By John Walker on February 19th, 2009 at 9:56 pm.
Monolith’s sequel to F.E.A.R., eventually called F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, came out last week. Alma’s back, messing with our heads, disturbing our telekinetic fields. Was it worth the scrabble to recover the name from Vivendi? Here’s wot I think.
I have come to the conclusion that FEAR 2 is about the importance of team communication. When one of your team mates radios to you that they’re off to investigate the sound of the crying woman – the same crying woman who’s tried to kill you in psychic attacks for most of that day – you’d think, maybe, you’d give him a heads-up. Not remain completely mute, waiting for the inevitable cries of pain to be broadcast back to you. In FEAR 2, the guy you play is a bit of a dick.
It is, in so many ways, an incredibly traditional first-person shooter. And as is the way of traditions, it’s safely familiar territory, but an experience you’ve maybe had once too often. It’s Christmas with your comfortably predictable, sometimes dull family. Except with perhaps slightly more viscera.
Rather nicely, Project Origin picks up the story half an hour before the end of FEAR. Playing Delta Force operative Michael Becket, you and your team are tasked with arresting Genevieve Aristide, the president of Armacham – the corporation behind all the evil psychic projects that made up the story of the first game. And indeed the people who had imprisoned Alma, the apparent little girl who haunted you throughout. Aristide soon escapes you, and through a series of events, you’re in a hospital, having received some sort of dodgy treatment that’s improved your psychic powers.
Of course what this all boils down to is shooting at the enemies, then running into the next corridor/room, and shooting at the enemies. Along the way you’ll be psychically disturbed, dragged into hallucinations, and rather peculiarly, occasionally forced to hammer the right mouse button to stop Alma from throttling you to death. And of course you’ve got bullet time. Beyond the completely batshit bonkers inclusion of two giant mech suit sequences, there’s nothing that stands out about the mechanics. In fact, what’s most peculiar about a game inspired by J-Horror spooks, is the astonishing amount of time it’s just yet another soldier shooter.
There’s all sorts of mystery about your team, your abilities, and who is why and where for when, told out through cutscenes and bits of information left lying around the levels, and there’s no need to spoil them here. But of course the larger story is that of Alma, who is released from her imprisonment near the beginning of the game, and messing with your head from the off. Oh, and then there’s the backstory to Armacham. And the story about the training facility. And the mysterious Snake Fist… FEAR 2 is a game that is in no way short of story, telling it in every imaginable way, occasionally effectively.
The primary school that makes up the game’s finest section is packed with little hints on the walls, notes in classrooms and so on, that satisfyingly unfold the farther you delve into the building’s secrets. But none of it feels forced upon you – there’s a sense of discovering it through your own thoroughness. However, this isn’t the case throughout, with great chunks of the information discovered on discarded, apparently “top secret” bits of data, lying around on the floor of vast, industrial complexes. It’s a little incongruous. The story overall, when reflected upon, just doesn’t add up to much. “Oh,” you’ll say. “So that did that, then. Oh, if you like.”
This back and forth, decent ideas and desperately hoary tropes, exemplifies the experience of FEAR 2. Technically, it’s extremely accomplished. The enemy AI lets it not only find cover, but also create it, tipping over objects, flipping tables, and hiding behind them. (You can do the same, but frustratingly only on pre-determined objects. One bookcase tips over, probably discovered after a firefight. Another, right before the next bullet exchange, does not.) The music is cleverly woven into the action, reacting in time to events, spiking the shocks, and generating tension. The visual effects are frenetic and varied, each associated to particular phenomena you encounter. The flashes of Alma appearing in rooms, on monitors, in shadows, and so on are fantastic. The poltergeist effects make you jump, as objects topple over, doors fly open, bodies get dragged rapidly away. All of this is true… for the first couple of hours.
For the first hour or two I was jumping like a big idiot. At one point I was so engrossed that just the sudden appearance of a couple of soldiers had me firing my gun wildly at the ceiling before I’d gotten a hold of myself. But a few hours of tedious grey corridors and I was immune to it all. The opening sequences seem like a vaccine that prevents you from being effected by much of the game.
You learn how it works, and at that point it stops working. The musical cues eventually are so familiar they warn you of a surprise, rather than aiding one. The flashes of Alma become so predictable that I started saying hello to her. “Oh, hi Alma. How’s it going? Not sticking around?” The enemy AI reliably hides behind the object, so you know you can wait to get your shot. And the screen going black and white means your heart sinks as there’s going to be another tedious section in the dark with ghost pecking at your armour like a slightly cross chaffinch.
The two large sections that succeed are the hospital and the primary school. Both are real-world settings that are twisted by the actions of Alma, the enemy ATC soldiers, and Armacham. Here the game thrives, splashing colour and familiar signs that usually represent safety, and making them dangerous, terrible places. The secret to all good horror. Both, everywhere in the game, are tight, one-way corridors, but the nature of both buildings makes this feel reasonable. It’s a little contrived with piles of furniture blocking passages, and the number of barricaded doors is remarkable, but you can believe that panicked staff and pupils had done this at some point in the past. These bright, airy locations become effectively upsetting when things get messed up. The same cannot be said for the miles and miles of grey, metallic corridors and chambers, or dull, beige passages, that bulk out most of the rest of the game.
There’s little opportunity to play smart. Equipped with a sniper rifle (all the weapons are satisfying to fire, but it’s deeply unsatisfying to see their laboured effectiveness when shot repeatedly into the face of the same soldier), you might crouch before the entrance to a large chamber, knowing it will be filled with guards. Pick off a few before you go in? No. Because their existence won’t be triggered until you’ve crossed that boundary. Eventually you start playing up to this, working out which action will generate the next wave. You reload your weapons and maybe use a medkit before going over to that crate with the ammo, which will certainly trigger their entrance. You can game it further, throwing proximity mines over to where the enemies will inevitably appear.
The firefights against the troops or Armacham’s Replica soldiers are fun enough. (It’s important to note that for most of the game, I wasn’t aware which of the two I was fighting – it never seemed important, unless they were shooting at each other). The slo-mo Reflex Time makes fights a degree more engaging, letting you take out multiple opponents before ducking back behind cover, with bullet tracers everywhere and globules of blood floating about. But you don’t often need to use it. It became something I kept forgetting I had, pulled out only in emergencies. But what’s especially strange about these extended sections is the game apparently forgetting it’s a horror. It’s all gone, for ages and ages, everything so overwhelmingly ordinary.
(Behind the scenes note: I’m editing this paragraph in a few minutes after thinking I’d finished the review.) The melee combat that was a big part of the popularity of FEAR is here too. You can use the butt of any weapon to bash enemies, and if jumping you’ll deliver a kick. And if in Reflex Time, sprinting or jumping toward bads will polish them off in a slick move. Except, well, I forgot to even mention it when discussing the game. There’s rarely a moment you’d ever need to use it, and fewer you’d want to. It’s clumsy, and almost never necessary.
The shooting becomes significantly less fun, however, when fighting the frenetic, spasmodic experimental beasties that appear now and then. They’re effectively dispatched with a shotgun, but they’re a tiresome delay in progress, especially in one particular scene filled with them, that the game forces you to go through three times. By the later stages they’ve become invisible too, and since they don’t drop ammo, they can piss right off. But they’re still more fun than the damned ghosts.
