Wednesday, 1 October 2014

F.E.A.R. 3 first play through impressions

Just as a disclaimer, I went into this game completely blind of what to expect, never played the first 2, was playing it for the co-op so didn't really touch the multiplayer modes and we played it on the medium difficulty.





Going into this game I really didn't know what to expect. I had heard the series be praised and just based on the name alone I expected a pretty dark horror. What we got instead was pretty far from that in my opinion, although it wasn't a bad game in the end.

This time around my teammate was my very lovely girlfriend and we decided to go with this game as her introduction and learning of shooter games. I actually didn't know that the 2 characters played differently, one (me) being a more typical shooter playstyle while player 2 had the psychic and psychotic powers to play with. In the end I think it worked out well being that 2nd player's playstyle was an easier one with not having to deal with reloading, recoil and crosshair spread.


Controls

For the most part the controls were pretty on point. I liked how they implemented their cover system where that was one of the big annoyances I had with Resident Evil 6. (Coming soon) Other than that I can't really say much, it has all the basic buttons, although one problem I had was that slow time was set as triangle/Y and switching to your secondary weapon is L1. I feel like those would have been a lot better had they been switched.


Gameplay

For expecting a horror game I can say we were pretty disappointed. Some of the atmosphere was creepy but a lot of the time there was tension and buildup that left us with nothing in the end. I think we both genuinely only got scared maybe twice throughout the game and those were just unexpected jump scares. Basically 95% of the enemies are either soldiers or basically something not 'supernatural'. I liked the slow time ability but I found myself most of the time using it defensively, where if I was getting low on life and needed to hide or quickly take out a guy behind me or using it while reviving my partner. It was also fairly easy. For the most part we breezed through the game, I think there was only 2 parts that we struggled at, one being a power armor 'boss' that we really had trouble with just because of how easy it was to go down. All in all despite the flaws the game played pretty smoothly and although lacking majorly in the horror aspect, we enjoyed the (short)time.


Design and Music

Overall there was nothing special in this part of the game. It was all pretty textbook stuff, basic soldiers and supernatural enemies, no mindblowing environments or creepy atmospheres. Music-wise I can't even really remember if there was anything other than the basic 'you're still in combat' music that played.


Story

It probably would have helped if I had played the other games but even then the story didn't seem all that engaging. I did like the way the story was told between each chapter or interval as they called them but other than that it seemed pretty basic and I was pretty disappointed that my choice at the end was determined by which brother preformed better throughout the game instead of being an actual choice.


Overall

Overall I didn't dislike the game but I didn't really love it either. It was just easy, short, and a bit of a letdown when hoping for a horror shooter. Other than that though it played well and had some enjoyable moments such as the enemy banter and Fettle's character was quite amusing to both of us. Just really wished it delivered the fear we desired and had a bit more than 6 hours of story mode. We did dabble in the multiplayer and although they are decent and don't stick to the vanilla FPS multiplayer modes, I don't see it holding my attention very long.

5.5/10

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