Warning: The following review contains spoilers. Reader's discretion is advised.
F.E.A.R. 3 (or
F.3.A.R., if you
prefer) is a first-person shooter, psychological horror developed by
Day 1 Studios and
published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the third
installment of the F.E.A.R. franchise
and picks up right where Project Origin left off.
Day
1 Studios is a former video game development team that was founded in
2001. They were recently bought out by Wargaming.net and rebranded
Wargaming West. Day 1 Studios also worked on the PS3 and Xbox 360
versions of the first F.E.A.R. and was put in charge of development
by WB after Monolith was put in charge of the Lord of the Rings IP. The change of development team
certainly shows, doesn't it? I've been through F.E.A.R. 1 and F.E.A.R. 2, so
let's endure the nightmare one last time. Or at least until F.E.A.R.
Online comes out.
Reunited
and it feels so good!
F.E.A.R.
3 brings back the Point Man and Paxton Fettel allowing us to take
control of both either in single player campaign or through co-op
mode. Of course, you do have to complete the game with Point Man
before you can play as Fettel. The game offers you the ability to
play co- op online with a friend or invite someone over to play on a
split-screen. Something I haven't seen done in a video game for way
too long. Unfortunately, I couldn't get anyone to play co-op with me
so this is mainly going to be a review of the single player campaign
and online multiplayer.
We
kick things off with a recap of the first two games with narration
from Fettel. I love it when a game shows you better games you could
be playing. Point Man and Fettel are sons of Alma Wade, all three of
which were experimented on by Armacham. A
multi-national conglomerate which serves as the secondary antagonist
of the game after Alma herself. Point Man is being held in a prison
facility until Fettel possesses one of the guards and helps him
escape. This is drastically different from the usual mission
briefing before throwing us into the thick of it.
He's
dead, but not useless.
Point
Man plays the same way as we're used to from the first two games.
Taking cover has been improved by allowing us to look around
corners and slowly letting us rise up to look for enemies. With the
touch of the fire button Point Man will automatically stand up and
start shooting. Apart from that not a whole lot has changed from the
second game.
Fettel
only plays as Point Man when you possess a human body. Otherwise
you're just a ghost who blasts red energy and can string people up
in the air to either possess them or just blast them to oblivion.
But for some reason you can still die like a normal person. An
advantage with the body possessing is that in addition to going into
soldiers you can enter the bodies of more powerful enemies giving
you an edge in battle that the Point Man simply doesn't have. If they
die Fettel will be just fine, and there's nothing like taking a body
and not giving a shit.
You are one
ugly mofo.
I'm sad to
report that Alma Wade takes a backseat to this guy. The monstrous
manifestation of Harlan Wade. Or the memories of Harlan Wade, I
should say. Harlan is the father of Alma and the one behind the
experiments of both her and the brothers. He's also responsible for
putting Alma in the vault which led to her death. And the “Father
of the Year” award goes to...
Harlan
appears as early as the first mission and is constant throughout,
eventually being something that you would have to face by the end of
the game. Unlike most of Alma's appearances, the monster can hurt
you when he appears. However, you can keep him at bay with bullets,
which is something you really couldn't do when Alma was haunting you.
While I do like the background provided on the brothers, and the
idea of Alma's father being the thing they all fear, he just isn't
scary. His design looks like something you'd see from Doom. An
experimentation you'd shoot at and then go on your merry way, not
something you end the game on.
This is what
having children does to you, folks.
Alma has
undergone quite the design change since F.E.A.R. 2. Tearing off the
sleeves on her dress and making her look more like a zombie child.
This might not have been so bad if they didn't constantly show us
the F.E.A.R. 2 design in the cut-scenes which looks so much better
than this.
After
having raped you in the last game, Alma is pregnant and about to give
birth. Her contractions are enough to literally plunge the world
into hell and give life to creatures that only existed in
hallucinations before. Hence, Harlan Wade's monster form and the
enemy called “Scavengers.” As for Alma
herself? She does fuck all in the whole game. There is no buildup to
her first appearance or any of her appearances. She just pops up
during random spots of the game, looks at you and then disappears.
Granted, Alma does a lot of that in the first game too, but it was
only after you saw her kill your whole squad and chase you down a
hallway with everything blowing up around her. The most you get in
this game are contractions that act like nuclear explosions.
