Comments on: Fear Alma Again

By: Stromko

Stromko — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:03:49 +0000

Or perhaps more succinctly, FEAR relies on the same core combat skills from start to finish, whereas CoC: DCotE repeatedly stopped the player dead, literally, and required them to discover a completely different technique over several or dozens of deaths in order to beat a contrived challenge. It was more of an FPS puzzler, and not in the empowering ‘Portal’ way, more like the Medal of Honor series but moreso.

By: Stromko

Stromko — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:57:09 +0000

dhex: If you’re really hard up for a game set in a Lovecraft story then it might be worth playing again. That chase near the beginning isn’t the only part where you’re going to be dying over and over again with no clue how to proceed except massive repetition however. Perhaps they made the game intentionally tricky and difficult to capture the essence of ‘futility’ that’s right at home in the theme, but it’s easy to dismiss it as just horribly, terribly designed. I don’t remember the combat being bad at all, just the puzzles and map design. It is also largely composed of the same environments and enemies and drags on way too long. I don’t remember really been scared playing it.

FEAR didn’t scare me much either, but I actually found the combat to be quite fun and would replay it multiple times. I even played about halfway through without using slo-mo, which really changes things. Since the mid-game ‘scary’ parts would never hurt me I’d just ignore them and rush through. The last tenth of the game was rather more effective as a horror / cinematic game, though not as intriguing of an action game, really didn’t encourage another playthrough for me.

I think it’s helpful to compare FEAR and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corner of the Earth because one had supernatural elements that really didn’t effect gameplay, and the other put them front and center and killed you with them without warning or clue how to protect yourself ad nauseum and then some. Whichever one you prefer is kind of a matter of taste, I consider CoC more flawed, but a lot of people didn’t like F.E.A.R. as much as I did.

By: Something Else To Fear | Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Lost in SPAAAACE Week.

Something Else To Fear | Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Lost in SPAAAACE Week. — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:44:24 +0000

[...] new Project Origin trailer appears, in what appears to be a series attempting to put us off the game as much as possible. This time with 34 seconds of company [...]

By: minus

minus — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:15:28 +0000

Hmm, I think the ‘Fear’ depends on a lot of factors. I play all games in a softly lit room, on a big screen that take up most of my FOV with stero speakers on pretty high.

Plus, ‘you can only be scared if you have an imagination’. ;)

By: Captain Bland

Captain Bland — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:40:31 +0000

It is a really good game and well worth playing. But it is also one of the only games in my collection I’ve never finished. Some of the sections (the factory springs to mind) are far too long and the pace of the game is quite slow for the most part. Still if you feel like playing it is creepy and atmospheric and has some brilliant action sequences.

By: dhex

dhex — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:25:39 +0000

is CoC worth cracking open again? i bought it a while back, got stuck on the first bit and then distracted by some other game. (perhaps the first fear, actually)

By: 4-bzz

4-bzz — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:24:28 +0000

That would be really cool if, in this sequel, they further improved enemy A.I.. I thought it was really good in F.E.A.R..

By: Jochen Scheisse

Jochen Scheisse — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:19:47 +0000

Yeah, there were a lot of follow up games planned, with the documents already written and even a number od screenshots, but due to the rather limited success of CoC, they never actually saw the light of day. A shame. I think I read that on the wiki page for the CoC Innsmouth game.

By: Captain Bland

Captain Bland — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:10:58 +0000

“Call of Cthulhu had the best hud ever.”

And some fantastic action scenes. but it was really bloody long and the save system frustrated me in a “I am A PC user! How dare you limit my control over everything?” way.

It seemed to go relatively un-noticed due to Ubisoft’s canny 0 marketing approach, which is a shame.

By: Lh'owon

Lh'owon — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:04:26 +0000

What is this obsession FPS designers of today seem to have with big HUDs that cover up half your screen? If there’s anything that breaks immersion easily, it’s ugly HUDs that make no compromise to actually make you feel like you’re in the shoes of the character you’re playing (which is the point of first person games, but a lot of developers seem to have missed that as well).

Indeed. Not so long ago I felt really elated at the apparent shift toward ultra-minimalist HUDs in FPS games. It seems that isn’t going to be the trend :\

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:37:15 +0000

Call of Cthulhu had the best hud ever.

By: Arrrgh

Arrrgh — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:18:04 +0000

What is this obsession FPS designers of today seem to have with big HUDs that cover up half your screen? If there’s anything that breaks immersion easily, it’s ugly HUDs that make no compromise to actually make you feel like you’re in the shoes of the character you’re playing (which is the point of first person games, but a lot of developers seem to have missed that as well).