Graphics

As mentioned before, level design isn’t all that it could be, and the look of the game reflects this lack of imagination. There’s only so much you can do with office buildings and warehouses, but these are some of the spookiest corridors you’ll ever crawl. Shadow quality is outstanding. Developers have made sure to include many moments where low light sources make those shadows stretch out in front of you, and rear lighting that often makes your own shadow obscure what’s right in front of your face.

Combat visuals are absolutely amazing, thanks mainly to outstanding use of particle effects. Open up with an automatic weapon and the surroundings are instantly awash in flying shrapnel and smoke. Hold the trigger down for too long and you can end up in a Benson & Hedges wet dream, so wrapped in a smoky cloud that you can’t see the bad guys trying to plug you. Rooms look like they’ve been hit by a pissed-off hurricane in the wake of firefights. Huge chunks are typically blasted from the walls, tables are overturned, and glass is smashed. Needless to say, leaving behind the visible evidence of such carnage is tres satisfying.

Shooting the bad guys is also most agreeable. Injury and death is handled in a more realistic manner than any other shooter on the market. Blitz a Replica with automatic-weapons fire and he either shows specific damage from where he was shot (which is deeply cool, since enemies will actually drag their legs and clearly favor arms) or slumps to the ground, dead. There isn’t any cheesy rag-doll physics, no bodies being blasted back five feet by a round from a Tec-9. This adds to the tension of firefights, too. Because enemies don’t react in exaggerated ways, you’ve gotta pump rounds into them until they’re on the ground and have dropped their weapons.

Great big cans

Audio follows the same lines. Battles leave you awash in rat-a-tat-tat sounds and squawking enemies. Objects constantly rattle. You can’t walk past a desk without knocking over a soda can, or down a hallway without somehow kicking a garbage bag. Such clumsiness is a little goofy, in that you’re supposed to be Joe Supercommando with kick-ass reflexes and all. But it works from a gameplay perspective because all the little laughs and ghost noises mean that you never feel totally alone. I got a little worked up every time I upset a Coke can because I was always worried that someone or something would hear me. These noises really added to the tension.

In contrast, the soundtrack is almost laid back, and the voice acting extremely subdued. Your character never says a word, and even the dialogue during cutscenes is brief and right to the point. Characters say just enough to move the plot along and that’s it. I assumed that the point of this was to present a cool personality, similar to that expressed in the taciturn X-Files, although I found the lack of emotion detached me from the story more than anything else.

Multiplayer didn’t engage me, either. Since the principal draws of F.E.A.R. are its narrative and artificial intelligence, there really doesn’t seem to be any point to the multiplayer modes of play. And it’s not like Monolith was really trying all that hard, anyway. The game ships with only the deeply predictable deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag options, which are far too familiar to really win anyone over. There is a lot of carnage in online games, but no depth and no squad-level tactics. It’s all very forgettable.