Rock, Paper, Shotgun

51lly 5equ3l: F.3.A.R

By Alec Meer on March 24th, 2010 at 7:15 pm.

Fans of increasingly unadventurous corridor shooters, rejoice! It appears Monolith’s horror-FPS F.E.A.R. is due another sequel, and it is to be known as Effthreearrr. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? I have a dream. The dream is that Effthreearr and Thifourf are released on the same day, and the resulting shop displays look so ridiculous that no publisher ever attempts to bring about game titles which look like a rich idiot’s personalised numberplate again.

The reveal of F.3.A.R. comes from a scan of a next month page in Spanish gaming mag, which is currently being hosted over on mega-forum NeoGAF. A magazine which probably isn’t in Warner’s good books right now, I’d have thought: this was surely meant to be an E3 reveal. All the pic confirms is the entirely unsurprising revelation that Alma – sorry, 41m4 – returns, and also some dude who’s been shot in the head. Is that someone important? I couldn’t finish the second game.

Next month, Bio3hock, followed by Ma33 3ff3ct. Oh, we’ve done this merry gaggery before, but the foolishness of marketing men never fails to amuse.

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85 Comments »

  1. 24/03/2010 at 19:19 iainl says:

    wip3out continues to be one of the best games of all time, and SE7EN was a pretty darn good film. So at least it doesn’t seem to affect the content itself.

    • 24/03/2010 at 20:20 yaster says:

      That was 90′s. Everybody knows in 90′s everything was better, sun was brighter, grass greener, ice creams ice cremer, heck, even numbers in titles made sense.

      Also:

      2011: F.E.4.R.
      2012: F.E.A.5.
      2013: F.6.a.r.
      2014: 7.E.A.R.
      2015: F.E.A.8.
      2016: F.e.9.r.
      2018: F.E.A.R.
      2019: 2.E.A.R
      2020: F.E.3.R.
      2021: …

    • 25/03/2010 at 10:02 Pod says:

      hexjoke alert

    • 25/03/2010 at 15:20 Kirkburn says:

      You ask, I deliver:

      After F.e.9.r you get F.E.A.R, B.E.A.R, F.E.C.R, D.E.A.R, F.E.E.R. F.E.A.F.

      I like the idea of a game called F.E.C.R.

    • 25/03/2010 at 15:41 Uhm says:

      First Offense Unit Recon.
      First Incident Violent Encounter

  2. 24/03/2010 at 19:19 Javier-de-Ass says:

    hehe. a lot of noise being made about this title. whatever, marketing monkeys will be marketing monkeys. fear 2 was such an awesome game, and it looked like monolith was in a bit of trouble there for a while so I’m just really happy to see the third game is coming

  3. 24/03/2010 at 19:20 Nighthood says:

    I would say that “Fuhthreearr” would be a much better way to pronounce it than “Effthreearr”. Regardless, what an awful name.

  4. 24/03/2010 at 19:22 Linfosoma says:

    F.U.|3.A.R.

    • 24/03/2010 at 19:27 Linfosoma says:

      Since my comment is kinda lame Im going to elaborate. The first game was a fun shooter with great AI, I never particularly considered it an horror game but the gunplay was fun.
      The second game was a dumbed down mess, with worst graphics, worst AI and predictable “horror”.

      I have no confidence in F3AR’s quality, and as silly as it seems the name is the first indication of lack of cohesive design in the series.

    • 24/03/2010 at 20:01 Nova says:

      @Linfosoma

      Agreed. One of the best things about FEAR was the AI and the unpredictable enemies and the AI sucked in the second part.

      There were so many great moments in the first FEAR were the AI surprised me.

    • 25/03/2010 at 14:14 PHeMoX says:

      F.E.A.R and good AI?

      Well the dynamic AI in the first part was pretty much still the equivalent of scripted events that were area-sensitive, albeit a convincing one.

      I don’t quite agree that it was all that amazing, with the exception of the fact that the AI made more realistic choices when it comes to cover. That was a definite milestone.

      I haven’t quite experienced this same AI so much in F.E.A.R. 2, but I haven’t played it much at all either, so I wouldn’t quite know how this ‘evolved’.

      I think F.E.A.R 2 mostly got crushed because it didn’t do a lot of new stuff, nor was all that graphically impressive.

  5. 24/03/2010 at 19:23 Choca says:

    If Driv3r is any indication, this does not bode well :D

    • 25/03/2010 at 14:16 PHeMoX says:

      I strongly disagree! While the out of car action was pretty weak, the game had a lot to be happy with.

      Great graphics (better than San Andreas at the time), some of the best car physics until then, the good Hollywood-style chases were still there. Oh, and motorcycles! Yes!

