F.E.A.R. 2 - Project Origin demo review.
 

I finished the demo of F.E.A.R. 2 - Project Origin from Monolith Games.

The first thing I noticed that greatly displeased me was the onscreen HUD, the blue outline around your field of vision. What the sweet fuck is it with this shit in some games ? Who the fuck cares about them ? To me it seems some kind of console bullshit making it's way to PC games. I don't care what kind of goggles or visual aid device your character wears, or if he's a fucking cyborg - it shouldn't be displayed on screen all the time. It takes away valuable screen realestate and more importantly, is distracting. It also constantly reminds you that you are playing a game - more so if it didn't exist. In my opinion, most mature players won't appreciate it.

The graphics are very nice and run really well. I ran the game at 1920x1200@32bit with 16X Anisotropic filtering, 4X FSAA and every other setting at Maximum or On. The major components of my system are an Intel quad core Q9550 CPU running at 2.83GHz, 4GB of DDR-2 RAM running at 1066MHz with around 3.2GB available to my operating system of Windows XP with Service Pack 3, and a nVidia GTX-280 GPU. Using FRAPS, I got a constant 60 frames per second. Later on, as you make your way to outdoor environments, the framerate does drop a little, to around 30-45 frames per second during certain times. This is acceptable and very playable, and as usual the worst offender would be the anisotropic filtering, especially at 16X. Turning that option down or completely off would most likely keep the game running at a constant 60 frames per second at all times.

Playing the game is scary - I get goosebumps. Walking along dark corridors with ominous lighting and strange sounds, waiting for something to jump at you at any moment can be very nerve wrecking. For me, this is also enhanced by playing in a dark room with headphones late at night and into the morning. I like it. Psychologically, most people like to be scared. When scared, the body releases adrenaline which, among other things, heightens your senses.

The much touted (by the developers) artificial intelligence that is supposed to be agile and take cover and be able to flank you realistically is nothing more then annoying. What seems to happen most often is that the enemy simply strafes to extreme left or right. Their movement seems to be enhanced (sped up) during strafing and they just rush from side to side. This isn't intelligent at all. It's almost cheating.

Another aspect I wasn't too pleased with was the blood effects. It looks like red syrup and it has an unnatural way of exiting the body of it's host. It's too bright and has a gloss. Blood was much better represented in the previous F.E.A.R. titles - more realistic, if you like. Now, it's almost comical.

The textures and amount of detail on everyday objects like posters, walls and cardboard boxes is fantastic. The weapon textures are also superb. That's one thing even Crysis lacked and I very mush disliked about it. Crysis had, and still has superb graphics, yet you could, for example, pick up an ordinary item like a can (and there were many around) from a table or the fridge and not know what the can was supposed to contain or have contained - simply because the textures were washed out and low resolution - even when the game was otherwise maxed out.

The lack of leaning support is simply not acceptable. All previous F.E.A.R. titles supported leaning left and right. What professional gamer doesn't use leaning to peek around corners and during battles ? Unacceptable.

At the end of the game there is some video footage that shows some nice scenes from the full game and what players can expect. It looks pretty good - but the thing that struck me was that nowhere in that promotional gameplay footage were they showing that stupid HUD. Funny that. No doubt they too were thinking that the promotional footage looks cooler without the HUD. I can not emphasize how much I hate the HUD in F.E.A.R. 2.

Some time ago I decided that I would not rate games. I prefer the Gaius Julius Caesar method - Yay or Nay. It's that simple. I mean you either like a movie or you don't. You either like the game or you don't. The rest is simply personal justification and reasoning as to why or why not. I vote Yay - and look forward to the full game.

The full game will use Steam as it's copy protection/DRM. Fuck Steam!! Fuck Monolith!! Fuck Warner Brothers!!