F3AR REVIEW

It looks like this franchise is a one trick pony.

   

Fear 3 is the sequel to Fear 2 which is part of the Fear franchise which consists of 3 games and a couple of expansion packs for PC. In Fear you take the role of Point Man who is part of an elite force called FEAR to stop a man named Fettel who has super natural powers and has been causing chaos all over the city. In Fear 2 you take the lead of Michael Becket who is part of a Delta Force Squad to take Genevieve Aristide into protective custody however nothing goes as planned and in the end Becket ends up being sexually assaulted by Alma. This time around you take the role of Point Man again with the help of his brother Fettel to escape the prison he is being held in, in an attempt to bring the family together. 

 

Fear 3 starts out with a flashback to the events of Fear with Fettel narrating the flashback. This small movie sequence helps bring players up to date with the Fear storyline and even helps new players understand what is going on without having to go back and play FEAR. We then cut into a scene where Point Man is getting interrogated to give the location of his former team mate Jim Sun-Kwon. Fettel then takes over one of the guard’s body and kills the second guard. Point Man then breaks free and kills the first guard that Fettel possessed. 

 

As gameplay beings, you will take the role of Point Man with his first mission being to escape the prison.  As you proceed you will notice that Fear 3 plays just like its 2 counterparts where you have to take cover and shoot hoards of Armacham Soldiers whose jobs are to stop Point Man. In the beginning you will have access to only 3 weapons which are the SMS, Gun and Shotgun. Later on you will get other weapons such as the Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Dual Wielding Uzi’s, and Nail Gun. From time to time you will also get Rocket Launchers as well as a suit of armor to get through a few missions. Collecting guns is practically worthless as they do not transition to other levels so if you’re saving your favorite gun for later, you might as well enjoy it now. 

 

You will also get 3 types of grenades which are: Regular, Frag and Shock. The shock grenade will come in handy when fighting the stages mini-bosses which are the only one who carry a nail gun and they’re your only chance to ever use one. The Shock grenade will paralyze anyone close to it for a couple of second before blowing up. During those couple of seconds you can also shoot anyone being shocked by it. While useful grenades it can be hard to aim and even harder to hit your target and Point Man just chucks them over so use them with caution as throwing them will leave you vulnerable for a couple of seconds. 

 

The strengths of Fear 3 are also its biggest weakness. Throughout most of the game you will be fighting wave after wave of soldiers and at times there doesn’t seem to be an end. That is fine and all but it can get annoying after a while. Not to mention if you die you will be thrown back to the previous checkpoint which might start off at a place you wish you wouldn’t start off. Expect to die hundreds of times before you finally get it right. 

 

Another problem with Fear is the trial and error part in which you must get it wrong many times before you finally get it right. Throughout the game you will be haunted by this creature that always grabs you and appears to draw blood from you which is fine because you heal later on. However at the end of the game you meet the same creature and it draws blood from you again as many times as before however this time you don’t heal but of course you don’t know that because they never explain anything to you and before you know it, you are dead. Another problem is that sometimes you will be stuck at a level and you won’t know where to go. You have to walk around in circles like an idiot until you realize that you have to pull a lever to open the path to the next part of the level. There are no maps or hints as to what to do so you expect to get stuck many times. 

 

Fear 3 aims to close all the holes from Fear 1 and 2 and it does so pretty well. The story line will explain how Point Man and Fettel came to be who they are. It also closes the chapter on Michael Becket who was raped by Alma and is now being held by the Aramcham soldiers. The only downside of the story is that it focuses too much on Point Man and Fettel with Point Man being a man of many expressions since he doesn’t talk and Fettel being a lunatic killer. There aren’t many supporting cast characters and the ones that are in the game don’t make much of an appearance at all. 

 

The game is also set up to be a Co-Op game where you must score as many points as possible by killing, collecting ammo, collecting psychic links with corpses and taking cover. You are awarded points in Bulk which means you have to kill so many soldiers with a certain weapon before getting 2000 points and such. While playing single player you will play as Point Man but as you unlock all the levels you can play as Fettel which has the ability to take over the bodies of soldiers. The point is to collect as many points as possible and towards the end whoever has the most point’s wins. Whoever wins will determine the ending of the game but either way, Alma’s fate is sealed. 

 

There are a total of 8 intervals in the game or should I say levels. Each level gives you an average of 45 mins of game time which gives you a total of 5 – 6 hours of gameplay but that time is doubled if you play with Fettel through the story mode once he has been unlocked. Multiplayer is something new in Fear 3. You don’t get your king of the hill or death matches here. Instead you get “Fucking Run” in which 4 players must move through a wave of enemies before the time runs out trying to outrun Alma’s wall of death. “Contractions” is a game where you barricade yourself and kill hoards of enemies coming your way. The twist is that every time you win the game will get harder with fog effects blocking your view as it gets closer and closer to your locating making enemies harder to see. In “Soul Survivor” 1 player will take the role of the “Spectre” which possesses enemies in an attempt to kill the other 3 players. “Soul King” all players must possess enemies and kill each other while collecting souls with the highest soul collector winning at the end.

Graphically Fear 3 is good looking and the ambience truly gives you the feeling that some shit went down. However as nice as fear is, it is a hog when it comes to power. I was playing using a GTX470 with a couple of medium settings in order to peak at 60FPS. I swapped my 470 for a 560 and while performance increased a bit, it didn’t increase by much. A few settings will lock your game at 30FPS and other settings will just slow it down. The System Requirements which are: “Windows XP or later, Intel Core 2 Core E7500 2.93 GHz Video/Graphic Card Geforce 200 series, sound card Direct x9.0c or Direct x10. or higher” but I am running an Intel Core i5, GTX560 and 12GB of ram and my system is still having trouble keeping up. I feel sorry for those try to run this game in low profile. 

The sound effects are nice but they are not jump out of your seat scary. Some voice acting could have used some better work and hearing Fittel talk is like hearing a drag queen complain about her day on the streets. Seriously we don’t need Fittel to be hissing all the time what gives. What made the first Fear game scary where those moments where you are in a dark place and everything is going crazy. Those moments are rare in Fear 3 with the only part being slightly scary is the end where you are by yourself and all this crazy flash backs are coming to you with the creature known as the Creep always following you. In Fear 3 however they try to mix those same sound effects while you are fighting soldiers or while something going on in the background that distracts you. You can have awesome visuals but if the sound effects don’t match, then you have a disaster. 

Verdict: Rent

My main problem with Fear 3 is that it tries to recycle the same formula of Fear 1 and Fear 2. It tries to use the same gameplay style as its predecessors without introducing anything new. At times I felt that the developers didn’t pour all their hard work with this game. At least in the Fear 1 and 2 you could easily find your way but Fear 3 feels like it needs a GPS system to guide you. I do like how the story is closed on Alma and it may be possible for another game to be made but I just hope they do a better job than they did in this one.

GamePlay: Fun at first but gets boring after doing the exact same thing in different locations. 6/10

Graphics: Very nice rendered graphics and cinematics with some very nice effects, I just wished that it wouldn’t hog all the resources available. 9/10

Sound: Great Sound effects but most of the time they will be blocked off by something in the background that distracts you. Voice over could have been better. Way better. 6/10

Story: Closes the story of Alma and her 2 sons but focuses too much on a character that speaks with his face and a ghost that sounds like a tranny. 7/10  

LifeSpan: 2 different characters to play as with a different ending offered, offers 12 hours of gameplay. Co-Op adds more of a competitive feel and multiplayer offers something new that isn’t offered on any other game. 10/10

Total Score: 76/100