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

Hmmm. You see HL2 had good gameplay, i even played that through twice but the world detail seriously pissed me off. Doom 3 had sexy visuals and i put up with the linear gameplay, but FEAR has elements of everything and good visuals. Tbh, i recon it's hard to create and FPS that does everything, unless you're gordon freeman. You basically go through killing people, and if you do that outside/inside/in between/in cars/in whatever is just a means to an end.

 

Seriously considering getting this, even though I didnt like the demo much.

 

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!











I have to say but the game is finally getting good I'm at the old apartment building now and i must say it's very impressive. Why oh why did it take so long to get going?!

 

yea that bit was way too easy

Spoiler

was pretty similar to the bit at the end of HL2 only far far easier those weird things flying out of the black holes were the scariest things in the game, they just freaked me out. not really scary just freaked me out

yea pretty damn decent ending, better than you get form most games

tehe, i did that too

 

Definately combine the AI of FEAR, the physics of HL2 and the visuals (save a few crappy wall textures) of Doom3 and Far Cry with the interactive lighting of SC:CT (like, shooting a light actually breaks it, not sets it swinging) and you have the sweetest game ever.

I'm in some office building right now

Spoiler

where those wacky guys that attack melee go down with one melee hit but need half a magazine to shoot to death, and you need to go find and reboot the server

and imo the game's just getting better. But I'm somewhat dissapointed with the positional audio, it just seems rather off. And how realism is making the game harder (damned dust clouds from destructable walls) isn't fair.

 

Spoiler

the ninjas? they pissed me off so much, but it was funny as hell blowing them out of the air in slow-mo with the shotty and later the big ole cannon thing

theres one bit in a stationary cupboard or something, shoot up a lot of cardboard boxes and it starts to snow

 

Ahh yea, there was nowhere enough of those Ninja things, they were the only thing that really stressed me in the game and you only got about 6 of them. They were like the flying things in RE4 sewers.

Dust clouds dont half piss you off, eh? You're there waiting for them to go away so you can see where the people have gone.

 

It's more the AI that gets me, half the time I can't tell whether it's their bloodied up head sticking out over the box waiting to see where I am or the blood splatter on the wall behind them after my successful headshot.

And maybe my aim just sucks in heavy combat, but I'd swear that headshots are only effective in sniping-type situations. Like, they go down with one bullet to the head if they're just patrolling but as soon as they start shooting at me their bulletproof skull gets activated.

 

I'm at the 5th chapter and I'm seeing a lot of replay action. There are usually several paths to the same directive with the enemies reacting differently. I'm also not finding too many slo-mo boosters so I'd like to play hide and seek my 2nd time around.

I got the Director's Cut, and I'm looking forward to seeing if the commentary is in the same fashion as it was with the Chronicles of Riddick.

It would be AWESOME if this game allowed for co-op. I'm playing on the 2nd hardest level and there are several times when I'm just totally pinned down and could use a 2nd gunner providing suppression fire or something.

As for the multiplayer, I thought the maps that I tried were too crowded. Everytime I spawned, I either saw an enemy or appeared right in front of one, or perhaps both. There's not much strategy involved; rather the multiplayer is more like run and gun insanity. I'll stick to BF2 if I want to satiate my multiplayer cravings.

I like how (so far,) the chapter transitions are so much less choppy than either Doom3 or HL2. Instead of getting into an elevator or taking a minute to load up new textures within the same map, FEAR glides through pretty seamlessly. I like how the weapons are roughly balanced, allowing you to use even pistols effectively. In other games it's the size of the weapon that counts. Here, it's the strategy you apply to specific weapons.

 

needs more splinter cell style thermal vision

and yea, when they aren't alerted a single headshot will kill them, once they are it takes a couple of headshots
splinter cell is like that as are quite a few other games

 

Stu - you automatically recharge slowmo in the single player game?!

 

i think he means the boosters than increase your max amount of slow-mo
i had 150 health by the time i got to the end of the game

the chapter transitions thing, i get the feeling loads up a lot more map than hl2 did
hl2 had lots of really quick loading sequences, this has just a few long ones
and it uses about 4x as much ram as hl2

 

Well i've finished it now, and now it's on ebay.
Not even remotely interested in playing it again.

After the apartment building level i was sure it would get better but it just degenerated into more boring corridors again. The ending was rubbish.

Ah well.

 

Tbh HL2 isnt exactly cutting edge apart from the physics. A lot of the textures were old mixed with new and the poly count of quite a few things was low. I think they designed it so more people could play it easier, i mean, you can play it on a Xpress200 IGP which is about X300 speed! It's not only playable, you can do deathmatch and still manage to frag as well as a fast pc.
Having 2gig of ram definately helps imo.

H - 175HP

 

I'm already to 155 or something, and I'll be a bit dissapointed at the length of the time if I'm that close to the end. I'm very thorough in exploring though, I think I've found one of each health and slowmo booster on almost every level. I can't say I use slowmo often enough... it's pretty cool though.

 

Actually, forget what I said, there are still various pauses when new stages load. They're just happening more frequent because my tactics are working better. So far I'm having a tough time on the hardest difficulty. After I'm done, I look forward to trying the hardest difficulty for a while; it seems like the AI would be on par with Halo's legendary setting.

What I'm not liking is that the availability of my favorite weapon is so hard to come accross.

 

My first thoughts were: This game needs 2GB. Stole a gig from another rig in my house and the thing ran perfectly.

Oh, yeah, gameplay and such. I love it, it's exactly the kind of game I enjoy. Everything requires thought, you can only succeed if you plan it out. I think the fact that they limit you to carrying 3 weapons completely changes the strategy of the game, and in a good way. You can't blast people with the repeating cannon, take out the penetrator and own some infantry, whip out rocket launcher and take out another bot, take out SMG and mow down a horde of people only to finish them off with the assault rifle, then switch to shotgun to use through hallways and offices, like I would do in most games. You have to pick and choose the right weapons for the scenario, or what you have the most ammo for, etc.

Really enjoyed this one, haven't quite made it through yet. Just playing it slow and enjoying the awesome finer details (anyone catch the tons of Office Space references? Tetris is on one of the computer screens with Cheetos bags, and there's a desk with a red Swingline stapler and a TPS report that says "Initech" on the top . There are TPS reports everywhere, too).

One of the things that bugs me is how they stockpile you with health, ammo, and armor between sections of baddies, though. I want to run into a mass of 50 infantry with 3 bullets and 25 health, and instead they pretty much say "Hey, we're gonna throw some AI at you in a few moments, here's a billion health packs, too much armor to use, and racks of guns. Do be careful, yes?"

Overall very worth the money, though.

 

Well, they replensih you between massive intervals, but I'm finding that if I need to use more than 1 health pack in a firefight, I'm going to die anyways.

I can't stress enough how much cover I need. The replica soldiers fight with inaccurate weapons, but the sheer volume of firepower forces me to keep my head down constantly.

I've gotten a good strategy down for using the grenades but I'm not using my melee attacks efficiently yet. I started using my kicks to drop the last soldier, but it's a powerful attack I want to use more often.

Also... shotgun + slo-mo + one enemy soldier = top torso + lower torso = acrobatic entertainment!

 

That's why I'm playing on easy the first time 'round. Yeah, the godlike AI together with the three-gun limit really does make it stand out from normal FPSs.

 

Loving the game , need to get me some more ram and a new gfx card tho the old fx5500 just about manages when everything is pretty much set to minimum,seems a 256mb gfx card and 1 gb ram just dont cut it anymore, the other rig with an fx5200 just laughs and gives up when you try and play, it's so laggy its permament slo-mo