FEAR 2 seems like it’s been in development for over a hundred years, but at last you can play it, for at least a short while. The demo has been released today, and gives you a good 20 to 30 minutes (so long as you don’t rush like an idiot) of the spooksome world. You can get the demo here. Impressions below.
The most striking thing about the portion of the game on display here is quite how traditional a shooter FEAR 2 is looking to be. Tight corridors, health packs, armour packs, and some bullet time. There’s not even a left/right choice throughout the demo, so constricted are you in its funnel. But you know what? It’s a pretty fine funnel to be in.
The horror tropes are also extremely traditional, but what’s known to be effective is damned effective. The familiar split-second flashing of alternate worlds, spooky figures, and horrific displays are in full force. It almost strobes with the effects at points. The appearances of the little girl, Alma, are all well timed, and often surprising. There’s also some extremely effective use of music, with the score ripping and changing to match your actions, even offering orchestral stabs at the conclusion of your firing.
The sound is used in an exemplary fashion throughout. At one point a shadow appears on the wall in front of you, encouraging you to turn around and see some awful figure for just a fragment of a second, which is a great moment. But at another it’s simply a sound effect that has you check behind you, to disturbing effect. It’s smart, and it’s obviously the reason for the funnel.
Lots more fun comes from swinging doors, slamming furniture, and all-out frenzy in some of the corridors of the elementary school that makes up the first half of the level. Then things focus more on the run-and-gunplay, finishing with a ludicrous sequence in a giant, stomping robo-suit. I think I like the idea of a shameless corridor shooter, with everything from dropped data messages, in-HUD messages from unseen compatriots, and daft old health packs. Especially if it can maintain the momentum and spookiness on show here.
Related Stories:
Also: “The level design, on the other hand, was second to none.”
I don’t think it was. The blandness and lack of variety made navigating the maps quite difficult. I kept backtracking without realising. Maybe that’s just me being rubbish, though.
Requiem: for what it’s worth, I enjoyed the Fear 2 demo more than I enjoyed any part of Fear.
The Demo is now on steam for anyone interested in grabbing it that way. (according to a Valve Tweet anyhow)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/16470/
@Sonicgoo:
What?! But, but . . . I remember seeing melee combat in the early FEAR 2 trailers. I can’t believe they’d take that out. That was one of the best and most unique features of what was otherwise another run-of-the-mill shooter. (Okay, okay, they gunplay and AI was good too.)
Still, I agree wholeheartedly about the sentiment that Monolith has done enough FEAR now. Let’s get back to making more games like NOLF and TRON 2.0. NOLF 3 would be an instant purchase for me.
Hmmm. Widescreen vs. Letterboxing for film isn’t the same debate as that for games, PC or console. There’s little reason not to include support for a wide range of resolutions. In fact, there’s little reason not to include support for arbitrary, fantasy resolutions too, like 1283 x 7-f-giggle.
I played through the original FEAR because it had some entertaining gunplay and reasonable AI. Story was tripe and game wasn’t scary for shit though. If they removed the kung-fu kicking antics though… I don’t know. I mean, now how am I supposed to kick the 20 corpses of the enemies I just mowed down with a turret into the corner of a room and then toss a grenade under the pile?
They haven’t removed it. It’s still there. It’s not overtly featured in the demo, though. The focus has definitely been shifted away from it.
Played it now – I am not exactly convinced. I am a huge fan of the original, but this demo doesn’t quite do it for me. Too much horror, too many sequences that seem ripped straight out of other games (like the sniper alley), and not really a demonstration of what the AI can do. The mech is a bit rubbish, too.
Still, I’ll wait for reviews. It has the potential to be great if it has enough levels where you can play cat and mouse with the AI.
I don’t think it was. The blandness and lack of variety made navigating the maps quite difficult. I kept backtracking without realising. Maybe that’s just me being rubbish, though.
Then the bland environment had a direct (rather than purely cosmetic) influence on your enjoyment, which I can understand. My point stands though that the level design (multiple routes, entry points, etc., and how the AI could make use of it) was great. I always saw FEAR as something like almost a puzzle game. You, the AI, and a level that, pragmatically more than anything else, is designed around that. The lack of variation was as relevant for me as the lack of background pictures in Tetris. I was always a bit afraid that if Monolith tried to improve that, the game would lose its purity, and the demo confirms that a little for me.
