F.E.A.R. Series Catch-All

Did FEAR2 keep the crazy melee system from the first? If it did, I'm in.

I think it's something about how Monolith design their levels in FEAR, specifically FEAR1.

In terms of level design that game is like the nexus between old games where it was quick and easy to make long level of room after room, and modern games where you've got to put in lots of detail so each they've got to drag out the playtime per-room.

Levels in FEAR1 are also bizarre if you stop to think about them. If you stop and look at an individual room or corridor be it lab space, office, industrial or bunker, it works and you can see it as a world space, it looks right, but when you consider the larger level layout it's confusing and illogical, no one would make a level like that in real life and it breaks immersion. FEAR seems to be made on the micro level rather than the macro, like they just "made a bunch of stuff" and glued it all together.

If you're not just playing it for the combat, the story moves along very slowly too.

Now that half my day is gone, it's worth warning others that the linked site is almost as dangerous as TV Tropes. (and perhaps deserves a meta-entry concerning itself)

Yes, with the difference being that TV Tropes doesn't get me looking over my shoulder nearly as much as the SCP Foundation site. Back to virtual driving of nice, safe Euro trucks for me.

Arise, thread! I just replayed FEAR and it still rules! Graphics are obviously really long in the tooth, but the combat still feels just about perfect and all the crazy slo-mo lighting and particle effects are still super satisfying. The NPC barks when you fire up slo-mo never get old to me: "Holy sh*t! He's too fast!" That shotgun! The Penetrator! The particle weapon (and the replicas shouting "holy f*ck" when you vaporize their friend)!

I also still dig the very minimal approach to narrative, where almost all of the exposition is delivered via phone messages and brief com-link snippets. The writing feels a little dated and maybe works a little too hard to include f-bombs, but it's really pretty darn solid for a 2005 shooter, and you only get as much of it as you want. If you want to just keep shooting dudes and getting jump scares, you totally have that freedom. And the music! Some of the more orchestral stuff doesn't hold up all that well, but fortunately most of it is made up of ominous, menacing noise beds full of found metallic percussion, spirals of distortion, ominous Ghost in the Shell-esque Bulgarian women's choirs - it's still immensely fresh-sounding and effective.

I installed FEAR 2 after finishing FEAR and playing an hour or so of Extraction Point (it's fine). I remember liking FEAR 2 a fair amount at the time, and was really disappointed at how much of the first game's vibe was lost. Environments are beautiful, but the combat is a pale, weightless shadow of FEAR's, the HUD is disgusting, the dialogue writing/voice acting feels forced and self-consciously gritty. I've always been annoyed by the charges of "consoleization" but it really does feel like they tried to shoehorn the aesthetics of FEAR into a Modern Warfare-shaped box, and the whole thing is just a bummer to me now.

I feel like Control is the real spiritual successor to FEAR's "action horror game featuring a psychic superhero that turns mundane environments into a chaos of sparks and broken glass and flying papers" sub-genre. Has any other developer successfully tried to tap this vein?

Also, my favorite bit of dialogue, at the end of Interval 4, when you come upon a gore-soaked room that is absolutely coated with the what is apparently the remains of a missing recon team. Flawless delivery here:

Control is a little like FEAR but in 3rd person and if you were somehow both Alma and the Point Man simultaneously. And it's also gorgeous and leans quite a lot more toward spooky cosmic horror than the blood-soaked J-horror of FEAR.