Short for First Encounter Assault Recon, the unique blend of first person shooting, sci-fi horror and lore tied together lovingly by the talented team at Monolith Productions. The ones owned by Warner Brothers, not the ones behind the Xenoblade series, to be clear. The game was developed with the PC in mind, and brought to PS3 and Xbox 360 afterwards, where the first game took off to great critical reception, likening the series to Half Life. Which is just about the highest honour you can receive as a PC focused shooter.

We haven’t see a new entry in this series since 2011, and before digging deeper, it might be easy to believe that the studio joining the Warner Brother’s publishing umbrella forced them into a licensed game purgatory. However, it’s worth noting that the first game, F.E.A.R., launched in 2005, following the acquisition. Unfortunately, we can’t really blame the disappearance directly on WB here. Through an exploration of the series history, we’re hoping to discover just why we haven’t seen any games in so long.

When the series launched in 2005, it was going up against quite a lot of other shooters with the rocketing popularity of the genre. However, Monolith smartly leveraged a few design decisions to make their horror game stand out, the first being the genre. Survival Horror games would usually be modelled after Resident Evil at the time, for no reason other than the fact it was the most popular series in the genre. More involved shooting mechanics than those common at the time made the game unique from a play perspective as well. The supernatural elements of F.E.A.R., which sees the player take control of the F.E.A.R. team’s point man and leveraged powers such as Bullet Time to give them a feeling of power against rather shockingly intelligent AI enemies. At least, all before the antagonist Alma takes it away.

Alma, and the intricate plot and lore that the series would grow and develop over its short run, stands as its legacy today. Throughout the first game, visions of a girl in a red dress haunt Point Man, and laptops provide insight on the terrifying experiments conducted on the woman named Alma. Her torture granted her frightening powers somewhat like the girl from The Ring and Slenderman – with an attitude. The entire plot of the third game takes off from a rather violent sexual assault she performs on the hero in the second game. Did I mention that this series is far less campy than its contemporaries?

Two expansions would come out of the original game that built on the story and characters, as well as fleshed out the also unique multiplayer modes on offer, which leveraged the shooting mechanics and Bullet Time, but it would be 4 years before Monolith would give us a true sequel in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. Unfortunately for all the novel things the game did with its story, the genre had caught up to it in the interm. The beginning of an unfortunate drop in the Metacritic average began here, as the team just didn’t improve much upon the base foundation.

Taking place almost simultaneously as the events of the first game, players take on the role of someone new, Michael Becket, an operator on the Delta Force Team that was supposed to support the team of the first game, as he undergoes his own trials thanks to Alma, and discovers his own dark relation to the events that shaped her. As alluded to earlier, the game ends with Becket being forced to impregnate Alma, setting up the events of the third game. F.E.A.R 2 was generally liked and debuted at the number two spot in the US and UK sales charts for the platform, despite the critics finding that the game didn’t do anything that new.

By the time F.E.A.R. 2 came around, the unfortunate reality was that the landscape of the medium had been irrevocably changed. Publishers all wanted to chase that money, forgetting that they had an audience already there. This environment is where we now find the development of F.E.A.R. 3, or F.3.A.R., which was handled by a completely different studio and generally received the same critical reception as the previous game. The sales were a different story altogether.

Day 1 Studios had previously assisted with porting the first game to consoles, but otherwise was completely new to the series. This resulted in numerous changes to the formula, many of them based on popular ideas at the time, such as a game needing Co-op to be successful. This led to the game showing the hero and villain from the first game teaming up to find the pregnant Alma, both for their own reasons. Generally though, the team at Day 1 Studios failed to capture the spirit of the original 2 games, which reflected in the critical reception.

There is a distinct change in the tone of reviews from F.E.A.R. 2 to F.3.A.R, with outlets such as Gamespot and Eurogamer being generally unimpressed by the scares, and considering the core of the series, that psychological horror, as secondary to the action. IGN’s Colin Moriarty literally included the words “Something set in a unique, horror filled atmosphere” to describe the game as a shooter first. While strong shooting was in the DNA of F.E.A.R., it was never really the major draw.