There’s fantastic dollops of gore throughout. Revolting corpses festering in hallways, bodies exploding into bits, ripping in half, or having their heads pop off as you shoot at them. The dart gun lets you pin enemies to walls, resulting in some superbly gruesome poses, and this is never more satisfying than when it’s one of the annoying, wall-running, flitting beasts. “Stay there!” There’s no questioning that FEAR 2 does the job of being a first-person shooter.
But what it doesn’t do is stand out. The spooky effects were innovative and inspired in FEAR. They’ve been copied a lot since, but they’d still grow stale this time out if it were the first time anyone had thought to try them. As alluded to earlier, the only significantly original ingredient are the brief mech sections, in which you stomp through the post-explosion city streets in a giant robot suit, blasting everything to catastrophic bits. And sure, they’re a bunch of fun. But they’ve got absolutely nothing to do with anything, and feel ludicrously out of place.
Monolith are still strong game developers, and it seems from the enormous amount of silliness hidden through the game (the resuscitation instructions on the wall of a room in which you’re stupidly trapped, fighting off wave after wave of enemies, almost make up for the laziness of that scene’s design) that the spirit that made No One Lives Forever might like to come out again. It’s trapped in a dull, metallic world of po-faced special forces soldiers and attempts at significance. But you’re still manning a turret here, and taking out the snipers over there. It so often feels like they’re going through the motions, rather than scaring the motions through us.
And we’ll talk about the ending once everyone’s got there.
19/02/2009 at 22:11 CrashT says:
My own views on the game are a little more succinct.
19/02/2009 at 22:12 Mil says:
If being a pedant is wrong I don’t want to be right: musical queues -> musical cues.
About the game: I won’t be playing it. I’m sick of horror. I’m sick of gore. There’s so much of both in modern gaming. And yet when a relatively mainstream game like The Witcher dares to include some sexy content it’s viewed as hugely controversial and possibly misogynistic by lots of people. It’s enough to make a man angry. On the Internet.
19/02/2009 at 22:29 SuperNashwan says:
So, enough of this shit, time for another NOLF?
19/02/2009 at 22:32 derFeef says:
I enjoyed the game. Its a funride – even if its a dull funride. Not every game has to be some kind of reinventig, superstory or super challenging to be good. Its shooting, its a bit scary, and its looking and sounding good. I liked it and it was worth the buy.
19/02/2009 at 22:34 qrter says:
Sounds like it’s a lot like the first game – there’s the horror bits (which were never scary) and then there were the shooty bits (which were quite shooty). The two never seemed to have any real relation to eachother.
I’d love to see a third NOLF. Away with the po-facedness.
19/02/2009 at 22:35 A-Scale says:
I’m really getting annoyed with your “wots”.
19/02/2009 at 22:46 Pace says:
So if we played the demo, we can probably just be content with that? I remember thinking after FEAR 1 that the demo had most of the best parts of the game. Sounds like this may be similar? I enjoyed the FEAR 2 demo, though I worry that’s all there is.
(and I take it that’s a thumbs down on the ending?)
(oh, and do we pick up the story of the guy from the first one? Alma’s brother it was, right?)
(oh, and count my vote in favor of “wot”s.)
19/02/2009 at 22:55 Sonic Goo says:
I always thought with both FEAR and Condemned around, they’d be hedging their bets and secretly working on something different, like a NOLF 3. Nothing so far, though. :(
19/02/2009 at 22:56 Mman says:
The thing that worries me about getting it is hearing that the combat is a step-back from the original (especially stuff like that article linked in the comments of the blog entry in the first post here, which explains it in tangible ways, as opposed to just “feel”).
Hearing the combat is easy doesn’t bother me too much, as I also found the original game very easy even on the hardest mode (namely because of bullet-time), but hearing it’s less fun is another thing.
19/02/2009 at 23:02 A-Scale says:
I just don’t like the spelling of Wot. It’s antiquated and pretentious. I love the articles themselves!
[Awesome, thanks for explaining - John]
19/02/2009 at 23:02 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Scary jailbait doesn’t make up for crappy corridors.
19/02/2009 at 23:03 AK says:
The bottom contextual ad on the right-hand side of this post says, delightfully:
Men’s Fear Of Intimacy
Cure His Fear! Bring Him Close & Make Him Want To Stay Forever
ReconnectYourRelationship.com
19/02/2009 at 23:04 AK says:
Second A-Scale. Excellent article, aggravating title tic.
19/02/2009 at 23:05 AK says:
aggravating enough that I sometimes go ‘nngh!’ and don’t click through. 0.0003% drop in your ad revenue! Try and buy another private jet now, buster.
19/02/2009 at 23:11 Kieron Gillen says:
I’m off to bed, so I’ll explain the title tick: “What I Think” Implies fanaticism – the idea that What I think is worth a title and the capitals. “Wot I Think” in its schoolboy language undermines the importance of an individual opinion, making explicit the idea that this is just what some fucking idiot thinks about a game, and if you fill the coment thread with “It sounds more like a 6″isms, you deserve eye-rolling. Clearly it’s just an opinion. That’s why we called it a Wot I Think. You may as well get uptight over a Beano cartoon.
In other words, we’re mocking ourselves to make the underpinnings of the pieces clearer for everyone else. It’s a joke, but it’s totally serious. Same as every review, but we admit it.
Also, funny.
KG
19/02/2009 at 23:11 Leman says:
Love the ending.
Love it.
19/02/2009 at 23:14 Subject 706 says:
BUT YOU CANNOT LEAN! DAMN YOU MONOLITH!
19/02/2009 at 23:15 SuperNashwan says:
I like the ‘Wot’, I see it as the thumbing of a nose at slapping a score on things and pretending there’s some kind of absolute objectivism that games critics somehow possess.
edit: wot KG said
19/02/2009 at 23:21 Azradesh says:
It wasn’t anything special, but I enjoyed it. Wish there had been more story/horror bit in it though, I liked those. Also the ending was a little……..unexpected :/
19/02/2009 at 23:21 AK says:
> just what some fucking idiot thinks about a game
Sure, hence my irritation. it comes across (possibly to just me and A-Scale out of the whole Internet, in which case tic away) as faux self-deprecation. You are after all Oscar-winning games journalists, not some idiots. Either you think (generally correctly) that your opinion is worth airing, in which case don’t undermine it with a coy title; or you don’t, in which case leave it on your hard drive. Sweet dreams.
19/02/2009 at 23:30 A-Scale says:
I’ve never heard a schoolboy say “wot”. I think your underlying humor has been lost on the audience. I thought you were just trying to British up the title of these articles.
PS: RPS is my favorite blog around. I evangelize it to every gamer I know. Don’t hate me.
19/02/2009 at 23:30 Pags says:
I’ve sent them many angry letters, but they never reply!
We can mathematically ascertain the annoyingness of the title tic: Firstly, it appears twice in the entire text not excluding the title itself; as I don’t have wordcount on this computer, I cannot provide an accurate ratio. Also, the size of the title-text ‘Wot’ must be taken into account, as size is directly related to annoyingness. Someone please do the math for me and we can close the matter.
As for the game, well… the demo left none-too-sweet an impression on me. The general consensus on RPS seems to be that the demo is not really representative of the game as a whole, but the primary concern – ie. that the game hasn’t really progressed much past the original – is still entirely applicable to the full game. Being that that’s the feeling I left the demo with, I’m inclined to agree with that.
