F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

What the Game’s About

Monolith has been operating under the radar, making great first-person shooters for years, but they didn’t reach the upper echelon of the genre until they tapped into their psychotic side. The original F.E.A.R. assaulted players with a potent combination of disturbing imagery, offensive sounds and relentless enemy AI in a perfectly paced and marvelously depraved stimulus overdose. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is bigger, louder and bloodier than its predecessor, packing more than enough gore and firepower to put your adrenal glands back into overdrive, but it doesn’t evolve the experience enough to recreate the same levels of shock and awe. Monolith’s latest shooter is brilliantly executed, but it’s also conceptually very safe, which is disappointing given the developer’s history of thinking outside the box.

What’s Hot

No offense to Alma, but her psychokinetic magic tricks and hallucinatory mind****s aren’t nearly as intimidating as the enemy AI that players will encounter in battle. Aggressive and downright devious, the hostiles in F.E.A.R. 2 make expert use of the environment. The use of cover is particularly impressive, because the enemies don’t simply sit and take pot-shots while you work your way over to them. They’re constantly on the move, pushing for the best position and working with their comrades to cut down your potential angles of approach. Enemies coordinate flanking maneuvers, provide suppressive fire to keep you pinned down while their teammates move in for the kill, and toss grenades to flush you into the open. Those are just the standard enemies by the way, and they’ll have back up from even nastier, elite military and supernatural units that can do anything from appear out of thin air to animate the bodies of the drones you just gunned down. None of these behaviors are scripted, so every skirmish unfolds in uniquely visceral fashion.

The slow-motion “reflex” ability returns to even the odds against the more powerful enemies in the game and greatly enhances the cinematic value of the gameplay. The precious few seconds of slow-motion advantage this power provides is so critical that it actually starts to dictate the rhythm of the fire-fights for the latter half of the game. Larger skirmishes against the nastiest enemies will require more than a few doses of the psychic slow-motion, so decisions regarding when and where to take cover, which enemies to pick off at what times, when to charge or retreat all depend on how much juice is left in your reflex meter. The value of the mechanic is bolstered further by the simple fact that it transforms already exciting fire-fights into outright spectacles of violence. Not only does the slow-motion give you time to appreciate the finer details of the in-game destruction like wood, glass and dust erupting into the air along with arterial spray, but you’ll also find yourself pulling off moves ripped right out of the movie Wanted when reflex is active. F.E.A.R. 2 has bar none the most enthralling fire-fights of any first-person shooter on the market.

The combat wouldn’t feel nearly as intense were it not for Monolith’s talent for building tension through atmosphere. F.E.A.R. 2 builds on the intriguing narrative from the first game, but the chain of events quickly becomes too predictable to elicit any scares. Likewise, Alma’s antics were unsettling in their mystery in the original F.E.A.R., but now that we’re wise to her tricks and aware of her motivations, most of the psychotic episodes she brings on fail to shock or impress. They’re still creepy and disturbing, as they basically transform the world around you into a mosaic of disturbing imagery, but the relatively quick, jarring transitions are played for shock value, leaving little time for legitimate fear to sink in. The atmosphere surrounding the core narrative, however, is still incredibly powerful, as Monolith demonstrates a deep understanding of the principles of horror. Darkness covers everything and the silence that fills most of the levels is deafening. As the players progress through the environments, Monolith starts dropping clues of what to expect — sounds and quick glimpses of movement in the shadows, ominous musical cues and blood-smeared walls –- just enough material to let your imagination start running wild.

What’s Not

F.E.A.R. 2 is paced differently than its predecessor, and depending on what kind of experience you prefer that might be a good or a bad thing. The original F.E.A.R. had a very distinct ebb and flow, as Monolith was willing to make players endure extended sections of brooding silence before unleashing a frenzy of combat. Some people felt these quiet sections were too long, feelings likely exacerbated by the drab, repetitive industrial environments that were easy to get lost in. Monolith has addressed the level variety issue, sending players everywhere from ruined city streets to elementary schools, but they’ve also simplified the layout of the areas, removing many of the alternate routes that made the larger set-piece battles so tactical and engaging. Players needn’t worry about weaving through circuits of rooms and corridors trying to escape or outmaneuver enemies, nor should they worry about the enemies doing the same to them. The levels feel very linear and very focused this time, pushing players from small skirmish to small skirmish with plenty of health and armor pickups in between, which keeps the pace at a nice, median intensity. On one hand, you’ll never get bored wandering through the levels, but on the other hand, the inevitable confrontations never feel as tactical or epic either.

The multiplayer is competent but unspectacular, and it suffers from Monolith’s perplexing decision to remove the modes that included the slow-motion feature. Without that key feature to set it apart from the pack, F.E.A.R. 2 doesn’t really offer anything that can’t be found in other games. One mode, Armored Front, incorporates the mechs from the single-player campaign, but that’s hardly a fair trade. Compared to the depth and personality of games like Team Fortress 2, Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, the multiplayer in F.E.A.R. 2 feels lackluster.

More than anything though, F.E.A.R. 2 suffers from the same plight that every horror movie sequel suffers from; it’s just too similar to the original to recreate the same level of excitement. Scare tactics and gameplay devises are alike in that they can only be experienced so many times before the excitement wanes. Instead of building on the foundation of the first game by adding additional psychic powers, forcing players to play through entire levels of layered hallucinations, or simply finding a way to make the short hallucinations actually impact the gameplay, Monolith opted to play it safe and add a few vehicle segments to the existing formula. Make no mistake, it’s a fantastic formula that makes for an exhilarating shooter, but there was definitely potential for the franchise to take a bigger step forward.

Final Word

A great shooter on the verge of excellence, let down only by a lack of ambition, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is a fine showcase for the technical talents of Monolith Software but a relatively weak example of their creativity. Fans of the FPS genre should definitely give the game a shot for the stylish, adrenaline-pumping firefights, but they shouldn’t expect anything as groundbreaking as the first game felt.