Gaming FEAR 3 Review

Sounds worth a pop, when it drops in price. Shame the fear factor from the 1st game isn't there (see what I did there).

 

Was it eck. The combat in FEAR 1 was a case of easy but enjoyable non-stop shooting. It wasn't complex, it didn't require leaning or resource management (I didn't even know you COULD lean when I played the game and it's not like it had an inventory system. You just swapped guns when you ran out of ammo.) The only time audio cues came into it was when you heard someone say "I'm the last one left!", at which point you'd know to charge in.

Positioning? Understanding enemy tactics? Finesse? No, it was about working through corridors and killing things. I know people who did as you say of FEAR 2 - played throughout without using slow-mo - on the hardest difficulty.

Don't get me wrong; FEAR 1 was a good and enjoyable game and it was far superior to FEAR 2, but let's not romanticise it in retrospect. It was a linear corridor shooter, not an Immersive RPG/FPS hybrid.

 

I'm one of the players who wasn't impressed with the character animation in fear 1

everyone looked like they were a little kids dream running around.. the gameplay was mindless too.. the multiplayer didn't get me hooked but that was a lot better than the single player, and while I did like the grudge, the game didn't really get to me scared (I'm probably a lot like brawl, I played amnesia and wasn't scared either, but I did have to turn off insanity in the graphics options- was giving me a headache)

now fear 2.. man what the heck was that- it was like, let's get a group of the fattest people on earth, sit them in front of a console and design this word for word from their black cherry gospel.. I thought the ending might get me but while watching her walk up to me in the chair I had flashbacks to farcry 2

 

I really enjoyed the first 2 installments and expansions but I really feel they've run out of steam with this one... story fell flat on its face and dropped the scares, not much left.

 

Agreed.

The devs, Day 1, are the people that ported the original game to the consoles, and thats what we've got in FEAR 3 - a console shooter. I really wanted it to be scary or, well anything but another shooter with 'bullet-time' that was a new mechanic 6 years ago in FEAR 1...

 

Not even new then. Max Payne did it several years before they did (bullet-time).

 

Seriously... did you read what I put?

 

Thought I'd highlight for others that you have never played Amnesia.

 

I also found the slo-mo made it all a little bit too easy -- it almost felt like cheating so I had to make a conscious decision to only use it sparingly and in places where I was really struggling. That having been said, it was occasionally fun to run into a crowded room in slo mo and kill them all with the shotgun before they could react.

But I have to say that F.E.A.R. is still the only FPS I've played where I was generally happy to repeat a given section of corridor as often as necessary. Normally, after a few die/repeat cycles of frustration I end up putting a game down and playing something else. So it must have done something right for me.

 

I did, but the disbelief was too much to handle.

You should play Amnesia.

 

You're off the Christmas Present list aswell... I amazingly can't remember writting that at silly o'clock post-pub jagermeister...

 

And Requiem: Avenging Angel did it several years before that. FACT.

 

That actually looks good. Might get a copy as the multiplayer seems fun. While waiting for BF3.

 

Hmm, didn't know that. Must have missed that game somehow. Is it worth playing?

 

I found this game to be utter tosh if I'm honest. The controls are twitchy even on a Razer Boomslang (the new one) and it just feels rather clunky. Couple that with how irritatingly hard it is and how it completely rips off MW2* and I was totally dissapointed. FEAR 2 = fantastic yet short. This one 'feels' like you are playing a muddled up version of Alien VS Predator (which was a bit poo) and Modern Warfare 2.

* When I stepped out into the brazillian style streets and took on the urban warfare I could have sworn I was playing Modern Warfare 2. I didn't like that either, so there was absolutely nothing new in this game nor original.

I found Duke Nukem Forever to be far more entertaining and had far more original content in it than this.

Just goes to show how gaming has changed, and not for the better IMO.

 

Oh and slo mo = Max Payne. Why is it that reviews are not pointing out how unoriginal THIS game is, yet when Duke Forever launched they all seemed to drop the amnesia and turn on their memory function?

There is absolutely nothing new in FEAR 3 or F3AR whatever they want to call it, so it should not score more than a 5.

 

Seconded. Very scary played with the lights off. I also remember being quite disturbed by playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein in the university post grad labs, at the weekend and on my own.

 

It boggles my mind that this game got such a good review. It was by far the shortest, least scary game of the series. 6 hours of my life I will never get back and to think I pre-ordered it. . . There isn't anything in this game worth seeing that the first two didn't already do better. Recycled bleh with bleh-sauce on top and co-op tacked on the side.

 

Yeah I'm with you guys on Doom 3. The double take/red bit in the mirror resulted in me breaking my keyboard tray. I was playing in the dark with headphones on and that bit made me jump so much I snapped my keyboard tray clean off the desk. My knee was hurting for days.

 

It doesn't add much new, but there are a few small additions. But to say a game that doesn't add anything new shouldn't score more than a 5?
Just Cause 2 didn't add much beyond the first one, it's still good. Better in fact. The same with Doom II & Doom. Crysis WARHEAD & Crysis, etc. Lots of games are similar with only few additions. Having a new style, mechanic or content certainly helps to escalate enjoyment of a game, but it's not limited to that. I think it's entirely possible for a game to add very little & still be both enjoyable & an improvement over the last outing.
The way I interpreted a lot of the criticism of Duke Forever wasn't that it just didn't add very much, but that it specifically didn't add enough in light of it's 12 year dev time. Regardless of whether you liked it or not, I think most people can agree that it was an inevitable anticlimax.