19/02/2009 at 23:43 qrter says:
Personally not a fan of the ‘wot’, a bit too cutesy/twee for my taste, that said, I don’t really care, although that said, I have just pooped this little post (<- me being unnecessarily cutesy/twee).
Also, I believe Gillen to be drunk, unless he has been lying on Twitter, which would be an almost incomprehensibly vile act.
19/02/2009 at 23:48 Gap Gen says:
There’s an exploding robot kitty in this game though, right? Right?
19/02/2009 at 23:54 Scandalon says:
Or, you know, get over it. :P
20/02/2009 at 00:11 DSX says:
It sounds like we want to like it, want to love it perhaps even, but the predictable, repetitive, unoriginal gameplay ruins it. Reminds me of Dead Space sort of, with the exception of praise for the GUI.
Concerning “wot” – I too dislike it to a degree, even more when you say “this is just what some fucking idiot thinks about a game” is kind of an insult us as well as yourself, (beyond normal charming Brittish self-effacing behavior). We click in daily.. hourly even, not to read what a fucking idiot thinks, this should be clear.
20/02/2009 at 00:15 JKjoker says:
i barelly liked FEAR, it started ok but it got really BORING at the end (the ending was particulary shitty, specially the part where they take all your weapons and then you kill the “big bad” without a fight), i did like Condemned, a game that completely rips off fear but pulls all the scares just right and end just as its becoming annoying
its too bad Condemned 2 never got released for pc, i think i would enjoy it better than fear2
what i dont understand is that they are willing to make a sequel to so so game like fear without even having rights to the name but they refuse to make a sequel to “bestest” FPS ever No one lives forever 2 ? and a bit worse but still very fun Tron 2.0 ?, wth are they smoking ? drop the scare shit that you obviously fail at and go make some more nolf! (and bury Contract JACK where the sun doesnt shine!)
20/02/2009 at 00:19 A-Scale says:
Not just hourly, DSX. It’s the top site on my “daily” folder of bookmarks in firefox, which I open perhaps 10-20 times per day at work and home. I also checked it three times today in class while on my windows mobile phone. I love this site.
20/02/2009 at 00:24 Rob says:
Storm, teacup, meet ‘wot’, I think you’ll get along famously.
20/02/2009 at 00:29 AK says:
argument in the comments on a blog post focuses on extremely minor point of contention. Alert the press!
I like this blog. It’s 55% better than EG PC and almost as good as Tom Chick. This makes my sorrow all the deeper.
20/02/2009 at 00:30 wat says:
I absolutely loved the game. It’s not revolutionary, innovative, or particularly artful…but why does every game have to be to give it the time of day? It’s solid, well made, sufficiently creepy, very pretty, and damn fun. That’s enough for me.
20/02/2009 at 00:33 A-Scale says:
Moslems, Rumanians, meet ‘wot’, I fancy you rapscallions shall get on merrily.
LETS ALL USE OLD WORDS!
20/02/2009 at 00:35 Arathain says:
I like Internets people. They’ll discuss *anything*. Just not always what you’d expect them to.
I like the “Wot.” I got what it meant.
20/02/2009 at 00:46 Nick says:
Personally, I am outraged you don’t spell it thunk. Clearly you are alienating all right thinking people on the internet with this foolishness.
I also couldn’t help thinking ‘Oh my god, SAY SOMETHING!’ when the guy was like ‘There’s something moving in the woods about 8 miles away, I’ll just go and check’.
20/02/2009 at 00:46 Deuteronomy says:
I don’t think ‘Wot’ is a actually an old world per se. I believe it’s how people afflicted by being from England actually pronounce the word.
20/02/2009 at 00:48 Grey_Ghost says:
So the only thing I’ve been wondering about… Do you find out anymore info about , or more importantly the fate of, the Point Man? (the Players character in their first F.E.A.R.)
20/02/2009 at 00:48 Nick says:
A-scale.. what the [gently now - Ed] are you on about? You may never have ‘heard a schoolboy say it’ but then you are American as we are constantly and painfully reminded. Just stop it.
20/02/2009 at 00:52 A-Scale says:
I still find it pretentious and annoying, and apparently I’m not the only one. I too was a bit offended by Kieron’s explanation. This and the “internet angry man” meme seem to indicate that you fellows have a rather low opinion of people involved with games. Additionally, one could say the same about any critique of a work in any medium.
“We know none of you REALLY care about what some dummy (durr) has to say about art, so we called it Artz Jurnal to let people know that we aren’t taking ourselves too seriously.”
Come on.
20/02/2009 at 00:52 Helm says:
From the review it seems this is really similar to the first F.E.A.R. (haha I just remembered that initial commercial. DO YOU KNOW WHAT FEAR IS? FEAR… IS AN EMOTION) and as such not really to my taste. I think I got tired of a first person shooter doing an okay job of being a first person shooter around… Painkiller? Was that before or after Half-Life 2?
I thought the ‘wot’ was about ‘hi, we’re British’. Not that Keiron has explained it to be “this is what an idiot thinks about a game” I think I don’t like it. Self-effacement doesn’t suit opinionated people. Just use your powers for good, not evil, and whoever gets offended over you having opinions can go sit in the corner and cool down a while.
20/02/2009 at 00:53 Will Tomas says:
I think the ‘wot’ is rather Molesworth, in a very good way. That it’s old fashioned adds to its self-consciously outdated charm.
20/02/2009 at 01:04 jalf says:
How can “wot” possibly be pretentious?
Here’s what wiktionary says:
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wot#Etymology_3)
I really have no clue why you keep claiming it’s “an old word”. I only know it in the above sense, a kind of exaggerated British uneducated working class dialect kinda thing. It’s basically just spelling the world like it’s pronounced in some parts of England.
As far as I know, it’s not an “old word”, and I don’t see how it can be either antiquated or pretentious.
Am I missing something here? Was it a common way to spell the word in Shakespeare’s time or something?
20/02/2009 at 01:08 John Walker says:
My take on the “Wot” SCANDAL. I think the words “What I Think” as a title are silly and pretentious. Slightly spoofing that seems fun. We went through a whole bunch of suggestions for what to write at the top of reviews on this site, without using the word “review” and all the baggage that comes with that term. We’d already used up “Verdict” for Verdicts. “Wot I Think” seemed to convey the idea that it was our individual opinion of a game, while still being RPS.
I hope that the words of the reviews speak for themselves, and demonstrate that we’re not just another fucking idiot. But we are other people who enjoy games, who hope to express that enjoyment or dissatisfaction to you in a way that’s helpful and entertaining. That’s how I see it.
I’m sure that as time passes, it will stop being three separate words and just become the phrase by which you know our reviews. And it abbreviates nicely to WIT.
20/02/2009 at 01:09 AK says:
>Deuteronomy says: I believe it’s how people afflicted by >being from England actually pronounce the word.
My goodness. The ignorance. We pronounce it ‘hwot’ if we possess breeding and ‘woh’ if we do not.
>Self-effacement doesn’t suit opinionated people
Hwot he said.
20/02/2009 at 01:09 Flappybat says:
The best way I can sum it up is that Fear 2 is to Fear what Quake 4 is to Quake 2. The original was groundbreaking, the sequel is solid but much more generic.
I don’t appreciate most of the enemies being covered in glowing neon either.
20/02/2009 at 01:13 AK says:
I am less aggravated by it now I imagine how it would look if you titled it ‘What I Think’, but you should still have better ideas. This is taxpayers’ money you’re frittering away.
Actually IMO it should be called A Correct Opinion.
