Windows F.E.A.R. thoughts thread...

I'm surprised nobody has started this up yet....

what do you all think so far?

I've not played all of the game yet... only little bits and bobs to find a benchmarking section. It's almost like Max Payne with some of the Doom 3 chill - Geoff said its like Max Payne on bad acid... I'm inclined to agree.

I love games that get under your skin, and this one does it more than anything else I've ever seen.

 

I'm on the 3rd level, only played for a few hours at a very slow pace to soak things up. It really is quite scary, although I feel I'll be immune to it soon like I was with Doom 3 after 10 seconds.

Bloody amazing game this is though, fantastic.

 

cant get enough of the stake gun thing
one of the best weapons in any game ever imo, so much fun pinning people to the wall with it

haven't really found it that scary, most of the ghost things only appear when theres no soldiers around and dont actively hurt you
only time it made me jump was when some ghosty spider type thing came running down the airvent you were crawling through

 

I totally agree - some of it i was thinking "this is what max payne should have been". Some of it is really very creepy (specially playing the final chapter at 1am with no lights and headphones), there were some bits in the middle where you just run around office buildings with no enemys for a while that are a bit, hmm, slow and the end where

Spoiler

you have to enable the 6 power thingys and then shoot the 4 dodars from the roof, which offer NO resistance, just "something to do" a bit like resident evil but without the stress of a countdown or enemies. However the final-final chapter is really cool and makes for a seriously decent ending!

Loved the music, really fitted with the mood although i'd have liked some more hardcore metal tracks in the fights to really get you in the mood for hardcore fraggin.
It has elements of a lot of other games: resident evil pre-final chapter, splinter cell office areas, max payne slowmo and apartment buildings.
I really enjoyed the 3 gun idea - where you had to choose what weaponry for what wasa avaliable would best suit your needs. No carrying a mini-armys worth of weapons, although i couldnt for the life of me work out how to use remote detonating bombs
Melee was fun too! forward, jump and melee = flying kick
There was always more than 1 way around things (even though they came out in the same place) which i thought was exceptionally well designed, and even though the game is effectively linear it doesnt feel like it from the extremely innovative designs of the levels.

My only jipes are that i didnt really pay enough attention to the story to understand it well enough, although i picked it up more at the end

Spoiler

where they explained how her mother was a psychic and was put in an induced coma then forced to have a child etc! ****ed up but great story

and listening to answerphone messages was EXTREMELY difficult imo.
LOVE the blood dripping noise! First time i heard it i thought it was something walking like the licky tounge out of resident evil. Was really cacking myself till i just realised it was a dead guy.

Spoiler

I also tried shooting the fat git at the end, but it wouldnt let me

My 6800gt/3.73EE was dying quite a lot, even at 1024 2AA/8AF everything MAX. You NEED AA, otherwise it just looks piss poor imo.

 

Doh....one less thing for me to cr** my pants about now when I purchase this game....

Not too many spoiler please....

 

I think it's the most overated game i've played in a long time. I've not quite finished it yet but so far i've seen nothing that made me go 'wow'

Good points;
Graphics, Umm....

Bad points;
Boring samey level design.
Boring samey enemies throughout.
The weapons lack any imagination.
Tries to hard to shock and scare. Does neither. All to predicatable.

Playing it just feels like i'm going throught the motions, there's nothing new whatsoever it this game imo. Unlike HL2 theres no urge to see the next level as i know it'll be virtually the same as the level before, and the level before that.

HL2 is a year old now, and it's far far superior in everyway.

I just cannot believe it's getting at least 90% / 9 out of 10 in every review i've read.

As i said tho i've not quite finished it yet and as i've heard the end of the game is pretty good i'll make sure i complete it. But i'm not holding my breath.

I love first person shooters, but i could name at least 10 others off the top of my head that i enjoyed far more than FEAR.

Roll on STALKER!

EDIT, blimey theres been loads more posts since i started to write mine. Just thought i'd mention that Painkiller did the stake gun thing over a year ago, and did it better too
Everything in FEAR has been done before, and better imo!

 

press 6 to get them out, g to throw the bomb and click to detonate it, mucho fun when the baddies are hiding behind stuff

 

The choice is either soft shadows or AA - they don't work together AFAIK.

 

I tried that!! It didnt throw just clicked the button

 

1280x960 2xTMS AA 16xAF with maximum detail minus soft shadows enabled is playable on a 7800 GTX Extreme. Here's a run through from a couple of battles in the Heavy Resistance level:

X2 4800+, 2GB RAM, XFX 7800 GTX Extreme Gamer Edition



The drops below 25 fps are where I've turned slow mo on - the frame rate seems to drop when you fire with full detailed slow mo, however, the game is still perfectly playable at that time as everything is going so slow.

I agree that some AA is needed, but I wonder whether you would take AA over a higher resolution? I can't see a 7800 GT being able to play the game with 1280x960 2xAA without lowering some details... we'll see..

 

I've only played through about 45 minutes of it so far, but I love it. For those who have tried the MP, how are the rest of the levels? I loved the Factory in the demo, was wondering how the others in the full are holding up. But I love this game so far. Totally awesome. Gonna get more time with it this weekend.

 

eve servers are down til 8pm for new hardware
gonna play fear until then now

 

Yeh the servers are down, dammit! I wana play Eve!!!

But yeh loved F.E.A.R, and i played Painkiller but the nail gun there wasnt as good at all imo!
I feel sad, everyone play F.E.A.R on the highest settings and everything and here i am on the lowest!

 

Bigz, what settings would you need to play 1600x1200? I found it somewhat-playable (emphasis on somewhat) on 6800GT SLI with the demo and the detected settings... and I'm not sure whether to save for 2GB or a 7800GT (I'd love to see some 1GB vs 2GB on FEAR and Q4 and any other upcoming games, covering midrange to high end cards, by the way)
Though, as the game doesn't seem to have any widescreen resolutions it'll probably have to be 1280x960.

cod_ball don't worry, I'm using a single 6600gt right now, far from maxxed. 1024x768 low-medium everything.

 

Silver Shamrock I thought Exactly the same thing.

Far too predictible imo. Just as poor as doom3, but sadly games makers dont seem to be really making games for the fans anymore, just for the $$$ it rakes in per year.

 

They've satisfied alot of people, so its probably the minority that arn't happy......
But you can't please everyone

 

in the demo at high everything, 1024 2xaa 2xaf
X2 @ 2.5gig, x800xl @ 440/500
1gig bh5 240mhz 2.5-2-2-7 = 20-40 fps
2gig crucial 235 3-3-3-7 = 30-70 fps
went from barely playable to very playable for me

 

Noway, i thought i was the only one!
I thought that after seeing everyone say how amazing FEAR is that i'd missed something, maybe even got sold a different game entirely!

I still cannot believe that it's getting the same sort of ratings as HL2.
I thought that after such open, diverse games like HL2 and FarCry that i'd seen the last of these boring, linear, endless (admitedly good looking) corridors leading to the next level of boring, endless corridors.
It's just like an updated version of Kileak the Blood!! hehe

 

IMO it's simply because it's just been released and everyone is transfixed at how good it looks.
The same thing happened when Doom 3 was released. Yet how many of you would actually honestly say it's still a good game a year down the line?

 

i thought doom3 was shite from the beginning
fear is a damn good game, maybe not as good as HL2 but its still one of the best ones this year