By Jim Rossignol on October 11th, 2007 at 10:43 am.
As if the terrible name wasn’t enough, the Perseus Mandate demo turns out to be a shambolic outing for the ailing FEAR series. You can download the 734.82MB sampler from here. Once installed and playing, you’ll probably find yourself saying: “woooOOOooo” in that sarcastic way that you do when things just aren’t scary.
It’s still trying to deliver the proven FEAR formula (there’s some cryptic information about spooky goings on, you see some stuttering ghosts down the end of a corridor, and then you fight a load of marines) but it’s nevertheless drained of life. The environments are makeshift and absurdly dull, the action is obvious and predictable – even the NPC voice actor sounds bored, rather than however it is you are supposed to sound when being attacked by psychic marines and pursued by diaphanous ninjas. Presumably TimeGate, who are now handling the series, have got better things to do. Or perhaps this disappointing demo is somehow unrepresentative of the full game. Whatever the reality: get back to making Kohan, TimeGate. And I guess genuine fans of the original game will just have to wait to see what Monolith come up with for ‘Project Origin‘. (Why DID they choose such an insipid name?)
11/10/2007 at 12:57 mno says:
Monolith… lithtech… SHOGO!
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division brings back warm fuzzy feelings. Instead of having the flightsim controls of heavygear when piloting a suit of armor, you had FPS responses in a bigass killing machine. While also providing great gore and action akimbo style out of the armor.
I just found it on a 57 day old news server post i’m glad my server recently upgraded to 100+ days retention.
waddaya know wikipedia says about the same thing i did on the gameplay check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogo:_Mobile_Armor_Division
11/10/2007 at 13:37 Alistair says:
I didn’t bother finishing it… was FEAR this uninspired? Or is it suffering from being in the middle of you, know, 2007 games. When Bioshock, Halo & the Orange Box are all fresh in people’s minds, this is a pretty hard time to extend an older shooter. I enjoyed the Jericho demo – let’s see how COD4 looks later today :)
11/10/2007 at 13:40 just_finished_okami says:
/signed
Timegate should stick to Kohan. It’s just one of the plain best fantasy RTS series ever made. It’s better than Warcraft. There, I said it. Sue me!
11/10/2007 at 13:42 just_finished_okami says:
I should also change my name to just_finished_bioshock_and_is_waiting_for_that_damned_orange_box_to_come_out
11/10/2007 at 13:59 Thiefsie says:
Har har, effectively we ‘chose’ such an insipid name for the sequal. That’ll learn us… it IS a retarded name!
11/10/2007 at 14:38 Jim Rossignol says:
FEAR was better than this.
11/10/2007 at 15:22 nectarine says:
Well it’s not really a sequel if all they own is the name. They don’t even own the characters or game world.
I think Monolith did pretty well out of the deal to keep everything, but the name. F.E.A.R was a stupid name anyway..
Project Origin is terribly generic, talk about a wasted opportunity.
11/10/2007 at 17:02 Andrew says:
Of course it’s his opinion.
This site is built around opinions.
It just so happens that Jim’s right on this one, though.
11/10/2007 at 17:03 James says:
Welcome to RPS.
11/10/2007 at 18:38 SwiftRanger says:
It might be an addon too much (FEAR’s Blue Shift perhaps), Extraction Point was quite decent imo and was also Timegate’s work.
11/10/2007 at 19:47 Andrew says:
Perseus Mandate is a crap name for the same reasons that ‘Omega Protocol’ or ‘Alpha Doctrine’ or ‘Medusa Horizon’ would be. It sounds like a trash airport novel.
20/05/2013 at 15:46 chinook says:
I’ll just leave this here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Protocol
12/10/2007 at 01:31 Ging says:
Perseus Mandate does seem more like a Robert Ludlum book name than a game – I’d love to give it a go, but the installer chokes when I point it somewhere other than the default location and my C drive just ain’t got the space spare for demos!
12/10/2007 at 17:37 Jim Rossignol says:
I think James is pointing out that RPS *is* just our respective opinions on things, rather than suggesting my evaluation of the name is good or bad.