Really, the story of why F.E.A.R. disappeared is much about the story of why Survival Horror games disappeared. Publishers went on the action gold-rush that defined much of the previous generation, but left the audience they did have out in the cold. F.3.A.R. sold very poorly, and saw the studio lay off 100 people following disappointing sales. A 2013 attempted free-to-play online multiplayer game called F.E.A.R. Online would never even make it out of open beta due to a lack of support and general apathy from a gaming audience.

Unfortunately, while both the lacklustre sales of F.3.A.R. and the total failure of F.E.A.R. Online might mean that it’s time to pour one out for Monolith Productions best known game series, things have gotten better. The era of shooters seems to have come to an end, leaving them to return to more interesting ideas once again. More importantly, some high profile successes in the indy market and even from publishers such as Bethesda with The Evil Within series have started to see the genre make something of a resurgence. Resident Evil 7 made a glorious return to form and we still lament the fact we’re in the darkest timeline where Silent Hills never happened. I guess the moral of this episode of “Publishers ruin everything” is that even a totally dead genre can rise again.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Hitman Absolution

To be perfectly clear, it’s not like Hitman Absolution was terrible. It just failed to really capitalize on what made the series so popular – the sandbox levels that encouraged experimentation and all manner of interesting assassinations. The story was fine and the visuals top-notch but without its rich sandbox, Absolution felt like a stop-gap rather than a real step forward.

Alma Wade has horrendous power that including her giving everyone around her frequent hallucinations, horrific images and a strong sense of not being in control with a feeling of helplessness.  When Point Man finds Paxton for a second time he is riddled with images he has seen and has learned that he is the first born son of Alma Wade.. making him Paxton Fettels brother as well.  With Alma now free but everyone else still in shock from the mental trauma she had caused, Point Man still with his mind fresh with painful images, trying to come to some sort of realization of what he is, he raises his gun to Paxtons forehead. Let us just F.E.A.R. ends with a bang, as when this family reunites, it ain’t no picnic.  A second game was then released, called F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origins, but you quickly realize that some is very familiar yet different at the same time.  In the second installment you play as Michael Becket a Delta Force Squad member that is ordered to protective custody as the point in the game now is about 30 minutes before the end of the first game taking place in the same area.  In the second game Michael Becket is constantly getting hallucinations with Alma in it, even when is not near by as she usually is when she is attacking.  Becket awakes from one of his hallucinations, each time feeling like he is become more aware of something.   There is a point when Becket has the opportunity to take out Alma but before he gets a chance to, Point Man detonates the Project  Origin Facility’s reactor once again knocking Becket unconscious as the last moments of the first F.E.A.R.  play out  Once Becket is done take a nap in the middle of hell, he meets a new Commander with his team wiped out, calls himself Snake Fist.  Once reuniting with his higher ranking Officers they make their way the facility known as Project Harbinger (secretly known as Project Paragon) yet another program that tested, trained and even operated on to turn them into more super psychic soldiers.  Standing in the place that Becket and most likely even Paxton went through, as the small amount of Soldiers Alma did not destroy where killed by Becket anyway for feeding lies to all what they say were lab rats… but only the ones he trusted.  The rest of them encounter Alma again and Becket and her get into an intense hand to hand combat with her while even though Becket knows what she can do.  He starts to feel his abilities more and more but when looking into Almas eyes, she had the same look in them right before he almost killed her, as she stared at back at him with them.  She has feelings for Becket and he becomes unsure of how he feels toward her after learning everything he has known has been a lie.  What’s now left of Becket’s ruthless squad is Colonel Vanek who kills and before killing Snake Fist, he unmasks himself to be Terry Halford who is working for ATC and explains to Becket that he believes that he can kill Alma if they can get this special device that that can amplifies psychic powers.  This device is supposed to be located in an Armacham nuclear reactor on nearby Still Island, which houses a device. With this device, Becket can possibly defeat Alma with his own psychic abilities.  A huge battle then takes place between you, Replica Forces, Almas army and other enemy soldiers in which Halford dies.  Becket tries to use the device after finally in contact with her a third time, bit all it takes are simple images that Alma is forcing Becket see while hallucinating.  While a battle is still waging, Genevieve Aristide then sees an opportunity to seal Becket and Alma inside the device together, using Alma as leverage against ATC.  After a short battle Alma and Becket are now sealed inside the device, but then Alma seemed be trying to protect Becket but then she puts him an extremely, intense graphic hallucination where he is seeing himself get raped by Alma herself.  As Becket’s hallucination wear off and the battlefield clears, a pregnant Alma walks up to Becket as she puts his hand on her stomach… ‘Mommy’.  End game.

