FEAR 2: Project Origin, picks up where the original left off. The always frightening Alma is still around, however she’s no longer the scary little girl that you would find lurking in the shadows, instead she is a young adult, and just as furious and murderous as ever. This is a game that is heavy on the scare and light on the boredom. The excellent pacing and special effects help create a world that is both believable and hauntingly dreamlike at the same time. Sure it suffers from the same shortcomings that the genre seems to have trouble shaking, such as feeling like an on-rails shooter at times, but on the whole FEAR 2 does a manageable job at throwing at you enough enemies and scares to keep from reminding you that you have to follow a certain path before you can move on.
Conventions aside, there is a more varied level design this time around. Gone are the levels full of nothing but cubicles, instead there are environments from labs to primary schools, and the tech running everything ensues that the framerate rarely drops when the action gets heavy – which is often. While you may be able to count the different types of enemy you’ll be facing on one hand, they do take turns in showing up are varied intervals making sure that they don’t repeat too often to become boring to fight. The AI running the enemy soldiers is rock solid and really gives you a run for your money. They will turn over tables and take cover behind them, they creep along low walls and fire at you from the shadows, and they will flank you and throw grenades to get you out of cover so they can take some shots at you as you scramble for the next free spot behind an object. These guys really do have some clever programming dictating their actions and they do pose a serious challenge, this in turn will make you play at a more methodical pace. Sometimes you can safely predict what they are going to do next because the level design will often bottle neck into a small corridor eliminating options that the soldiers can choose to do, but when it comes to the more open spaces you’ll find yourself in shooter heaven, even if the world around you might feel like hell. From cloned soldiers to scientific monsters, they all come at you hard and won’t stop until you either stop them or they slaughter you. Very convincing stuff.
The atmosphere in FEAR 2 is what you would expect from Monolith, if you’ve played the original or played the Condemned games you’ll know what sort of scares I’m talking about. Alma will appear out of nowhere, ghosts will rush you when you least expect it, enemies will show up in the middle of a supernatural haunting, there is always something around the corner ready to scare the absolute crap out of you. You might think that some of the scares may sound a little bit scripted, and whilst that is true some of the time, the majority of scripted moments happen in places where you least expect them. Even if you somehow manage to predict the arrival of a scare, the very nature of the subject matter is brutal and supernatural and still manages to chill the senses. Hollywood would love to make movies as thrilling as this and it’s this very reason why a love scary games that are done so convincingly. The special effects and filters used here are of a high calibre really giving the player a forcefully compelling narrative that can frighten you to your very core. (A note to anyone around someone playing this game, do not creep up behind the player, you might get hurt). Not everything is perfect in FEAR 2, there is a simple bullet time effect that adds very minimal value to the way that you play the game, there are some bugs that refused to load textures on certain levels forcing me to reload levels (this happened about five or six times), and there are certainly moments of déjà vu when you come across some old tricks of the trade that Monolith have used more successfully in previous games they’ve created. It almost seems wrong though to overlook the excellent and solid foundations make this game so enjoyable, but there are still some issues that should’ve been ironed out by now and of course there is some totally useless Quicktime events in here that do absolutely nothing to advance the story, luckily they only make an appearance a couple of times throughout the game making it very easy to forgive.
I did have some trouble with the multiplayer, it wouldn’t connect to games, it had trouble finding people, but on the couple of rounds I did play the tech didn’t let down the experience at all. Lag times were minimal and the action was actually pretty exciting. There are stand death matches to be played and the most impressive bit is that the weapons all feel very balanced relying on an almost rock paper scissor approach. You can split up into teams and even play a mode that puts human players against mech teams. There is fun to be had here but it’s not going to be reason why you buy this game, the single player campaign is where most of the fun is at. Overall: FEAR 2: Project Origin is well put together and delivers exactly what it promises. There are plenty of scares, a ton of action and a pretty lengthy campaign. When you’re finished with the main story there is some multiplayer fun to be found, just don’t expect anything you haven’t seen before. There is nothing overly wrong with this game but it will feel like familiar ground in more than a few places, however I guarantee that you should walk away from the experience very satisfied. Monolith has created another great game that does the very popular first game proud. It might be more action orientated and the arsenal might eliminate some of the dread associated with creepy corridor shooters, but it’s one hell of a ride while it lasts. F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin shouldn’t be missed for those that love their games full of blood-spattered terror and anxiety fuelled action.
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