Under the Radar Vol. 1

Under the Radar will be a weekly article on the games I think aren't getting much press, or there just isn't a lot of buzz about them for whatever reason. I'll feature a single game each week until the well runs dry, and hopefully that won't happen for a long while. This week's game is.......dum dum dummm...........F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin.

The origin and evolution of F.E.A.R.

The first thing I think of when I see the name F.E.A.R. is the combat. The team at Monolith provided me with the sweetest slow-motion shotgun action I could ask for, and A.I. that was pretty much unmatched at the time. Blood gushed profusely from your foes in glorious bullet-time, and the fact that they were more than a match for you made it even more satisfying. Fast forward a few years, and it's easy to see the game's shortcomings. Every level was basically the same office building or warehouse complex, only the layout was slightly different. The story was a little confusing at times, even if you knew all you had to do was track down someone and shoot the shit out of anything that got in your way. But there was a creepy atmosphere(replete with a J-horror ghost girl), a sinister corporation bent on creating clone warriors from a psychic, and the guns felt great. Shooters are a delicate species; the lion's share of them tend not to age so well. The weapon mechanics and player movement have to gel just right, otherwise its other merits and accomplishments are easily forgotten. To make a long story short, F.E.A.R. did for FPS gameplay what Shadow of the Colossus did for story.


Which brings me to the fan subtitled sequel, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. There was a bit of a licensing issue between Monolith and ActiBlizzard for a while, and Project Origin was the settled upon name which came out of a contest Monolith held on its website. The situation eventually got resolved, so they rightfully put F.E.A.R. back into the title, and here we are. I think it's important that they were able to do so, because there's probably a lot of people who didn't know Project Origin had anything to do with F.E.A.R., and their sales might have suffered for it. Regardless, everything is now as it should be, and the game's coming out next month.

10 minutes of gameplay from F.E.A.R. 2

The first thing I noticed from watching the above video is how it still looks like F.E.A.R. Seeing is believing, and based on what I just saw, Monolith obeyed the cardinal rule and didn't try to fix what wasn't broken. You might say to me, "But it looks exactly like the last game." While that's true, I think it was done on purpose. That footage was put out a long time ago, and the developers probably wanted to keep the new scenarios close to their chest. John Mulkey, the Lead Designer of F.E.A.R. 2 -- from an interview with IGN -- had this to say about the game's level design. "We had a really limited art palette to work from in the first game, so things ended up looking pretty repetitive. For Project Origin we have really set out to present a greater visual variety of environments and a greater variation in locations you will be visiting over the course of the game." It's too early to take those comments as fact, but Monolith has earned my respect and I simply have faith that they will make good on their promises.

Will manning a full-bodied mech give F.E.A.R. the variety it needs?

One thing I would like to mention very quickly is the health system. Unless Monolith changed their mind since the gameplay trailers were released, they've decided to go with regenerating health. I'm still not sure how I feel about that system in general. Sometimes I miss being able to hoard health packs for that ever-looming, pound-your-ass hard boss fight. Other times I don't really mind it. It's a personal preference, but I just wanted to point out the one glaring difference between this game and the original. As long as the A.I. is programmed with the same loving care and attention it was given last time and the gameplay isn't given a complete face lift, I can see no reason why this game won't surpass its predecessor in every possible way.


[update] It looks like a demo for the game will be released on January 22nd. That's great news; I plan to try it out on both 360 and PC.