Fear 2: project origin rating

[Dredgon]

So have any of you played it? Is it good and worth it?

[Aragoni]

Releasedate is tomorrow..?

[Special K]

Well I'm a big fan of the first one so I played through the demo. Basically it has everything the first had, but to a highly exaggerated degree. The horror elements are initially good but they are so blatant and overexposed compared to the first that it loses all element of subtlety and just throws it in your face. The only positive thing I can say about the supernatural parts of the game is the fact that some ghosts can actually hurt you. The combat elements are similar to the first one but just a little slower paced. Alma follows this trend, taking an annoyingly blatant role in the game as you are almost arm-wrestling her sometimes. This is tolerable, but the atmosphere of the bad guys is equally overplayed to the point where they seem kind of silly. Basically the bad guy soldiers are just trying to seem evil. Their appearance is now just the stupid genre-cliche' of guys wearing red goggles and gas masks that you could pull out of any random shooter made in the past 5 years. The most appealing element of combat in the first FEAR for me was the visceral feel that shooting had. Unfortunately they did the same thing to this as they did to everything else, they exaggerated it to the point where if you were to tap a 9mm smg on someone a few times it will explode half their body in a big storm of what looks like melted wax. You have a few teammates who like to spew inane bullshit into their radios but that's pretty much standard nowadays and it isn't insufferable. Basically comparing this game to the first is like comparing the movie "Predator" to "Aliens versus Predator".

So after all of this I was still seriously considering buying the game, until I got to what I will have to call the "Mech" portion. The usual ghosts/soldiers/ghosts/soldiers/ghosts pattern of the game is apparently interrupted by portions of the game where you climb into a big metal mech with infinite ammo and health regeneration. Not only does this butcher the game's atmosphere to no end and remove you from what you feel like is a precarious and life-threatening situation for your character, but it feels exactly like a crappy arcade game. I was hoping this was a one-time situation, but considering there is an entire segment of the tutorial devoted to the usage of this mech it is apparently an integral part of the game. To demonstrate how this effectively ruins the atmosphere, the demo ends with a situation where you run into a much bigger mech and are supposed to feel threatened, then the demo ends. Considering the mech makes you invincible if you're even half awake, it is a giant break from the game's overall atmosphere.

The game takes place in the city after it has been blown up so if you thought the redundant environments of the first fear were bad then, well just expect worse redundant environments. It's hardly original considering that almost every shooter made these days involves you running through a partially destroyed city shooting guys with red goggles and gas masks. As in the first FEAR, the game is extremely linear. Of course after about the 15th time you pass through a little hole in a building which happens to be the only way to go you start to think the environments aren't very imaginative. The graphics are entirely standard and there is nothing worth mentioning about them. The AI, which was one of the selling points of the original is still quite good. Unfortunately the soldiers now tend to act like they have no sense of self-preservation so it takes a lot of the reality out of the combat. One more little thing, as far as the demo indicates, the game basically has no story.

Once again because I cannot stress this enough, it is a highly exaggerated version of the original.

[Dogmadude720]

I've read a few reviews, but they seemed like the usual hype, played the original, seemed pretty good, imma just sit back and hope this one is a winner.