In Depth Look
By Chris Hudak
Special-forces types are trained and geared up to handle anything, to expect the unexpected, and to kick any asses that may need kicking. But what happens when they're called into a situation that A) makes nonsense of the normal world, and B) has already caused one special-forces team to go missing? That's the question posed by developer Monolith's forthcoming F.E.A.R., a first-person shooter that takes the reliable standard of bad-ass military ops, pits it against the surreal, creepy horror found in movies like The Ring or The Grudge, and tops it all off with showy action in the vein of The Matrix.
Visually, it's a gorgeous game, with a hard-core military ops feel that would do Half-Life 2 proud. The locales we've seen so far -- mostly a military base, with lots of functional corridors, equipment warehouses, offices spaces, and so forth -- are very straightfaced and feel like real places, without a lot of silly rooms full of improbable tech. The gunfire and ambient solider-chatter sound dead on, and the enemy AI looks nothing short of brutal. These guys will flank you, draw you into ambushes, flush you out with grenades, and coordinate assault teams against you. Apparently, the only thing they can't handle is... a little girl with her hair hanging in her eyes.
Uh-oh. That's never good news, is it?
The game's intro is rather cryptic and downright disturbing. Let's just say it involves a nervous-looking soldier sitting in a small, dark room (apparently losing his mind by degrees), some footprints that seem to come from nowhere, and a wee bit of frenzied cannibalism on the part of said mind-loser. All we know for sure when the game starts is that the player enters an unspecified base with a squad of special-ops types (First Encounter Armed Recon, and in the space of five minutes, the player is on his own again. His compatriots have apparently been reduced to ashes where they stand, with subjective reality occasionally melting into a soft blur.
This is what we'll call the "fear effect:" When something is happening that ought not to happen. Objects move by themselves, freaky-looking phantoms prowl the darkened halls, and the screen starts a bullet-time-like slowdown as visual and audio effects take on unreal clarity. You can suddenly watch the slowed lick of flames, suddenly hear each plinking shell casing hitting the floor when the bloody, relentless combat erupts. Which it seems to do a lot.
Certain fear moments are carefully scripted to move the story along, but later the player can enact this effect himself for the kind of balletic, slow-mo attacks some video games call "focus" attacks. When gunfire isn't appropriate, players can also execute slide attacks and melee silent kills to take down enemies with minimal fuss. When the situation goes really bad, however, it's not always possible to deliver such showy, elegant takedowns.
And when things get bad in this game, they get creepy. Monolith is mostly mum on many story elements, as they should be, but when the video/audio starts getting mushy and time slows down, you can bet the game's got some bad stuff in store for you. Consider this: You're riding in an elevator, pumped up from combat, all but certain you'll face a hail of bullets when the doors next open. Then the light in the elevator starts flickering and stuttering, cutting in and out. And in one of those moments when it flickers on, you see it, just for a moment: The girl, right there next to you, in the corner, watching you... Brrrr!
read the rest here http://gamesdomain.yahoo.com/pc/fear/preview/67750
download demo here http://gamesdomain.yahoo.com/pc/fear/files/1121858
some screenshots plenty to look at
http://gamesdomain.yahoo.com/pc/fear/gal
This game looks wicked, cant wait to buy it, i don't buy many games, but i do like games such as Half life 2 and Doom 3-Type games ...
http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showthread.php?p=287979
hey vamp there is a pc demo u can download if you want'Originally Posted by Vampmon
http://gamesdomain.yahoo.com/pc/fear/files/1121858
sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet
A world of invisible people. We pass them without seeing them, as casually and indifferently as we pass our own reflections in store front windows. Do they really live among us? Or are they citizens of another country, a vast and teaming gulag of the dispossessed. No, don't turn away. Look in their faces. Do you see your brother? Your mother? An old friend? Someone you went to school with? Someone you once loved? No? You didn't see them? Not today. Tomorrow you could.
Safe! This will take about 4/5 Hours on my 300K connection!
I've never downloaded anything larger then about 35MB ... :O
I'll use Download Accelerator Plus for this, cos knowing my brother he'll fuck something up!
eh well thats a great plan man then man i will download it too but first i am going to wait till i finish downloading something off of azureus and then i can download it. I want to get it. huge file though but it will be worth it
get left is a good program to resume with been using it for long time
better link, i was getting around 600 kb/s, still not fast by any means but...
ftp://ftp.sierra.com/pub/sierra/fear..._spdemo_en.exe
works for me, if it dont for you, your pc sucks
yeah its faster thanks
i had stopped other one though cuz i was testing out get left again
ch33rz
Well, i just got back home and its only 56% completed!!!
Still, you're right, it'll be worth the wait, from what i've seen on the screen shots. :icon_comp
Its a good game i played it a few days ago,its pretty scary too the little girl will feck with your head in the demo,oh and you better have a good pc to run it with full effects this game makes hl2 look old school.
Rest in peace mother
16.1.2006
You will always be with me.
yea it does take alot to run it, but its worth it imo, just like bf2...sorta
Remeber shogo kids, I think this game is gonna change things
ok, demo downloaded and i've been playing for 10 mins, cant say graphics are as good as Doom 3 or Half Life 2, but its ok ... one thing i can say about this game is its bloody creepy.
vampmon whats your rig? i played hl2 on full but had to get a new graphics card for fear.
Rest in peace mother
16.1.2006
You will always be with me.
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