      It’s actually a pretty underrated game for what you get! Despite the out of car-on foot-combat choke points it features.

  6. 24/03/2010 at 19:23 blah says:

    It’s gotta be a real mistake this time around; 3 is right above E on the keyboard… unless they used the keypad!!!111!!!!11!one! :P

  7. 24/03/2010 at 19:24 Tiny says:

    The next one is going to be called F34r. This process of numberisation will continue until all game titles consist entirely of numbers. And so leetspeak will conquer the universe, severing all sensible linguistic ties. It is just one step in the relentless crusade of artificial intelligence, which will eventually reduce everything to not just numbers, but ones and zeros. Yes. They should make a game about this.

    Also yay F3ar! I thought it actually made slightly more sense for something like Wip3out, it fit the whole hip ‘n cool aesthetic it had going on. Everything else is just silly though. Why couldn’t they have just called it Left FOR Dead, I may have actually bought it then.

    • 24/03/2010 at 20:36 Pantsman says:

      Because it’s a four-player co-op game. Unlike “F3AR” and “Thi4f”, “Left 4 Dead” is actually a pun, and so is perfectly aligned with RPS’s ideological axis.

    • 24/03/2010 at 20:38 James G says:

      Reminds me of my entry in the Crysis competition all those years ago:

      It started slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the early incidents noticed online and in text messages. Then on the occasional shop sign, a missing couple of letters on a sign, forming a rude word, or else incomprehensible gibberish. At the stage no one even realised there was a problem, just isolated cases of laziness, stupidity, or vandalism. But soon is spread to newspapers, books, legal documents, and people begun 2 take notice. The wrld was in the grp of a global letters shortage. Th vwls were frst to strt dsapprng, nd for a tm symb0ls nd nmb3rs wr drftd 2 tke th3r plc. It ws shrtly aftr C4r0l Vrdman ws made rdndnt tht 3v3n cnstnts st3d dssprng, thn nmbs. Thn w3 cdnt wt t all…

      And you don’t want to know what happened to the punctuation.

    • 24/03/2010 at 23:47 The Colonel says:

      What larks! I too hope the marketing team and the design team are not the same brain-dead morons (but do I mean the morons that produced this new title OR the morons that created Fea2?)

      It pleases me that thanks to stubborn repetition, most people I know that play Left5Dead give it its proper title, and I occasionally hear people I don’t know calling it that. I live in hope that Left6Dead will be along shortly.

    • 25/03/2010 at 14:18 PHeMoX says:

      What’s F.E.A.R. 34 going to be named then?

      Also a ’4′ as ‘A’ … really?? Nah.

  8. 24/03/2010 at 19:26 SirKicksalot says:

    That artwork is ATROCIOUS. It reminds me of shitty ’90s straight to VHS movies starring, uh, Michael Dudikoff fighting Sumerian demons or something.

  9. 24/03/2010 at 19:26 Stizzy says:

    Ah, this reminds me of DRIV3R from back in the PS2 days..

  10. 24/03/2010 at 19:28 Brumisator says:

    The best effort in failed l33tsp34k is probably
    Thi4f…Thiaf? No, Thief 4.

    FEAR 1 was nice, FEAR2 was an okay and short shooter with better envoronments, F3AR will most probably be a mindless, unimaginative, but enjoyable shooter

  11. 24/03/2010 at 19:30 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:

    Yeah…I am bit lost too in the story now, FEAR 1 was bloody fantastic, but the second…dunno, I got bored (guess I’ve become spoiled by the open-world free-roamers like Mercenaries 2 and tend to expect something more than just “go forward and shoot”) and eventually annoyed by the QTE’s (somebody shoot the smartass who thought it’s a great idea…execution-style preferably)…somebody cares enough to do a FEAR 2 in 60 seconds video, anyone?

  12. 24/03/2010 at 19:33 ChampionHyena says:

    What about Deus Threex?

    Echoing sentiments about F.E.A.R. 2, nostalgia about F.E.A.R., etc.

    Do people still play F.E.A.R. Combat, by the by?

  13. 24/03/2010 at 19:36 Nick says:

    I hope its more like the first one. I’m not sure what it wa about the second, it just felt all wrong.. I mean the demo was quite fun but the main game was very meh.

  14. 24/03/2010 at 19:36 Zwebbie says:

    I never understood why F.E.A.R. got a sequel in the first place. It seemed to me to be a fairly unremarkble shooter, which only stood out because the maps were great at manipulating the AI and the overall execution was pretty good.
    The creative aspect, however, was rather lacking. Sewer, warehouse, office and lab levels, where you shoot genetically engineered masked military men? It seemed to me that they didn’t have enough good ideas and concepts to fill one game, let alone that it had so many good ideas that it needed two sequels.