20/02/2009 at 01:21 John Walker says:
Heh AK – I like that best. I will begin to petition the hivemind for it.
20/02/2009 at 01:22 A-Scale says:
I like it. The double (or is it single?) entendre adds more charm.
Or you could always just go with “Opinions”.
20/02/2009 at 01:28 AK says:
Brilliant! I look forward to receiving my Blue Peter badge.
Anyway thanks for convincing me not to spend my money on this rather ordinary item, and for the effective deployment of the ‘Not sticking around?’ line.
20/02/2009 at 01:34 Radiant says:
Have you ever seen the film ‘signal’ ?
Wot happens is that a picture and sound is broadcast over the tv that turns people [violently] insane.
The great conceit of the film is that everybody, affected and non affected [fighting a futile escape] , is aware that something is turning people insane; so the question for everyone becomes “am ‘I’ insane?”.
Apply that to us making comments on a website [or posting on forums].
20/02/2009 at 01:36 Radiant says:
YOU’RE ALL CRAZY.
How are you really upset [when presented with a great bit of writing] about the god damn title?
20/02/2009 at 01:42 Deuteronomy says:
I’m with A-Scale. All Brits sound pretentious and affected. Have they not been exposed to enough American movies and TV? Seriously Canadians have gotten with the program time y’all do too.
20/02/2009 at 01:51 A-Scale says:
Y’all is mispronounced slang.
Wot is mispronounced slang.
Irony.
20/02/2009 at 02:00 Pattom says:
First of all, I thought it was pretty obvious that the incorrect spelling was tongue-in-cheek, and all opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.
I’d just like to say, after listening to (and sometimes participating in) the Internet hate for this game after playing the demo, I was absolutely thrilled at how much this felt like FEAR. I’m surprised to read that John considered the scares cliche and unsuccessful, though: jump scares are present, but I thought they’ve become the exception, rather than the rule, in Project Origin.
Also, there is a bunch of story in there: I’m a little disappointed that two images that became associated with Alma got hand-waved away, while FOUR different brochures were made to explain Armacham’s products.
Finally, the Abominations (experiment victims) are annoying to fight, and they become sharply less scary the more you fight them. However, I don’t think it’s fair to lump them with the assassins: they’re not scary, but their cloaks look cool and they’re really fun to fight in bullet time. Probably has to do with the lack of a grapple attack, too.
20/02/2009 at 02:08 dhex says:
the ending actually won me over. or won me over enough, at least.
damn shame about that invincibility stuff – i .e. you should clone boy in the head but his “pain animation” makes him invincible to your second shot for a second or two. very annoying in slow motion.
20/02/2009 at 02:18 Clovis says:
Can someone explain to me why everybody is so shiny in this game?
And to be on topic, I’ve never liked “wot”. I just don’t. BTW, how does one get an editor to put a little remark inside their comment as opposed to getting a full comment in response. ‘Cause that is awesome!
20/02/2009 at 02:18 ChaosSmurf says:
Yeah. The ending. It felt like I was 12 again, I didn’t quite get it so I looked it up on the internet. Then I was like “oh right, that’s how it’s done.”
It was awesome.
20/02/2009 at 02:35 Vincent Avatar says:
Out of all the things you could be talking about in the comment thread, and you’re all nattering on about whether or not you like the use of “Wot” in the title of the article series?
How interesting.
20/02/2009 at 02:44 Nick says:
Can we stop the borderline rascism/xenophobia already?
20/02/2009 at 02:53 Pace says:
Vincent; and welcome to the club!
20/02/2009 at 03:00 Deuteronomy says:
A-Scale. Irony intended. More irony if you didn’t realize that.
20/02/2009 at 03:03 Radiant says:
Well considering that not many people have played the game it’s understandable that people will go off at a tangent.
Since there’s no fighting over drm, review scores, piracy or console fanaticism you can actually see it as a good thing.
20/02/2009 at 03:04 Radiant says:
Not a great thing but a good thing.
A 3 stars out of 5 thing for example.
20/02/2009 at 03:06 Radiant says:
Alright 2 stars but only cause it needs patching.
20/02/2009 at 03:10 Phil H says:
Wot is perfectly cromulent for me.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game, it never personally felt like it was getting bogged down, there was plenty of variety in the layouts, and the mechs were a great point to blow off some tension(though not from the horror aspects, those have never freaked me out) after cautiously working my way through a horde of baddies.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw few points where I actively needed to use the Reflex Time. I’ve been obsessing a bit over the reviews on this one a bit and every single one of them seems to imply that you need to use the ability in practically every fight, which has been making me wonder if I was some sort of FEAR savant.
While the final fight itself left something to be desired(still miles better than the end of FEAR), the ending itself was outstanding, and was refreshing after a string of disappointing endings from big titles.
20/02/2009 at 03:13 Weylund says:
I downloaded the demo… and haven’t played it. I’ve been playing HL2 mods instead. Total lack of compelling… anything? Guess so. This review could have been summed up as “meh”, as far as I can see.
As for “wot”: you mean people come here to read the RPS guys’ opinions, and these selfsame people think they *aren’t* idiots? If I want the opinions of people that aren’t idiots I’ll go look up the phone number for Bill Trotter’s secret underground lair, then call up Charlie Rose and have him conference in. I like Kieron’s take on things – that is, in fact, why I come here, to get the ideas of fairly regular (if knowledgeable) guys about this stuff.
If you’re coming here for expert opinions, I have several houses in my area that I’d like to sell you at pre-crash prices. And some bunnies. With rabies. And venereal diseases.
20/02/2009 at 03:14 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Does this mean that FEAR 2 counts among the “Things Man Was Not Meant to Wot Of?”
20/02/2009 at 03:23 IdleHands says:
Yeah the FEAR series has really been more of a generic shooter with some shock moments, it’s never really been able to create a scary atmosphere (well for me anyway). Not that it’s bad, it does it well but I hate that developers think shock moments equals horror.
@JKjoker
I played Condemned 2 and . . no, just no. It completely lost everything that the original had.
20/02/2009 at 03:52 Muzman says:
My main objection is that these articles aren’t closed with “Eer, wot you fink, innit?”
20/02/2009 at 04:09 SuperNashwan says:
If you think these comments are bad, go take a look at wot happened with Kieron’s EG review…
20/02/2009 at 04:11 TeeJay says:
Wot I Think: F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin
I have come to the conclusion that FEAR 2 is about the importance of team communication.
via
http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/rabbit (Uncle Fred’s friendly Cockney translator)
Awright geeezzaa! Wot I Think: F.E.A.R. Bottle ov Glue Project Origin. Sorted mate.
Lawd above! I ‘ave come ter da conclusion what FEAR Bottle ov Glue is abaaaht da impawtance ov team communicashun. . , innit.
20/02/2009 at 04:22 Anonononomous says:
I think it’s a lot like Invisible War, just less bad. The first game was excellent so we expected a lot from the sequel. Then they consolized it by removing things like lean and the ability to shoot grenades and detonate them. The graphics are nice but highlighting enemies while in Reflex time is unnecessary and “gamey.” I really liked the open fighting areas and, as noted in the article, the hospital and school are excellent areas. But then I remember that I can’t lean and I can’t reassign things to Mouse 4 and I cry at the thought of how much more the game could have been if the PC had been the lead platform.