Still, I’ll wait for reviews. There’s yet hope. :)
Just played through this. The game set most of my settings on medium, but I manually set them all to high and it ran very very smoothly.
Like the original game the environments are very boxy and the detailing seems a bit off – too regular. The weapons seemed to have little weight, especially compared to the original.
There seem to be a lot of console-led games recently which limit which keybinds you can use, and this game is no exception – you can’t bind extra mouse buttons for instance.
However the sound design is excellent, very spooky, but I did notice that my centre speaker seemed a bit quiet especially when trying to listen to the TVs – perhaps it doesn’t support 5.1 sound?
I quite enjoyed playing the demo. I might pick it up if the price is right, and there’s no limited activation based DRM.
I have no idea why they haven’t even thought of a NOLF 3. It’s so clearly what they enjoy doing (just look at how lovingly crafted NOLF 2 was, and how much better than 1 it was, and 1 was good as it was anyway)
I’ve replayed NOLF2 countless times and i’m flabergasted that it isn’t on more “Top 10 FPS” lists because it really is miles away from a lot of the BANG POW BULLET bullshit the industry insists on purging upon us. NOLF 2 is still better than anything being released right now and it’s a years old game. DO A NOLF SEQUAL MONOLITH!
I preferred NOLF1 to 2, but yes, a sequel would be nice. Didn’t it sell bugger all though? I dimly remember something like this.
Also, the mech section in this was absolutley ghastly and horrible. Not only does the introduction of a mech completley send the psychological horror thing right out of the window, it’s also just suddenly dunped on the player and he/she is expected to accept it. I acctually found myself not wanting to get in the mech thing, and I was proved right when I got in and had to endure a shitty BANG SHOOTY WOAH BOOM EXPLOSION section which bored me to tears; luckily this is when the demo ended.
The sound design is great but this just seems so uninspired and has left me with no desire to purchase it at all. Tripe. Make NOLF 3! (or an original ip? *gasp*)
Yes uncluelou, it did appallingly bad which makes the chances of a sequal pretty slim. Still, they need to move on from FEAR. I’ve always liked Monoliths games, but i’m not overly sure on FEAR anymore. The first was okay, mind you.
“it’s also just suddenly dunped on the player and he/she is expected to accept it”
Yeah, in the demo I’d agree. But like people have said, this is presumably almost a clip-show of different things the full game has to offer. Hopefully, in reality, it’ll be given more context.
I can’t verify it, but I did hear a story about someone returning their copy of a NOLF game because that person didn’t like playing a female player character.
Sheesh.
And its a shame, the NOLF series is definitely one of the much better first person shooty experiences I’ve played to date.
I don’t know, aren’t you being kind of presumptuous here? Maybe the reason they haven’t made a NOLF3 is because, y’know, they don’t want to.
Of couse, that’s just me being presumptuous too.
What I mean is, it’s been a long delay since the last one, a good few years now, I thought that by now perhaps their interest in that particular ip would have picked up a little.
Just finished playing this and found it to be fairly enjoyable. I loved the first one and agree with the earlier comments about linear FPSs getting a bad reputation as of late for no real reason besides the “hardcore” not liking them and much preferring acres of bland levels to explore instead.
The combat felt solid, but I’m not sure about whether it was as good as the original. Something felt slightly lacking and the shotgun certainly doesn’t compare. There was also a sniff of consoles in the air, from the large fonts littering the place and the big HUDs.
I had a couple of tech problems too. First of, when I initially got into the game the character was starring up at the sky with the view spinning. After reloading, I tried minimising the game and having a quick look on the Internet. Not finding anything I maximised it again and it was suddenly fine. The other problem, slightly more serious, was an unusual 2 second freeze occurred pretty frequently, more so the longer I played.
Besides these few quibbles, it was enjoyable. The combat was still okay and the scares were pretty good. The bits with the lockers and Alma grabbing you were notably moments. Would have liked some open areas to play with the AI, but hopefully the full game will provide these. I was quite impressed when one of them opened a car door as cover though.
As for the letterboxing, not really desirable when you are already widescreen. Having said that, I much prefer that to the FOV being incorrect, which so many multiplatform games can’t get right.