    • 24/03/2010 at 19:45 Javier-de-Ass says:

      yeah, it was fairly unremarkable. and horribly bland. repetitive levels. they fixed all that in the sequel. and added a great art style. fear 2 is the man

    • 24/03/2010 at 20:27 Jesse says:

      Javier, your sense of taste is becoming more and more questionable as this thr3ad goes on.

    • 25/03/2010 at 04:33 Thants says:

      I have to agree. I played F.E.A.R. recently for the first time, and the levels were terrible. I enjoyed the shooting but the levels were so bland and repetitive that I quit half-way through. They managed to be completely linear, but still really easy to get lost in and spend 15 minutes circling around looking for where you’re supposed to go.

  15. 24/03/2010 at 19:59 Pidesco says:

    This what we get when FEAR sells truckloads and NOLF moves, like, two units.

    We, the customers get what we deserve I guess.

    • 24/03/2010 at 20:50 Miker says:

      Hear, hear. Played the original No One Loves Forever over winter break and loved it.

    • 24/03/2010 at 21:44 Ozzie says:

      Afaik Monolith doesn’t own the rights to the NOLF IP, so they couldn’t make a sequel even if they wanted to.

      But I miss the days where Monolith made creative and sometimes even colorful games. Condemned, FEAR,…not interested. :-/
      It’s hard to believe now, but Monolith even developed a nice Jump ‘n Run called Claw back in the day…

    • 24/03/2010 at 22:40 Wilson says:

      @Ozzie – You mean with Captain Claw, the cat vs the pirate dogs and rats? Or were you a pirate? Either way, that was an awesome game!

    • 25/03/2010 at 14:40 PHeMoX says:

      It’s why Monolith made Contract J.A.C.K and A Spy in H.A.R.M.’S Way that were basically a No One Lives Forever-style games.

      Same goes for F.E.A.R, hence the whole Project Origin name-drama thing.

      They should really make a new Blood game though!

    • 25/03/2010 at 20:41 Optimaximal says:

      It’s why Monolith made Contract J.A.C.K and A Spy in H.A.R.M.’S Way that were basically a No One Lives Forever-style games.

      Erm, they WERE NOLF games… A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way was NOLF 2 and Contract J.A.C.K. was an spin-off to fill plot holes.

      Activision Blizzard hold the license now, but it won’t make enough money for Kotick to use it.

  16. 24/03/2010 at 20:03 Taillefer says:

    0ut of 10.

    • 24/03/2010 at 23:51 The Colonel says:

      This thread has made me laugh a lot since the Thiaf fiasco but this actually made me laugh out loud for quite a long time. A geniune lol.

  17. 24/03/2010 at 20:23 Jacques says:

    We should probably just rename both F3AR and THI4F to “shit”.

  18. 24/03/2010 at 20:32 TheSombreroKid says:

    i litterally fell asleep when reading about this this morning, theres nothing involving slow motion killing more boring than the fear series, why of all monoliths ip’s have they picked this to get 2 sequals! ahem condemned 2 on pc would be a start.

  19. 24/03/2010 at 20:35 Shadowmancer says:

    The inevitable Half Lif3 I hope Valve doesn’t stoop that low.

  20. 24/03/2010 at 20:58 redrain85 says:

    How did I know Monolith’s next game would be yet another FEAR title. Sigh.

    The Monolith of old is gone. We’ll never see the likes of NOLF from them again.

  21. 24/03/2010 at 21:14 Solario says:

    If the artwork for the third one is to be believed, then F.3.A.R. is disturbing on far more levels than the previous ones. Isn’t Alma suppose to be a little girl? WHY IS SHE PREGNANT?

    • 24/03/2010 at 21:19 Gap Gen says:

      In the first one, she was an adult who was put in stasis as a child, so projected herself in the killer-ghost world as a little girl. I think.

    • 24/03/2010 at 22:29 luminosity says:

      And then in the second one she psychically steals your character’s sperm to impregnate herself. Presumably the baby will turn out to be the anti christ or something similarly original.

    • 24/03/2010 at 22:29 Jason Moyer says:

      If you had played the second game, you’d already know the answer to that.

      I’m only disappointed that the main character for the third game apparently won’t be the child that is conceived in the second game. That seemed like the most obvious move ever.

  22. 24/03/2010 at 21:20 Adamos says:

    To me monolith started going down from F.E.A.R. 1
    Hey monolith how about a new Blood game. I want JOJOjojo

  24. 24/03/2010 at 23:04 PHeMoX says:

    Yeah, F.3.A.R is a cool title. Not so sure if it would confuse people rather than be a good indication for a sequel though. :p

    Thief 4 has to be Thief 4, not Thi4f as that doesn’t make sense whatsoever to me. :)

  25. 24/03/2010 at 23:31 l1ddl3monkey says:

    Silly name aside: will it be nerfed like the last one or will I get my lean key back?