20/02/2009 at 05:13 Saul says:
I like ‘wot’. British people are generally more self-effacing and humble than Americans, and that is wot’s great about them. KG’s explanation was unnecessary for me, as it just expressed what I already felt. But then I’m Australian, and thus grew up with British, American and local cultural influences.
Americans often seem to have more trouble with cross-cultural messages, but I guess that’s understandable in what is quite an insular society. Not trying to be insulting– just my observations! (I used to be married to an American and lived there a while).
20/02/2009 at 05:53 A-Scale says:
Making sweeping generalizations is always and forever wrong.
20/02/2009 at 06:02 Nick says:
Tad hypocritical, no?
20/02/2009 at 07:29 Tei says:
Since I don’t understand english (I can prove this, go back and try to read most off my longest post). The “wot” thing is just on the departemente “things the authors of the blog put before the title of the article and I need to filter away to read the title of the article”. I don’t know, but It could be a good internet thing, like the particle [OT] in a mail-list, or the acronims IMHO.
About FEAR 2, I could say… I already have played FEAR (1), it was a good game (imho), and this one feels like a “map pack” expansion, a good one, more fun!.
20/02/2009 at 09:06 Hermit says:
I preordered this and played all of three minutes. I’ll actually play the game when Monolith, or more likely a fan, sorts out the 16:9 letterboxing.
Replayed FEAR1 in anticipation though, which was fun. Really not as scary/jumpy as I recalled though. I think I remembered too many of the funhouse scares so they didn’t exactly surprise me. Maybe I was easier to scare back in the day, too.
20/02/2009 at 09:13 StalinsGhost says:
Exactly. Exactly what I thought.
…
After having played the demo…
20/02/2009 at 09:23 Lewis says:
My biggest disappointment with Fear 2 – perhaps inevitibly, in retrospect, considering how the demo was crafted – is that not a single moment of it lived up to the silly edge-of-seat thrill of the half hour I played weeks ago.
And, having played through NecroVisioN recently, how much better that does Fear’s signature slow-mo melée thing. Come on. A game that doesn’t understand capital letters beat you at your own thing (though not, it must be said, at the rest of the game).
20/02/2009 at 09:34 Ian says:
Arguing about “wot”? Really?
20/02/2009 at 09:35 Gap Gen says:
Every American I’ve met smelled slightly of wee. I’m not saying all Americans do. I’m just implying it.
20/02/2009 at 09:39 phuzz says:
Using wot creates hordes of AIM.
Therefore it’s use is justified.
20/02/2009 at 09:47 Kieron Gillen says:
It gets a different class of annoyance than the word “review” though, so at least serves its purpose.
My explanation was overdetailed last night – I was in I Am Very Serious. That is Seriously Drunk mode, and probably shouldn’t have been on the internet. That sort of stuff kills a joke, even if all the stuff is there. It’s both self-effacing (It’s just an opinion, guys) and incredibly arrogant (Clearly we think it’s a spangly opinion, as otherwise we wouldn’t have bloody well written it). And very silly. In other words, very RPS.
EDIT: And, for God’s sake, can we talk about FEAR 2?
KG
20/02/2009 at 09:51 Kieron Gillen says:
Oh – for the record, I imagine the “Wot” prononced as Neneh Cherry does 2.40 into Buffalo Stance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EQCOshGwPI
KG
20/02/2009 at 09:53 MeestaNob says:
Wot the hell has happened to peoples sense of humour and whimsy?
Surely people can find more interesting topics to go off topic with than deliberately poor grammar used in a semi-humours context to highlight the officially unofficial nature of an opinion from someone fully qualified to give a officially unofficial opinion? Good grief.
So, FEAR2 then.
20/02/2009 at 10:06 Dinger says:
Honestly guys, I disagree. Talking about F.E.A.R. 2 is pointless after the Meer cat. KG’s review was a footnote, and Walker’s “Wot nobody would pay me to say” just seems pointless. You’ve been bested by one of your own.
QFT:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/09/feb/r1b.jpg
20/02/2009 at 10:41 Darkelp says:
Well with regards to FEAR 2, WOT I think is that its a good game. I enjoyed the first one, and its good to carry on the story into a new game. Plus I didn’t play any of the add on’s for the first one. Perhaps this is why I like it so much, because I didn’t have the crappy add ons ruin my overall view of Fear.
Plus Alma scares me every single time.
20/02/2009 at 10:49 Okami says:
This whole discussion is incredibly weird. In other words: Wot the fook?
20/02/2009 at 10:50 Tei says:
Sorry, I can’t talk about FEAR2, since I have not played it, and I don’t play to buy it, or download the demo. I like the original version, FEAR 1… back then, I loved that game. But now, I am more modern and I need a different type of satisfaction, with some RPG itemization, maybe with some character building.
I am happy FEAR 1 has been re-done with a slighty better engine, and a new history (that follows the older one). Reading your review, seems the game feels “long”, in the sense, the tricks become old before is finished. It seems the game lack “reinventation” (note: check World of Goo for a game with some reinventation). I supposed making a game perfect is something that need luck, you just can’t join some genius artist and engineers, drop buckloads of money, and get a perfect game, you also need luck. And withouth luck, FEAR2 is fail, because feels boring and repetitive after a while. But that is what I understand with your (VERY GOOD AND PROFESSIONAL) reviews. Theres a problem with your review, is soo profesional, soo enough perfect (in a 9.99/10 sense) that I have nothing(negative) to say about your review,.. or the game. I can even suggest to some random friend to buy the game, so I can also play it, as it seems, not enteryly, a waste of 50 €. Maybe even 40 good fun hours.
/talking about FEAR2 as you ask
20/02/2009 at 10:55 Tei says:
TL;DR version:
If Internet has nothing negative to say about X. X is not good or bad enough.
20/02/2009 at 11:36 Feet says:
Here’s Wot I Think about the wot.
It’s a British colloquialism, mostly used by those with thick London or “South East England” accents. The writers are from Britain so it’s not unreasonable to expect those kinds of British colloquial terms in the text or title.
Does that exclude people from understanding the complete meaning of the text that come from outside these fair isles?
Yes, quite possibly.
Has having to explain the reference and why it should be found amusing completely and utterly killed it? Oh yes.
In future, should people get offended or be bothered at the use of a term that does not adhere to the Queens English or appear in the Oxford English Dictionary?
Definately not, such people need to re-evaluate their priorities and learn to relax.
Should you the writer or you the reader care in this particular instance where the use is infact entirely incidental to the content of th article?
No, probably neither of you should, you’d better spend your time appreciating the wordsmanship of the article, the opinion expressed on the game in question, eating a sandwich or perhaps learning how to tie different kinds of knots.
There’s a skill that could be handy in the future.
EDIT: I haven’t played Fear 2, nor do I intend to unless I can get it for a fiver. COLLQUILLISM AIIIE!
20/02/2009 at 11:54 Diogo Ribeiro says:
RPS: Come for the I Think’s, stay for the Wot’s.
20/02/2009 at 11:54 Quirk says:
I’m mildly amused. I am familiar with the archaic “wot” – “A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot”, etc (which former sentence I think I first met in the pages of Asterix), and would tend to read “wot” as a word rather than a phoneticisation.