I suspect this is like the demo for the original FEAR where it was a collection of different areas from different levels combined.
My impressions.. hate the HUD with a passion, very intrusive to my eyes, the guns felt very weak compared to the big meaty, weighty feel to firing them in the original.. slow mo wasn’t very slow, or didn’t seem that slow compared to the original either.
It was ok apart from that.
I got this too, I thought perhaps it was just my PC not really being up to standard though.
Anyway, my not-very-thorough post-mortem is that it’s good when not actually letting you do the shooty thing. Combat didn’t feel as satisfying as the original, enemies frequently blended into the background as the levels became varying shades of grey and brown and it generally didn’t feel like the streamlined experience I remember. The scares were good however; the locker bit was definitely a stand out moment.
@ Pags – I thought it could have been that. My computer is pretty high spec, but the recommended settings were at medium mostly. I changed these all to max and removed AA (which it weirdly set to 4X, always the last thing I would change.) Having said that, it seemed absolutely fine bar these freezes and wasn’t sluggish.
The problem with the shooty thing is that it has a lot to live up to, as the original’s combat is second to none. Compared to most games, I reckon this demo was on par with them, but not reaching the levels of the original. My main concern would be the AI has also suffered. The demo didn’t have any areas that really demonstrated there ability to move around the levels. Their use of cover was good, although they always seemed to be exposed when behind cover.
The guns barely dented the environment too, that and their weedy sound effects are probably the main differences from the original – gunfights in it were often showered with smoke and plaster/concrete/dust thrown everywhere as holes are torn into of walls and stuff.
The brief freeze appears to be when the game is autosaving\checkpointing.
Am I the only one who finds the background noise of the PDA to be almost unbearable? It sounds like the kind of looping buzz I used to get when my computer froze.
I don’t know where people heard that they removed the melee combat because all the same moves from FEAR are there. Standard melee attack is either a punch or a strike with your weapon, jump-melee is a flying kick and sprint-crouch-melee is a sliding kick similar to that found in Mirror’s Edge.
I’ve been playing the original FEAR in preparation and I can’t say I personally find a big difference between the “feel” of the combat in either game. The weapons seem to have less reverb and the effects surrounding the slow-motion are more subdued but in terms of impact and animation it’s very similar. That said I did find that going back to fear the combat felt far less impressive than I remember it being the first time. Was it really all that good, or have recent games spoilt me?
Oops, forgot to add:
@Nick: Have you tried any of the grenades? Their explosions take chunks out of pillars and kick up a lot of smoke and dirt and plaster.
The AI didn’t seem to get demonstrated much, but then I recall the original FEAR demo also loaded you up with the most broken stuff and let you go to town. The damage effects on the mech also felt a bit overdone such that it got a bit hard to see at around half health.
For now though I’m waiting to give it another try because of the HORRIBLE black borders taking up almost literally half the screen at every resolution I choose and blunting a lot of my immersion. Thankfully there are enough other AIM on the issue that I’m sure it’ll be fixed in no time at all. I normally hate the term but between this, the lack of lean and a few other things it does seem to be a victim of consolisation.
I’m gonna guess that a big part of the reason Monolith aren’t interested in making NOLF3 is because they and/or WB don’t own the rights to it.
The game will probably satisfy die-hard F.E.A.R. fans, but otherwise there doesn’t seem to be much to distinguish it. The combat isn’t as intense as I remember, and the visuals – while they *are* very nice – are kind of underwhelming compared to shooters like Crysis, Far Cry 2, and (maybe) CoD5. And frankly, the huge clouds of blood porn that explode out of enemy soldiers did nothing for me.
I think the game probably came out a year too late.
@Messiah: Thank god for low violence mode, it reduces the blood considerably.
@noexes: my problem with it is that the intended “visual assault” ends up looking cartoonish. And for that matter, when you have size 42-DD drippy blood spatters *everywhere*, there’s just nothing interesting about it. Come to think of it, that might end up being a recurring theme with the whole game.
Thanks for the tip on the low violence mode, though. I didn’t know about that.
“You know what I liked about the demo? How smoothly it ran at maximum settings.”
Same here. Magnificent performance and optimization.
