Have You Played... F.E.A.R.

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

F.E.A.R. may not be the best first-person shooter of all time but it has the best shooting of any first-person game.

Monolith's horror-shooter hybrid, which mashes up special forces shenanigans and J-horror motifs, is one of those games that can ruin others in the same genre. Only for a while, granted, but just try playing Half Life 2 after a F.E.A.R. session. Every gun feels like its shooting blanks and the ragdoll physics make every enemy look like a collapsing sack of spuds.

F.E.A.R. is one of the few games that transfers the momentum and energy of a bullet into its target, sending bodies cartwheeling across rooms and throwing up clouds of dust and debris as shots punch into walls. It's magnificently horrible and the ability to shunt everything into slow-motion at the press of a button allows you to appreciate the whole show.

The office environments become repetitive after a while, as if the real horror of the game is being trapped inside a fictional 9-5, but the action puts almost every other game to shame, and most action movies as well.