In the
first game you got to a point where she could cause damage to you. In
the second game she raped you. In the third game she just makes a
few appearances (some you won't even find unless you explore) and
then just lays there at the end and dies. I get it, she's pregnant
and vulnerable. So what? It's Alma Wade! The most powerful psychic
in the whole F.E.A.R. universe. This woman has haunted people lives
since the first game. She could render fully grown soldiers into
skeletons with just a thought and her contractions wrecks an entire
city and she couldn't have built a better defense to keep herself
safe? In the online mode Alma will laugh and momentarily stun you
long enough to get shot at by enemy soldiers with a simple
appearance. Or trigger a game over entirely. The character feels
more like herself in a half-assed online multiplayer than the entire
main story. That's bullshit! It's an insult to the character. It's –
AHHHHHHHH!
The horror in F.E.A.R. 3
is practically nonexistent. There are a few jump scares here or there
and moments where you're expecting something to pop out when nothing
does, but there's nothing memorable about the horror in the game.
The reason the horror in the first game worked so well is because
they set a dark and suspenseful tone and never pulled away from it.
All throughout you can feel the suspense rising and even when you
know when the hallucinations are going to start, you're dreading it.
All of the things that wouldn't work on their own succeed because
it's part of a full package. F.E.A.R. 2 did away with this entirely,
but it at least had the “hallway of death” when you're exploring
the elementary school.
F.E.A.R. 3 has nothing.
The monster that chases you isn't scary. Alma Wade isn't scary. The
monsters created by Alma Wade are not scary. What little buildup
there is in the game isn't the least bit scary. The reason F.E.A.R.
stands out from all the other FPS games in the world is because of
the scare factor and Alma Wade. Take that away and all you have is
another FPS that's bound to get lost in the shuffle.
How'd I end
up at Walmart?
F.E.A.R. 3
has eight levels overall and several different enemy types to battle.
Ranging from soldiers, cultists, cyborgs, mechs, helicopters, and
Alma's apparitions. Everything is thrown at you except for the
kitchen sink. Soldiers say the same exact lines over and over again
you'd think they had a limited vocabulary. I know the game
introduces some new weapons, but they honestly don't feel all that
different from the firearm choices in F.E.A.R. 2. Only ones that
stick out is the highly useful riot gear and the shredder, a weapon
designed for taking out fast targets that you can only get if you
pre-order the game.
Achievements
in the game are so easy to get they require almost no effort on your
part. I guess that's more of an industry problem than a game
problem, but I was earning achievements by complete accident for
just playing the game. The only ones you really have to go out of
your way to get are psychic links (like the corpse five pictures
ago) and the Alma's dolls, and the former isn't that hard to miss.
At the end, the game counts up the points you've earned during the
struggle between Point Man and Fettel and decides who wins the
conflict based on that. So it's probably more exciting to play
multiplayer than be on your own since I knew who was going to win
the conflict from the get-go. I would have preferred if they just
made Fettel/Point Man the final boss depending on who you play as in
single player.
There are
cut-scenes that play before and after each level, which is different
from the previous games that largely told the story through
gameplay. I actually don't mind this all that much. The story itself
isn't bad, just the way it's executed through gameplay is terrible.
Fettel easily steals the show and the best scene is when the
brothers meet Beckett. I do have one gripe, though. For the first
time ever in the games we see the Point Man's face, and that's it. He
doesn't talk, he isn't much of a character all all. He's just a
blank slate. Of course he's that way because in the first game the
Point Man is meant to be an extension of the player to immerse
yourself in the story. But every time we see his face here it just
takes you out of the moment. If you're going to show what he looks
like why not go all the way and give him lines and a voice actor?
They did it for Becket. Otherwise, stick to showing the Point Man
from a first-person perspective. Because by the end of the game it
was tiring to see him just standing there with a dumb expression on
his face.
Twin pistols
are the best.
After the
Campaign we have the multiplayer online mode, which I only got to
check out because they have a solo mode you can try. Since no one
was online for me to interact with. How telling. The online
multiplayer gives us four modes overall where you're either surviving
wave of enemies, surviving other plays, or fighting each other. Look
out for Alma because she will fuck your shit up if you get in her
way.
There's
really nothing here that grabbed me. Maybe it would have been more
fun if I had others to play with, but I can't imagine sticking
around for long. If there's one thing worth checking online it's to
find someone to play co-op with you in the main story, as I have to imagine it's a lot
more fun going through the campaign with a friend than on
your own.
Conclusion:
If you play F.E.A.R. for the
horror aspect and Alma's story, then F.E.A.R. 3 is only going to be
a disappointment. If you play solely for the FPS elements, then
F.E.A.R. 3 improves on some of that while still feeling like an
upgraded F.E.A.R. 2.
Skip
it.
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