Please, Monolith, when you’re done with this, GIVE ME MY CONDEMNED 3, AND GIVE IT TO ME ON PC.
Kthx :D
I’ve gotta say, I was EXTREMELY disappointed by this demo. I’m a huge fan of the original FEAR, but they seem to have broken a lot of stuff this go ’round. The movement feels a lot slower and more clumsy, making melee attacks a lot harder to land (maybe I’ve just been playing too much Mirror’s Edge, but I could swear that FEAR didn’t feel this bad), the sound feels broken, because I’m not getting any auditory feedback when I get shot, so I hear gunshots and think I’m fine, and then I get capped again and die. They’ve toned dismemberment WAY down, and they’ve replaced the cool mist blood particle with a stupid shiny globular mess. THEY TOOK OUT LEANING, the fuckers. Fear was the last FPS that I can think of that had leaning, and used it well, and now it’s gone. Corpses don’t have proper collision any more, so you can’t kick them around, which is just an immersion breaker for me. And the weapons don’t feel nearly as meaty as in the first game. This went from a day one buy to a wait for a sale/bargain bin buy. And that makes me sad, because I was really really looking forward to more FEAR.
And what’s up with all the redesigned Replica soldiers? This is supposed to be taking place like 5 minutes after the end of the first game, yeah? Where were all these other guys hiding when the Pointman was fucking everybody’s shit up?
My God! the first time i encountered an enemy on this game I thought I was playing Bioshock again! Why the hell would you put that awful lighting thing on character models? And the blood…. This stinks of Playstation 3. From the “flashy” view smudging effects to the needless motion blur and awful lighting model. The “fear” bit seems to have been given a little more attention than it had before, but the combat could not be less involving. Where’s the menace? At least in the first game on hard you had to use the slow-mo from time to time. On this demo it seems you can just run a few bullets off in the direction of your enemy and he’ll be on the ground no problem. Put leaning back in please. On the positive side, having those ghosts to kill does mean that the scary bits are actually a little scarier than not at all. On the original once you realised that you couldn’t die on those bits, you relaxed and the game lost all tension. Little girl thing is still the freakiest thing anyone’s come up with yet though. Let’s hope they take the Mech bits out before final release.
On the original once you realised that you couldn’t die on those bits, you relaxed and the game lost all tension.
You could get hurt in those bits, just not early in the game.
@Lewis:
Thanks! Got a bit worried there…
As for NOLF, no it didn’t sell well. It’s one of those games that got all of the reviews but none of the sales. Still, many people remember it fondly and I can only presume it had quite a long tail, as they say.
The NOLF brand was also damaged by the cheap cash-in that was Contract JACK. They have also recently stopped supporting the older games. Though I know that at least for NOLF2 the community has created a join-by-IP sort of tool to still be able to play. And, as said, they don’t own the name anymore. But then, they didn’t own the FEAR name until recently either.
Ah… FEAR1 would have been amazing fun if I could have shed a few IQ points… As it was, it was way too cliche and hamfisted to be particularly scary, rendering it a occasionally spectacular but incredibly repetitive shooter. Seriously, I get it. Its a weird little girl. You have to use a little better pacing than ‘boo! in the face! Now she’s not there! every 20 minutes if you want it to keep being terrifying, a bit of subtlety and build-up would have worked wonders. Is this any better in that department, or is it still replacing tension with oogedy boogle!
only played a few moments last night. engine is damn solid and very smooth. either that’s great optimization or there’s a hitch around the corner just waiting to pounce. they’re playing up the ALMA IS CREEPY angle too much, which robs her of her creepiness. (i.e. just showing up like a ghostly little motherfucker in odd corners is much more disturbing)
as a side note, i have nolf2 at home and i’ve tried playing it a few times over the years but i don’t get it and it doesn’t seem like much fun. is the original that much better or has this ship sailed in general?
You know what I liked about the demo? How smoothly it ran at maximum settings.
Running max settings on the ol’ quad core of mine had the game stuttering every time a hud element tutorial tip wanted to pop up =/
Asides from that, I wasn’t really impressed by this. Has that same overly chunky look and feel that I’ve noticed in a lot of Unreal engine based games of late, even though Monolith are probably using their own egine – perhaps I just prefer the feel of the first F.E.A.R engine. I also really didn’t like the feel of the HUD either. I just had this huge “I’m trying to look like a console game” feel to whole experience; that whole Web 2.0 feel of recent games.