    And enemies that don’t have bulletproof faces?

    Ok; the heavy armoured guys is fair enough, that armour is meant to stop bullets. But having to shoot normal grunts in both eyes with Penetrator rounds was just annoying.

    And fuck off with your ghosts and quick time events. I thought it was ok, not as good as the first one though.

  26. 24/03/2010 at 23:51 Mugrul says:

    And yet nobody except me finds “Left 4 Dead” cringe-worthy as a name?
    Yes, I get that there are 4 people who are left amongst the dead or for dead, but I don’t need it driven home with 1337 5p34|<
    Left for Dead would have been fine, but I suspect Uncle S.A.M (Stupid American Marketing) got in the way.

    • 25/03/2010 at 08:53 Collic says:

      I think we all let that slide because it’s a pun, so it’s at least clever, rather than just being embarrassing. The box art helps too.

  27. 25/03/2010 at 00:46 Acosta says:

    011001100111010101100011011010110010000001110100011010000110010101101101

    Here, the future of marketing, only for your eyes.

  28. 25/03/2010 at 02:07 wheres_my_gun says:

    will they even bother releasing this one on pc? FEAR 2 lacked lean, had no dedicated server code, had annoying inaccessible graphics settings (letterbox, film grain), and had a generic COD spray and pray feel compared to FEAR 1 which had proper settings and a more solid FPS feel (rewarding well-placed shots and aiming). There was a huge outcry on the monolith forums following PC release regarding these issues but the response was very poor. Also the quicktime events were atrocious as they always are. “more like the original” in terms of gameplay and actually working on the PC would be great. in terms of content something really new seems necessary at this point.

  29. 25/03/2010 at 06:19 The Colonel says:

    Theorietically, shouldn’t this game have been called Third Encounter Assault Recon? They could have done away with the need to use numbers and l33t altogther. Maybe it would be better to just say First Unknown Causes Kommando – Insertion Team?

  30. 25/03/2010 at 08:23 Ragnar says:

    And now we will have to wait even longer for a new NOLF. :sad:

  31. 25/03/2010 at 08:33 robrob says:

    Still not as bad as calling a film Sesevenen.

  32. 25/03/2010 at 08:48 Collic says:

    I don’t really care about fear. The first one was good, since then it’s just been diminishing returns. Scary observation for the day; if this stupid title warrants a blog post and discussion, the marketeers are doing something right.

  33. 25/03/2010 at 12:16 Hyoscine says:

    “Effthreearrr” totally sounds like a browser based RPG.

  34. 25/03/2010 at 14:12 Bob says:

    Alma = 41m4? As in, 41 meters in the fourth dimension? Do we get tesseract warehouses now?

  35. 25/03/2010 at 15:20 suibhne says:

    Reminds me of Ma3a from TRON 2.0, which in turn reminds me that Monolith was once capable of creating something more interesting than ridiculous, awful F.E.A.R. 2.

    This is unwelcome news to me. Monolith needs new material or a total reboot in the worst way.

  36. 25/03/2010 at 16:52 Gabbo says:

    Okay, so the title is ridiculous, and Warner is probably unhappy it leaked early, but this is a case of no news is bad news. We’re still talking about it, making some noise. Marketing department did it’s job.
    If only the rest of Monolith could make a game interesting enough to back it up.

  37. 25/03/2010 at 20:05 Damien Stark says:

    I think the really important thing to remember here is that Se7en was a really good movie.

  38. 25/03/2010 at 21:05 Jaz says:

    F.E.A.R. already had a stupid name.

  39. 25/03/2010 at 21:10 The Colonel says:

    Oh my God they’ve won! It’ll be “I’m lovin’ it (doo doo dooo dooo dooo)” all over again! No wait. Didn’t they just suffer almost an entire comments section of abuse for making such a shit sequel? Remind me regularly about F2AR and I will not develop enough hazy goodwill to buy FE3R.

  40. 26/03/2010 at 05:14 Deuteronomy says:

    I liked Fear 2. A lot. I will get this.

  41. 26/03/2010 at 05:24 dethtoll says:

    Yeah I liked FEAR 2 as well, which may be illegal and/or possibly up there with pedophilia, Nazism and raping kittens if the reactions I get to that revelation are any indication. Besides, that completely fucking ballsy ending makes up for any faults the game may have had.

    But I don’t care. As long as that’s not the actual boxart (I doubt it will be though, ‘Lith are just trolling us) I will buy it. Stupid title and all.

  42. 04/04/2010 at 17:24 KindredPhantom says:

    I F3AR this is just the beginning.

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