Late last night, as I drove around frozen South Western England delivering inebriated people to their homes, I got to discussing F.E.A.R. with one of its fans. The sequel, he said, was one of the games that really excited him for 2009. While I definitely appreciated the original game and its expansions, they’re also games that I feel contain a weird tension that they never quite get past. The Fear Fan talked about that moment on the ladder, or that moment where you get clubbed in the face. I raised the invisi-ninjas as the best sections. These are great scary moments within the game, and they’re scary because you’re relatively helpless. The rest of the time, however, you find yourself being an unstoppable super-man who can slow time. How, then, do things remain scary?
I can’t help thinking, then, that the Elite Powered Armour that is shown off in this latest F.E.A.R 2 trailer does exactly the opposite to what is best in its game. It even says so in the trailer: “The Solution To Everything You Fear.” Surely that’s missing the point of making a horror shooter? Maybe that’s just me.
The game is due Feb 10th in North America and Feb 13th in Europe.
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But that won’t have anything to do with actual fear, I think. It would if you were actually going through the situation, perhaps, but for someone playing the game it’ll just make you go “they took my suit away again, oh well..”.
Now, here we find eachother, brother! I absolutely loved the underground bits in STALKER, they scared the shit out of me, constantly giving me that feeling of “I want to get out of here NOW”, which is exactly the thing you want to achieve.
In fact, I remember at the time of STALKERs release using STALKER as a perfect example why FEAR fails to be scary.
FEAR never scared me at all, but I loved it. I think that whole “evil little girl” thing has been so overused that it will never be scary again, anyway.
I found FEAR fun and scary at times (and pretty atmospheric even when it wasn’t actually scary) so I’m definitely looking forward to the sequel.
I do think they could probably do more to integrate the story/horror elements and the fighting elements though.
I loved Fear, everything about that game just clicked with me for whatever reason. I’m not really all too interested in what ‘a horror game’ is or isn’t meant to be any more than I’m interested in the thought that RPGs are meant to be turn-based or L4D should have had slow zombies because real zombies are slow, I just liked what Fear actually did.
Unless it’s a one-note mech combat game now (do we have any reason to think it is? I’ve been avoiding most of the trailers), I don’t see this as out of character for the series. We’ll have to wait and see how much they use it I guess.
@Rei Onryou, that was a good moment. I have no idea what made me look up there, but the creepy feeling of being watched by a malevolent being that can gore up a room at will that lingered after that was good.
I really enjoyed FEAR, and found it often tense and sometimes outright scary. I think one of the things they did best was to vary the pacing by switching between combat sequences, scary supernatural areas and even areas where there were no enemies or scares.
If it was all attempted scares all the time, it becomes predicable and tedious which ironically means it doesn’t remain scary (Doom 3 suffered from this). But switching between scares and relief helps keep the game fresh while keeping the tense atmosphere. Kinda like the horror movie moments where tense music is playing, the main character slowly looks under the bed expecting the worst… but it’s only a mouse. It also makes for an interesting contrast to say go from kicking the arse of the more mundane enemies to sudden visions of the supernatural you cannot possibly harm, or alternately getting a feeling of relief and catharsis when you see ordinary enemies you can actually fight against.
So I think the powered armour can work just fine.
Even within those seperate types of areas the pacing varied a lot too. Like with the combat you went from all out war with squads of units and mechs and taking down squads omnipotently via remote gun turrets, to a more intimate feeling of stalking a single unaware unit to the slow-paced scary combat of BEING stalked by invisi ninjas among other things.
So long as they don’t get rid of that approach it’s all good IMO.
Seems to me as if that line was really really dripping with sarcasm. After all, how can an armoured battlesuit help with paranormal phenomena?
Design-wise, it’s a bulky piece of equipment that probably interrupts the hell out of gameplay. Ah well, hurray to more diversion for the “ads” riddled audience. Gotta go take my first ritalin…
‘Interrupts the hell out of gameplay’, ‘ads riddled audience’ – at least wait until you’ve played the game.
I too thought FEAR’s boxy repetitive environments were pretty boring. After a while I also got used to the various tricks they were using – big open area ahead, yep, another ambush. The weapons also seemed fairly weedy, except for the nail gun. I did enjoy the game though.