In fact, I would further suggest that using the word in the archaic sense is the Right Thing To Do – and so the title can be modified to:
Wot What I Think:
20/02/2009 at 13:15 DV-Doom says:
all i see in the Wots you think is focus on the bad points much like yatzhee does, but without the fun part. People who see a “Wot you think” for the first time will be influenced not to buy the game, because the Wots make games look like total crap full of not funny stuff and stupid gameplay or whatever you rant about…which isn’t the right thing to do about games that deserve our money. Is it? that’s wot i thing though…
i wont recomend rps to anyone new anymore. New readers dont get the suposed fun bit about on the wots and then come back at me with stuff like “i’ve read that F.E.A.R. 2 is crap, so i’m not buying it.” so I will try to keep them away from the danger of the Wots.
20/02/2009 at 13:27 Kieron Gillen says:
But FEAR 2 is crap.
(In your idiom)
KG
20/02/2009 at 13:51 JKjoker says:
Wots are awesome BECAUSE they focus in the bad points instead of being a hyped fanboy review.
Wot sounds just like someone actually playing the game mentioning that the instalation sucks, too much hd space, it takes forever, the game has problems loading up, it crashes, damn story is stupid, mayor npc looks like ass, main player character is a dickhead, choices are an illusion, the game is too short, the ending blows, you need a super computer to run it in low, etc… you no longer get this information from other reviews so im usually very interested on the wots, also the comments usually follow with additional information, that is, when they dont go out of topic like this time
20/02/2009 at 13:56 Hermit says:
@DV
The whole point of these topics isn’t too sit down and review a game. There’s plenty of FEAR2 reviews out there which will go “Graphics x/10, Sound y/10″ and so on.
If anything, these topics are pointing out the flaws to come to an important endpoint: “Is this game still worth playing despite these problems?”
you could always rename these pieces “ATTN Developers: I don’t think you wanted to do that.” Though the cultural reference may be 10 years too late.
20/02/2009 at 13:58 Jim Rossignol says:
DV-Doom: that seems a strange attitude to take *when the games are bad*. When the games are good – Crayon Physics, Burnout Paradise – the pieces we write about them are positive.
20/02/2009 at 14:00 Lewis says:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/09/feb/r1b.jpg
Is that Dexter? John, you selotaped something to your cat?
20/02/2009 at 14:01 Lewis says:
Oh, no, it isn’t. My bad.
20/02/2009 at 14:05 John Walker says:
And Saints Row 2, of course – a completely fantastic game, if sometimes sloggy.
That you’ve taken “FEAR 2 is crap” from the review above does a disservice to what I wrote. It is a game of mixed qualities, and I’ve described the good, the bad, and the grey corridors of in between. The pleasure of a WIT is that we’re not putting a score on a game, as if the quality of “7/10″ness runs through something like a stick of rock, but rather describing our experience.
20/02/2009 at 14:07 Ian says:
@ DV-Doom: Alternatively, you could recommend RPS but also remind them other places review games too.
20/02/2009 at 14:24 John Walker says:
Lewis: HTH
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/09/feb/dexfear.jpg
20/02/2009 at 14:33 Tei says:
Recomend RPS, why?
Wen a gamming blog has threads with 100 post, the commenting area is imposible to read, so people re-post opinions that are already expresed before. In some sense, the blog “die of sucess”. I don’t want RPS to die, there are posts of 9 comments, that are worth reading, and post with 80 comments that are worth reading. Most people that post here are worth reading. If RPS become more popular, this (IMHO) will end.
If you want to recomend a blog, use kotaku, is already wildly popular and very good. Somewhat totally biased to consoles, but he!, seems the 90% of gamming ocurr on consoles. No damage in recomending Kotaku, all the threads are already 100 post, and no one read each another wots.
20/02/2009 at 14:47 Ian says:
@ Tei: Even an article only has 9 comments there’s a chance opinions will get effectively repeated just with a slightly different slant.
And besides, surely the articles (and quality thereof) themselves are what’s important rather than the number of comments it they receive?
20/02/2009 at 14:49 John Walker says:
Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, shall we reel this one in? Everyone tell everyone you know about RPS, and we’ll make more money, which will allow us to work harder on RPS. We’ll take care of policing the comments to make sure they stay fantastic.
Meanwhile, there was a discussion about FEAR 2. (Or sellotape stuff to your cat.)
20/02/2009 at 15:15 Dinger says:
…So, the cat Walker used is about 78% black. I can’t believe it. Everyone knows F.E.A.R. is worth AT LEAST a 83% black cat!
20/02/2009 at 15:17 Gap Gen says:
I remember a moment in the first FEAR, where I thought I heard something so I turned around, but then turned back and found a 2×4 in my face. That was pretty scary.
As it is, I find a lot of ‘horror’ just vaguely unpleasant. Dead Space was good, but I was rarely ever scared. Perhaps I was playing it a notch too low on the difficulty scale, but you could pretty much see some things coming, and a lot of it felt like working at a well-designed butcher’s shop where the sides of ham aren’t quite dead.
20/02/2009 at 15:20 Simes says:
I still think that, as the first game was titled “First Encounter: Assault Recon”, the title for this game should have been “Assault Recon: Second Encounter”.
Other than that, I got nothing.
20/02/2009 at 15:33 Diogo Ribeiro says:
I propose a new meme – CritCats, where we sellotape vague videogame criticism to our cats, then post pics on the internet.
It will be glorious.
20/02/2009 at 15:33 Clovis says:
Ya, all these comments are ruining RPS. Now you are gonna’ have to create an amazingly complex commenting system like slashdot. Then you can start posting the same story every other day too.
20/02/2009 at 15:48 Quirk says:
There are ways and means of dealing with “too many comments”. I used to read Slashdot way back in the day, which had and has a ton of posters. They have a reasonably sophisticated comment filtering mechanism which, when you have an account, you can tune to your personal preferences, so you can browse only the comments selected as most insightful or wittiest (you can tweak for MORE SERIOUS or just turn up for the funnies); you can go for a healthy mid-range, hiding the weaker half the comments or you can read every last one, down to the trolls and spam. Reasonably good systems do exist for dealing with this sort of thing. If ever RPS needs to move to one of them, I’m sure they will.
For now, let’s just keep recommending RPS so the RPS crew can keep devoting their time to it. That way we all win.
20/02/2009 at 15:52 PHeMoX says:
“No One Lives Forever”
It’s level design wasn’t as good as say Blood 2 The Chosen though. Actually when I come to think of it, Blood 2 had a lot more atmosphere going for it, it felt more real some how. I guess the sci-fi went over the top with F.E.A.R 1 already, but somehow this series never got me scared.
The level design in F2 still seems to suffer from the room-corridor-room design. Why can’t people get this right? I mean, I say yes to claustrophobic corridors in horror games, but dang that doesn’t mean you should make rather dull designed levels. :P
20/02/2009 at 16:16 Muzman says:
You’ve been playing some other “No One Lives Forever”. My one has a collection of great-to-utterly brilliant levels. It was like if Half-Life wasn’t excessively linear or combat driven and was more interested in “life” occasionally than just “battle” (not a harsh crit; Half Life was just doing what the story called for).
There was a germ of that in Blood 2 but NOLF was where they took it to the …uh, next level (and then failed to get it back again for NOLF 2, which was pretty good but I think a lot of important people left Monolith by that point. Then came Contract JACK…)
20/02/2009 at 16:34 Gap Gen says:
I think NOLF 1 was the better game, but NOLF2 had more funnies – particularly the banana skin weapon, where I ran around India chased by policemen, slipping myself and them up. And that was before the amazing chase sequence…
Part of the problem with NOLF2 was the balancing with the leveling up – Russia was hardcore, and the rest of the game was pretty easy.