I’ll probably skip this one until later in its post release life (and after several price drops).
I think the problem with FEAR is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. On one hand, the combat in FEAR was great fun and did a genuinley good job of making you feel like you were in the center of a big-budget hollywood action movie shootout, with dust and concrete being kicked up all over the place, stacks of paper going through the air as you shot at books and other places, the melee combat was fun, the bullet time also fit in with the whole “hollywood action movie” thing. But then it has Psychological horror elements and thats where the goodness ends. It just feels slapped on, and as Vivian said, hamfisted indeed. And the scary little girl thing? Puh-lease…
So it’s strengths lie in the combat and sheer balls out fun of it all, it’s weakness in the horror and story, and fear 2 seems to have crippled the first and payed more attention to the latter which is bad. FEAR could be so much better if it just dropped the slack horror thing IMO.
And yes, Contract JACK was pants.
Monolith games share alot of the same failings. Generally from having pointless areas, things that could have been cut and enemies that you cant tell if your hurting them.
Fear fixed the telling if you are hurting them, but every monolith game has had me at one level wondering why that areas wasnt cut.
Ok, I played it again with headphones on and motion blur off (it was giving me a headache). Really enjoyed it this time, the stompy mech suit was agreeable in its whirring and dusty demolishing of buildings. As for dismemberment toned down.. not sure what demo you were playing, but I shotgunned a chap at close range and the mist effect was there, when it cleared he torso was missing save for his spine. Suitably gruesome imo.
So, yeah, actually looking forward to this now, hopefully the godawful obtrusive HUD and letterbox vision can be modded out.
Yeah, GIBBING is still in, but the location based severing of specific limbs is a lot harder to pull off. In FEAR, I was a fucking surgeon with the shotgun, a point blank discharge into the shoulder would almost always tear their arm off. In the FEAR 2 demo, a point blank discharge into the shoulder either gibs them completely, or just kills them. Only once was I actually able to sever a limb.
OMFG @ letterboxing
I can’t play this. Really
It’s like having blinders on
The game ran SMOOTH though, but there was way too much HDR. And it wasn’t very interesting. Haven’t felt that unengaged in an fps in a really long time.
To be honest, I wasnt too impressed.
My more detailed impressions: http://thereticule.com/2009/01/23/fear-2-demo-and-impressions/
(sorry) :D
Does anyone else feel like Extraction Point had a better demo than the original FEAR? Not a better game, certainly, but I thought its scares were on the whole more effective, and it had two fights that stick out in my mind as brilliant.
I agree with Dave L. that the controls feel wonkier than in FEAR, though I’m not sure that removing the ability to lean is that big a deal: I always felt this drive to get as close to enemies as I could, just because bullet time and the melee system could pick up for any shortcomings in your gunplay.
I’m rather depressed about the hamstrung melee abilities, too. I was rather hoping that this and Mirror’s Edge would start to ease the idea of in-depth melee combat into more first-person games, but it doesn’t look likely. I’ll just have to see how Zeno Clash fares.
And is it just me, or are the grenades almost worthless now? I feel like the grenades from FEAR were ridiculously powerful, and I didn’t see one shockwave rippling through bullet time at any point.
That’s odd, first thing I did when throwing a grenade was turn on slow-mo and there was a shockwave.
anyone figure out how to get rid of the hud outline? it’s very distracting and claustrophobic.
I agree about the HUD being shite (excuse my tongue). In fact most reviews I have read state as much. Be gone stupid HUD. Is there an online petition for this ? If not let’s create one.
I completely forgot to hate on the HUD. Here’s a thought, Monolith: When you have important timed meters, like, say, for Slo-Mo and Sprint, how about NOT making them tiny and transparent and/or hiding them in the lower left hand corner? Like how FEAR didn’t do. I can’t imagine how much worse it must be for people playing on consoles on a standard def TV.
Got the demo on my 360 and tried playing it in the dark on my 42″ telly with the surround sound. Couldn’t. Shit myself about 15 minutes in and had to turn it off to play Fallout.