Rock, Paper, Shotgun

First there was the ludicrous nonsense over Sierra vs. Monolith for the rights to make the sequel to F.E.A.R., and the subsequent debacle that took place with Monolith organising a competition for fans to rename their sequel, resulting in Project Origin. Meanwhile Sierra stomped off with the ball, refusing to play nicely with others, and pretended they were making their own sequel which they would call F.E.A.R. 2. What a to-do it all was. Well, Project Origin is to be renamed. Can anyone guess what it will be?

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E3 this week, so a whole new bunch of trailers are trickling out onto the electric internet. I love trailers, whether they’re pre-rendered or in-engine, whether they feature in-game or are purely cinematic, whether they feature FMV or game or even if they feature the wrong game completely. Go trailers! Go trailers! Go trailers!

A New one for Monolith’s not-FEAR-except-actually-yes FPS Project Origin beneath the cut, complete with my frame-by-frame analysis/mild-sarcasm.
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Proof, if proof were needed that Project Origin is indeed a first person shooter videogame, has arrived in the form of two new in-game footage videos. It really is looking more and more like F.E.A.R. as the days wear on, which is good if you liked that game, and kind of an indifferent shrug “what-else-is-on” kind of situation if you didn’t. But perhaps it will be a kind of Super-F.E.A.R. which is both as good as the original game, and also better in ways that will please us enough to spend many dollars on its purchase and unite us in our taste for Monolith’s particular flavour of horror shootery. We can only dream. Anyway: short clips of supernatural slow-mo dude murder beyond the jump.
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Since the previous post was eye-rolling at a game’s unfortunate name, we’ll let Project Origin off from its RPS-traditional moniker-mocking and just deal with it seriously. Or, at least, as seriously as we ever get. Monolith have released some “Pre-Beta” footage of their forthcoming not-sequel-but-yes-but-no to their FEAR shootage. You’ll find it, along with second-by-second analysis, beneath the cut.
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Let’s start off with the robot and a SHOGO reference:

Thanks GameTrailers, your game trailering service is never robotic.

And there’s more after the jump.

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

We’d show you far more of ourselves, Gametrailers.

More floating down dingy corridors, more sudden cuts to a monster, and then some game footage that could come from any shooter ever. (Although Mr Flippityfloppity looks fun). Come on Monolith! What are you doing?

What do we want from Monolith’s ropey-named sequel to F.E.A.R.? Apart from less full-stops, obviously. More outdoorsmanship, more personality, more shocks, a much wider variety of angry men, please.

New screenshots suggest big robots. Happy-time! But what does the latest trailer suggest? Clicky below to find out.
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I’ll attempt to counterbalance my recent whining about Aliens with some celebration of Aliens.

I have only foggy, slightly disappointed memories of Aliens vs Predator 2 – handled by FEARmeisters Monolith rather than the first game’s Rebellion – so, hungry for Gearbox’s upcoming Colonial Marines, I though it was about time I revisited it. Specifically, to talk about its one moment of genius.
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I seem to be getting something of a bum deal here. First I get Peggle Nights, about which a big fat nothing is known. And now F.E.A.R. 2, which is apparently being developed in a secret underground bunker fifty miles below the Atlantic ocean, by a team made up of invisible fairies.

So what to tell you? I suppose a quick re-hashing of the confusion over FEAR’s sequalisation. But Kieron already did that when he wrote about the other FEAR 2, Project Origin. Very quickly, Vivendi own the name, while Monolith (now owned by Warner) own the game. So Project Origin (a name that I’m surprised to find out has grown on me) is a direct sequel to FEAR, in terms of engine, story and all.

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This piece was first published in PC Gamer UK‘s Long Play series.

Disney occasionally hit the high notes of imagination. The Tron movie was one of those: a neon-and-black vision of the innards of cyberspace, long before such concepts became bread and butter to our science fiction diet. Making what purported to be a sequel to that famed film as a videogame was a brave move, and it’s one that only just worked out for the best. Tron 2.0 is an awkward, flawed combat adventure that mixes annoying jumping puzzles with atmospheric brilliance and scenes of stark, cold beauty. Not one of the great games, perhaps, but certainly one of the memorable ones.
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While we’ve previously talked about how weren’t exactly impressed with the name they settled on – though we do like the list of close-but-no-cigars, including the immortal Little Miss Bloodshine – the actual whole story behind the change itself remains perhaps the most fascinating of recent times. Publisher keeping the name while the Developer keeps the engine has happened before, of course (with the separate directions the name and the game of Championship Manager went when Sports Interactive and Eidos split), but in this case it seems even more startling.

That the whole game is working under a new name doesn’t seem as shocking when it’s such a pure-mechanic thing as in the now-Football Manager. It’s just a bunch of numbers. The name isn’t a character. But Project Origin is just… F.E.A.R. 2, in any real way we can measure. It’s got all the iconic elements of the first game, including the bloody girl they stuck on the bloody box.
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