20/02/2009 at 16:40 Pags says:
NOLF 2 was the View to Kill to NOLF’s Goldfinger.
20/02/2009 at 17:18 drewski says:
I presume that’s a Bond reference.
I actually like the WIT title. It’s self deprecating and ironic.
I still haven’t played FEAR, despite buying it in a sale ages ago. For that, I blame EU3.
20/02/2009 at 19:08 SteveHatesYou says:
I agree that the comments are growing too large. They’re just getting cumbersome to sort through. A threaded system would be nice (and it would make utter nonsense like that “Wot” debate easier to ignore).
20/02/2009 at 19:13 SteveHatesYou says:
I propose a new meme – CritCats, where we sellotape vague videogame criticism to our cats, then post pics on the internet.
It should become the new standard format for game reviews. It’s both succinct and adorable.
20/02/2009 at 19:44 solipsistnation says:
I’m pretty much in agreement with this and Kieron’s review elsewhere… FEAR 2 is okay, but just okay. It has some good bits (the school in particular), and it has some boring or annoying bits (OH NOES ALMA IN YO FACE). It’s no “Contract JACK,” but it’s not even a FEAR 1 (which was also a combination of good and boring, but with a better ratio).
Snake Fist IS wearing a Shogo 2 t-shirt. And the troops (not the replicas, as I mentioned elsewhere) are the guys with the light-up kneepads who fall down easier when you shoot them.
20/02/2009 at 20:10 Markoff Chaney says:
I’m with KG on this one as well. Middling in every regard. Not one outstanding thing I’ve found in the game so far, and I don’t think I’ll keep going much longer. It’s polished, but polished glass is not a diamond. Even a flawed diamond has more value than a perfectly shiny hunk of glass. Such a shame too. The first one was quite enjoyable and felt really fresh when it came out. This actually feels like a step backwards in many regards. Finally, I still miss my lean.
20/02/2009 at 20:34 Pattom says:
I’m really surprised to see the strong opinions against this game and nostalgia for FEAR. I don’t think Project Origin is any better than FEAR, but it’s comfortably equal to it. I can’t think anything this game does much worse than FEAR did, so could anyone explain to me what the problem areas are? I know there’s the lack of lean and that enemies glow during Bullet Time, for starters, but that can’t be enough to ruin the entire game.
20/02/2009 at 20:56 John Walker says:
I like to think I mentioned one or two of the problem areas in the 1500 words at the top : )
20/02/2009 at 21:21 Anonononomous says:
Pattom,
Seems consolized:
No more leaning.
AI seems to be dumber.
Can’t remap stuff to mouse 4.
Can’t shoot grenades.
Enemies light up in Reflex time.
More general problems:
Game is lacking in the shadows that FEAR had.
No cool warping effect for explosives.
Guns look silly.
It just seems to be lacking on the whole. I expect a sequel to take what was in the original and add to it, not subtract. FEAR2′s only improvement is the bigger and more varied environments.
20/02/2009 at 21:29 Bret says:
I say all the reviews should be written in the style of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. I defy anyone to think up a good reason not to do this.
20/02/2009 at 21:50 CrashT says:
@Muzman: If you check the credits of Monolith’s games since the original No One Lives Forever you’ll see that nearlly all the Leads and a lot of the Designers are still there. Which makes the utterly average nature of Project Origin all the more frustrating we all know they are capable of so much better than this.
20/02/2009 at 22:10 Hashman says:
Wot about “A Goon With a View”..Excuse the Wot cause i is from the lower classes innit!!
20/02/2009 at 22:10 Deuteronomy says:
The lighting in FEAR 2 is atrocious. FEAR 1 had a much better dynamic lighting system, and a horror game is all about the lighting.
20/02/2009 at 22:33 KindredPhantom says:
F.E.A.R 2, is more of F.E.A.R but with better graphics and more variety of greys.
It is a game i have been looking forward to playing, i am slightly disappointed with the lack of lean, the abundance of medipacks and the fact even on hard it really isn’t that hard. But i do enjoy the background story explanation which was sorta lacked in the original until the last part of the game, the Giant Mechs, the gun battles and the helmet hud.
I am a fan of the F.E.A.R games I even played the disappointing expansions which I did find fun. What would redeem the game is if they release some modding tools, I could see fans of the game tweaking it.
21/02/2009 at 01:56 Pattom says:
@John Walker: Well, yes, I know why you were underwhelmed by it. I just meant that some comments were being negative without really being clear why they though this game is inferior to FEAR.
Thanks, Anonononomous. That’s a clear list I can understand, and now I realize why some are disappointed. Each little feature doesn’t strike me as a loss by itself, but so many little changes change the nature of the game for many people. That’s not something I had considered: my gut reaction was that it was much the same as FEAR, and that pleased me.
21/02/2009 at 02:08 Nick says:
Like Oblivion all the little utterly needless changes for the worse just eat away at the otherwise quite tasty fruit for me. That and almost all the weapons feel weak and rubbish. I reinstalled FEAR to make sure I wasn’t just imagining things but every gun there sounded meaty bar the sub machinegun (which isn’t meant to..) and just felt powerful. No slo-mo dual pistols grenade shooting and decapitation fun, which was all stylistically part of FEARs wonderful gun battles. No clouds of dust and debris.. no.. satisfaction? I still like it but if you transported the levels and story into the originals engine.. it would be BETTER. Which is just wrong imo.
I do like fly kicking doors open though.
21/02/2009 at 03:03 solipsistnation says:
@Anonononomous: You might check the graphics settings– I get shadows and distortion around explosions (and other stuff). I had to go set it all myself, though– it autodetected my reasonable-hefty system (dual geforce 9600GT SLI, dual-core 3.0GHz, etc) at mostly the lowest video quality settings. Once I set everything to the top it looked much better.
21/02/2009 at 05:08 Anonononomous says:
I wish I could concur with you, but I can’t. I just replayed the beginning of Climax, the last level, with everything set to high to test and I can confirm that both of those are lacking. During the psychic sequence that starts the level the elevator door and the PC both make shadows, but nothing else in the room does. Once you get out of the vision, nothing at all makes shadows. I also checked that grenades don’t do the cool effect from FEAR, and they don’t. Just a big puff of smoke. Also, you don’t get the ridiculous decals from shooting walls anymore. Rooms have small bullet decals on the walls after a firefight, but nothing like the foot wide chunks from the original. F2 does have rooms with proper shadows sometimes, but for the most part they are either missing or simple decals.
Here’s a video demonstration of the sahodows/lack thereof. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbzFfYwhz68 Now, I can’t confirm that he is playing with settings at full, but after my testing I don’t doubt it. You can even look at the pictures posted for this article and see the lack of shadows. The trophy case especially stands out. There is a bright light in the case but no shadows next to the trophies or the shelves.
21/02/2009 at 05:36 malkav11 says:
So it’s basically FEAR, but a bit shinier and with a few slightly more creative level designs? Disappointing. I mean, I love FEAR and all, but it was never perfect and they seem to have made most of the same mistakes all over again. Always frustrating.
And I am deeply in favor of the brief-review-taped-to-cat school of games journalism.
21/02/2009 at 05:40 Nick says:
I have settings on medium and I get the distortion shockwave from grenades in slo mo mode… weird.
