We love the suspense that builds as you
run through the tunnels, waiting for the next
fight. We love the autosaves, which keep
us from wasting hours traversing the same
empty corridors over and over. But we abso-lutely hate that the autosave
pause telegraphs an upcom-
ing firefight with 100 percent
accuracy, utterly destroying
the suspense built during the
10 minutes since the last fight.
It’s amazing how something so
small as a two-second hitch
can affect the game in such a
big (and bad) way.
Weapons are good, but
are difficult to use if you don’t
enable the game’s bullet-time
slow-mo effect. On the other
hand, if you use bullet-time frequently, the
game is very easy, even at the higher difficulty
settings. It quickly becomes more about man-
aging bullet-time rather than killing baddies.
Monolith did a great job with both the
in-game sounds and the soundtrack. The
spooky audio makes exploring deserted
ruins creepy, and the positional sound works
to great effect; sinister noises like breaking
bottles and creaking metal come from your
rear channels with just the right frequency to
freak you out.
From a technological standpoint, FEAR
uses the most advanced version of the
Lithtech engine we’ve seen. With support
for volumetric fog, soft shadows, normal
maps, and real-time lighting, the game looks
spectacular. Hell, you can even see your feet!
All the usual physics gimmicks are present,
and the enemy deaths, courtesy of the rag-
doll physics system, are always entertaining.
FEAR runs moderately well on last-gen hard-
ware, but to really see this game at its best,
you’re going to need a high-end CPU, a gigor more of memory, and a current-gen video-
card (or two), so you can crank up the detail.
The team deathmatch mode with bul-
let-time enabled is a must for multiplayer
aficionados. When bullet-time activates,
everyone on your team gets the bonus, not
just a single player. This creates frequent,
exciting shifts in an already high-speed,
almost frantic multiplayer scenario.
—7I,, SMITHF.E.A.R.
A decent shooter with some real
mommy issuesFEAR might have the best !I we’ve ever seen in a game, but you’ll still find an occa-
sional baddie who’s Just hanging around.EXplosions affect everything in the envi-
ronment, including the corpses of your
deceased enemies.F.E.A.R.J-0O0
Unbelievable AI, fun fire-
fights, great graphics, and
immersive sound.
J-HORROR^8
Lame autosave pauses,
repetitive and linear level design,
uninspired enemy design.9our enemies are particularly nimble,
they can Jump over many railings that
you can’t even climb over