STALKER’s underground sections were very spooky. I’ll never forget the first time I ran into a controller. I was really freaked out and went totally berzerk, full on panic mode, shooting wildly everywhere.
However I still think the Thief series works the best at inspiring fear and tension, because you’re pretty weak compared to the enemies, and the whole emphasis is on avoiding discovery. It also has the scariest levels in any video game ever, especially the haunted cathedral in thief 1, and the cradle in thief 3.
It’s that moment of massive panic, where you just go mad and shoot anything that even looks like it might be moving that I’ve only had a few times.
Most memorably quite a few years back I was playing Gunman Chronicles, whilst really, really stoned, to the point where it felt like I was in a horror film, and even the smallest baddie was greeted by hails rockets from me as I twitched through the level, spinning round to check behind me at every noise, real or imagined.
This is why you shouldn’t do drugs kids.
@phuzz
I dont know if ‘it makes games better is a great disincentive.
Actually, it did have plenty of those moments!! It was just scripted a little bit better. There really were no moments of actual danger for the player, not in a similar haunting way as the game Condemned did.
That game was pure genius in how vulnerable it made the player, probably about as far as games could, it makes you feel truly scared as almost any encounter with the enemy potentially could mean dead.
F.E.A.R just totally messes up with the slow-motion stuff when it comes to this, basically you’ll want to be in slow-motion mode for as long and often as possible, because if you’re skilled fps player, this almost makes you invulnerable.
It did however fail in very much the same way as Doom3 as far as trying to frighten people goes. Woah woah woah… Granted, it failed as a pure horror experience, but it didn’t have any damn monster-in-the-closet faux-scares.
Actually, it did have plenty of those moments!! It was just scripted a little bit better. There really were no moments of actual danger for the player, not in a similar haunting way as the game Condemned did.
That game was pure genius in how vulnerable it made the player, probably about as far as games could, it makes you feel truly scared as almost any encounter with the enemy potentially could mean dead.
F.E.A.R just totally messes up with the slow-motion stuff when it comes to this, basically you’ll want to be in slow-motion mode for as long and often as possible, because if you’re skilled fps player, this almost makes you invulnerable.
(sorry for the doubleposting, it messed up my quotation.)
OMGWAT? They have a guy with a SHOGO 2 t-shirt in this one? That had BETTER be their next title =<.
Hah, I loved FEAR as a shooter, but I hated the imposed morality choice of having to serve the government corp side. Keep it in the family!
Fear’s problem was that it alternated between Shooty and Scary. The twain never ever met, which left me feeling like I was playing two very different, and very dull, seperate games.
Plus Commander Butters was a dick.
Yea, It should definitely be noted that this trailer is done as an ARMACHAM advertisement – the realisation that this isn’t the solution to all your fears, presumably along with your ejection from the suit, could provide a cool moment and reinforce your (somewhat lacking as Jim notes) sense of vulnerability.
AFAIC it will depend on what enemies we will be up against. I liked FEAR because I was mostly seeing enemies that made sense, behaviour that made sense, ranged shoot-outs that made sense. In the expansion I felt the focus switched to some typical Valve heavy weapons guys and other things that want melee range and that killed it for me (or maybe I became even less tolerant for this kind of weak mob modeling). I hope for the sequel that the armor does not do to what was a good shooter what the panzerkleins did to the otherwise good WWII infantry simulator that was Silent Storm.
I love you. The Thief games, all three of them, are perfect examples of atmospheric worlds that scare the shit out of me.
now, there are some points I agree with and don’t… what’s putting me off FEAR 2: the Mechs, the loss of melee moves, the post-apocalyptic setting (Condemned 2 was crap. Fallout 3 ruined this, too.) The fact that in an interview with the game developer he said that they’d moved on from japanese themed horror to the horror style of Saw: Saw was also crap, and wasn’t scary at all. SO long as, with FEAR 2, they keep that sense of, right, I can handle these enemies, but what else lurks around the corner…? basically, they need the horror style of Deadspace – that was a bloody good game!
to be honest, FEAR is an aquired taste. it’s only going to appeal to people who like the actual japanese/little girl horror style… with many different horror styles everyone’s bound to have their own opinions on the other ones. myself, I prefer this one, whileothers, will prefer horrors along the lines of Stalker and Condemned.