21/02/2009 at 13:23 M. P. says:
My problem with the original FEAR was the ridiculous power of the unarmed attack in multiplayer. You could run absurdly fast if you had no guns equipped, so in a lot of the tighter corridor-based maps there would always be 1-2 smartarses who just threw down their weapons and bunnyhopped towards you while you emptied a whole clip of ammo in their direction and felling you with a single kick to the head.
My problem with that wasn’t that being fast and lightly-armed could beat being slow and weighed down by half a brigade’s worth of anti-tank equipment. That was fair enough. My problem was that, somehow, their flying ninja kicks were far deadlier than the half a clip of bullets that I was able to empty into their face by the time they reached me. I imagine most of them were under half health by the time they reached me, and certainly if they weren’t jumping around like hyperactive munchkins they’d get the WHOLE of my ammo clip in their face and that would certainly finish them off, but it just created so many WTF??? moments that I would die from a single kick whereas they were still standing and picking my slugs from the gaping holes in their torso that I quit playing.
If this were a sci-fi-themed game I maybe wouldn’t mind that much, but I find it harder to suspend my disbelief in a vaguely realistic shooter. Unless I imagine my teammates swapped my ammo clip for chocolate bullets for a laugh.
21/02/2009 at 15:19 Muzman says:
CrashT says:
If you check the credits of Monolith’s games since the original No One Lives Forever you’ll see that nearlly all the Leads and a lot of the Designers are still there.
That is a sad story. Losing people was the only thing I could think would explain the discontinuity. Maybe NOLF didn’t do well enough to give anyone confidence they were doing the right thing (still, sequel? I dunno anymore)
21/02/2009 at 16:59 Joseph says:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/09/feb/dexfear.jpg
Laughing my arse off (I typed it out, I’m so civilised, do I fit in now?). I want to stick one to my cat that is relevant to this topic. Maybe it should be something like:
Don’t Recommend:
RPS
(It might make the comments unmanageable.)
Oh wait, this is a F.E.A.R. 2: P.O. discussion? Hey!
Here’s my contribution, then:
More like, F.E.A.R. P.O.O. Just kidding:
Demo scared the hell out of me, repeatedly, but the combat felt… bad, and yes very probably it was mostly due to shooting guys in the face X (insert any number) times with an assault rifle just to have them give you the finger and return fire. At least, it felt like they gave me the finger.
I was also not very good with the killing, at parts, and the more careful I was not to die, the more I killed. It seemed like the only defense was a good offense, and as I didn’t have that I got frustrated.
The mech walker part was, however, enticing but it sounds like the full game doesn’t offer much more in the use of it, or many new exciting opponents / situations?
Cheers.
21/02/2009 at 17:01 Joseph says:
Oops. It’s supposed to read: “the more careful I was to not die, the more I was killed”. I am signed up but see no way to edit. Ta.
21/02/2009 at 17:34 Buemba says:
Hard to believe that NOLF and FEAR were made by the same people. NOLF and its sequel showed an ingenuity when it comes to set pieces, humor and environments that’s still unmatched in the FPS genre, while FEAR 1 and 2 were so boring I can’t bring myself to finish them.
FEAR has some good moments, sure, but I’d rather play NOLF’s worst levels (The “get spotted and it’s game over” office level from the first game instantly comes to mind) over it any day.
21/02/2009 at 20:42 malkav11 says:
FEAR -is- an SF shooter, though. It’s just..pseudo-modern-day SF. The enemies are meant to be a psychically linked hive mind army being controlled by some nutter, and Alma’s the result of some experiments or other. You don’t think we really have mechanized armor suits, hyperaccelerated reflexes, or rod guns, do you?
22/02/2009 at 00:10 Pundabaya says:
Fear2 – Good fun, nothing too original, qabout 8 times better than Crysis.
22/02/2009 at 04:58 MeestaNob says:
@Pundabaya
I don’t think I could possibly disagree more – it was close to game of the year for me.
22/02/2009 at 18:04 Brad Root says:
I am pretty sure the mech sections are just a bonus for long-time Monolith fans who miss and want another SHOGO. Hopefully they’re just a big teaser from Monolith suggesting they’re going to make a SHOGO2 because that would be the most amazing thing ever.
Also, I enjoy FEAR 2. Haven’t beat it yet, but I played FEAR and the expansion, and while neither (plus FEAR 2) are anything but blow-shit-up-with-a-shotgun-eyecandy-engines, they are satisfying games. I dig.
22/02/2009 at 23:14 The Almighty Narshe says:
Just finished the game. Oh my god. What a piece of ^^%$^%$&^%&%£&%^£&%^ ending.
23/02/2009 at 03:42 Anonononomous says:
Pretty sure it’s the first game ever to have that sequence in it, though. At least the first Western game.
23/02/2009 at 23:20 Psychopomp says:
Can we talk about the ending now?
Cuz, I shat a brick when I realized what was going on.
24/02/2009 at 16:40 PHeMoX says:
Quoted: “You’ve been playing some other “No One Lives Forever”. My one has a collection of great-to-utterly brilliant levels. It was like if Half-Life wasn’t excessively linear or combat driven and was more interested in “life” occasionally than just “battle” (not a harsh crit; Half Life was just doing what the story called for).
There was a germ of that in Blood 2 but NOLF was where they took it to the …uh, next level (and then failed to get it back again for NOLF 2, which was pretty good but I think a lot of important people left Monolith by that point. Then came Contract JACK…) ”
Mmm, when I come to think of it, I might indeed be confusing NOLF2 with the first game. Still, Blood 2 The Chosen had lots of great level design, eventhough it’s probably also just a generation older when it comes to standards, linearity and such – but really it managed to pull all that off in a good way.
25/02/2009 at 09:41 JKjoker says:
the first NOLF was about a strange plan to turn ppl into bombs, it has better story but the fps part while pretty good it was not perfected yet ( i seem to remember you couldnt free look, but i might be wrong) the game is also extremebly loooong and yet manages to hold your interest (boss battles were a chore tho), best of all, it ends with a bang!
NOLF2 was about making super soldiers, it has waaaay better fps elements (in fact i consider it the BEST fps ive ever played to date, and yes ive tried almost all of em) you can develop your character with points, there are less boss battles and they are better, the AI worked great, but sadly the game is much shorter and the story is not as interesting, the ending was lacking
Contract JACK was “so bad it’s horrible”, it took NOLF2, removed everything that was good about it : the story, the char development, the stealth, even the interesting ai and turned into some kind of zombie(ok they werent zombies but they behaved like them) shooter
26/02/2009 at 13:38 Werrick says:
I loved FEAR. I was so excited to play FEAR 2, until I realized it was a generic shooter and that they’d changed the gameplay.
I hate, hate, HATE shooters that don’t let you lean around corners!! Gimme a fucking break! FEAR was fine for this, but not FEAR 2? Why?!
*****************SPOILER ALERT!******************
I got to near the end of the game in the facility, after the second tram ride, when you get in the elevator and Alma comes at you the third time… I hammered that right mouse button as fast as I possibly could and it wasn’t good enough.
When the “skill” required to beat the game is represented by how fast you can press a button, the game loses me. I was inches from the end of the game and then that happened… I uninstalled it. I don’t have fucking patience for that horse-shit.
01/03/2009 at 13:42 KindredPhantom says:
@Werrick
That part was frustrating and killed me a couple of times, just press the button like your pressing a door bell. Their really isn’t much more to play after that.
The Ending was weird and also interesting and sets the scene for fear 3.