annyeonghaseyo ToriJ ui bidio geim
libyu e osin geos-eul hwan-yeonghabnida. I don't think it's any
secret by now that I am a huge F.E.A.R. fan. I love the first two
games, and utterly despise that horrible abomination that is
F.E.A.R. 3. So, when I heard news that they were making another
F.E.A.R. game and that it was going to be online, I was both excited
and concerned. Excited because I would have thought after F.E.A.R. 3
nobody would want to touch the franchise again, and concerned
because how do you turn something like F.E.A.R. into an online game?
Horror is a hard thing to capture both
on film and in video games, and having to constantly update it for a
MMO can be pretty difficult. The fact that it was going to be a free
to play game didn't ease my concerns, but nevertheless it was a new
F.E.A.R. and I felt they were really trying to bring back that
classic F.E.A.R. experience. With that said, will you follow me one
last time?
I love this
load screen.
All right, before you begin anything
else there's a tutorial you can take to familiarize yourself with
the controls, and my god, the tutorial has more to do with F.E.A.R.
than the entire third game. Inplay Interactive has done more in one
level than Day 1 Studios could do with a whole game. The game takes
a lot of inspiration from F.E.A.R. 2, I know there are some fans out
there who didn't like 2 as much as 1, but for me? It's a step in the
right direction.
You have Alma haunting you, soldiers
to take down, experiments coming at you, everything you would come
to expect from a classic F.E.A.R. game, but once the level is over
that's it. That's as F.E.A.R. as it gets. After that you connect to
the main server and you have eight stages overall, and only three of
them are story scenarios. From then on out the most Alma has is a
cameo here or there, and that's it. I can't begin to fathom how they
can do such a great job with the tutorial, and then fuck it all up
when you get to the meat of the game, but boy do they ever fuck it
up.
You can't even create
your own character, all you can do is choose between default character models and add accessories that you unlock by playing the game. What
kind of a deal is that? It's not like that on other MMO games. How
do you screw up the most fundamental of MMO features? At the start
all you have is the default character model for Armacham and Task
Force, and you only get to use them if you're playing for that
faction.
There are psychic
abilities you can purchase, but from what I can tell they have very
little to do with the actual gameplay. When you're not shooting
enemies, you're either being shot or stabbing people. After a stage
is completed you gain experience points that goes to leveling up.
There are levels in this game? I could understand if it was an RPG,
but this is a first-person- shooter. Shouldn't it be more based on
skills than levels? Does this mean if someone is a higher level than
me on a map they can just kill me in one or two hits? How is that
fair?
Snake, I'm
near. Can't you sense me near you?
Maps are
determined by which game mode you choose, you can't just select them.
In deathmatch you'll be playing the same map over and over again
until you get tired of it. Would it have killed them to add more
variety? Alien versus Predator 2 had more options than this! The
actual gameplay is pretty solid. If you fuck up, you know it was you
and not something to do with the game.
Due to the
story between Armacham and Task Force you're always fighting in team
battles. There's no option to play “Every man for himself.” Not
a big complaint for me since I prefer team battles anyway, but
something to keep in mind going in. In some modes like deathmatch,
you can die as many times as you'd like and always respawn. Doesn't
help your team any, but you can come back. In games like Demolition
all it takes to be removed from the game is to die once. Then all
you can do is watch your other teammates play from there. Then you
have a mode dedicated to knife fighting. You can probably guess how
well I did there.
The community is what you
can expect from an online game. I was just sitting on the menu above
and witnessed an argument from a guy named “Tragedy” about how he
pwned these guys and was the best player on F.E.A.R. Online. Then
the other two talked about how he'd just spawn kill and all that
crap, and you'd have gay jokes, dick jokes, your mom jokes, and
nobody on either side of the argument could spell. Some people
would just post “sdfkljsdfsdgsf.” You aren't even using real
words anymore!
One thing that annoys me
while sitting on this screen is that you can get a bunch of invites
to join the game whether you want to or not. I know that the point
is to play the game, but at least give me a chance to look around
before you start pestering me about it. I would join the server and
before even a full minute can past, I'm being invited to three
different games. Did I stumble upon Facebook by mistake? Leave me
alone!
Fuck my life!
F.E.A.R.
Online offers three different scenarios you can play. The annoying
thing about it is that you need to have at least four people before
you can start it, so a lot of the time you'll just be sitting there
waiting for more players just to run through one scenario. If
somebody doesn't connect on the load screen it will freeze and you
need to reboot the game. I get why it's like that, but why is it
possible to play the game with only two people if the other two
leaves right when it starts? You may as well say “Fuck you guys!
Try beating this level on your own!”
This is the
game's idea of easy: Being flooded by enemies, having to fight a
larger enemy with a shield, run down a tram to avoid being set on
fire, fight another flood of enemies capped off with a mech firing
missiles at you. Yeah, that's their idea of easy. I only even got to
see as much as I did because I just happen to come across an
experienced group of players, and we still couldn't beat the level.
I wasn't entirely useless, I helped get the key card and opened the
door. I contributed.
The story
is all over the place. I can't make heads or tails of it. It's even
more disoriented than F.E.A.R. 3 and that's saying something. I
don't even know where in the series this is taking place. Is it
before 2? During 2? After 2? I can only guess it's somewhere along
those lines because everything about this game screams F.E.A.R. 2,
even the tram part. You also see the same adult Alma's design
chasing you as there is in the second game. Points for not
acknowledging the third game exists, guys, but you may as well not
even bother with story.
What can I say? F.E.A.R.
was great once. After 2 it had a lot of promise, but that was all
thrown out the window with 3. If there's one good thing I can say
about F.E.A.R. Online, is that it's non canon so we can just ignore
it. I wish F.E.A.R. 3 wasn't canon! That Monolith Productions will
come back on a white horse and make the true sequel to Project
Origin. Maybe that will happen one day now that they're done with
Shadow of Mordor. Maybe they'll ignore F.E.A.R. 3 or find a
workaround, until then all I can say is stick with the first two. I'm
ToriJ, and this is review #99. Next week we're suplexing some
trains!
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