SPOILERS ARE DONE FROM THIS POINT ON

Now on to the Review of the third install of the series F.E.A.R. 3 which some key aspects of the previous game are not needed, but are good to know.  I definitely enjoyed the game more knowing the basics of the last two games, plus I have not even mentioned all the expansions, DLC and other smaller projects released in between each of the the major game.  F.E.A.R. 3 is very different from the the other games in a few different aspects, some for better and some for good.  For the first time you can play the game in co-op, whether it is the campaign or the bunch of different types of co-op modes that can be played online.  That puts a whole new spin on the franchise while it has also completely replaced online versus.  For those of you who don’t know and have not ready the re-caps above, F.E.A.R. 3 is about a super natural female that looks like a little girl named Alma, only she can cause ultimate destruction, make you hallucinate or just kill you.  She also has a couple of kids… for now, because F.E.A.R. 3 takes places 9 months after the last game and now we have Alma running around killing people pregnant.  Somehow how I feel like that can’t be good for the kid.

One Killer Co-op Combo

So we begin the game nine months after the end of F.E.A.R. 2 and since this family just never is able to kick back and relax, Point Man, who you begin the game playing as in an interrogation room after being captured by Armacham Security and are being held in an interrogation room.  Who just happens to show up but your brother, Paxton Fettel and since he is like dead, no one can see him but you really.  So along that plus on top of his mental abilities, he breaks you out from where you are.  Being that he has a grudge against for doing something to him in the first game that I won’t spoil, but it’s not the kind of thing people ever forgive you for if you catch my drift.  So why would he break you out?  To kill Mom of course… so she does not give birth to who the hell knows what.  You don’t even no what she is exactly, or which dimension or world she is in half the time but she has gone above and beyond to keep her unborn child safe, killing many while causing catastrophes.  It is the government based team named F.E.A.R. to stop her but they do a much better job of dying.  You wind up finding the father to be of Alma’s unborn through immaculate conception, well… only in this world.  Once the both of you find him Paxton uses his ability to posses him to gain more information on where Alma might be located.  Between what Becket learns of the brothers identities and what Paxton gets from his mind, spontaneously combusted and explodes, so that’s the end Becket making Alma a soon to be single mother, but she used it by now.

With this being a campaign that supports co-op, you can play as either Point Man or Paxton Fettel, but unfortunately not right away as every time you beat a level as the Point Man in single player you can than replay that level as Paxton.  If you just can’t wait I believe you can join a co-op game local or online and you can then play as Paxton while your co-op buddy is Point Man.  This happens to be the second game I have reviewed, released in June that playing the game in co-op makes a HUGE difference making it hard to score.  F.E.A.R. 3 does not suck playing the game in singleplayer, but I would rather play the game co-op with a monkey than by myself.  One of the coolest parts about playing co-op is the fact that depending on who you play as you will see the game differently as well as their very different abilities.  Point Man has guns through the whole game while Paxton can’t even pick one up, but he can posses some one with a weapon and then use that weapon, be it a gun or a crowbar.  There even Mech Units in the game now, which are hard to come by, but certain maps online have them making that mode even more fun.

Yep, he’s just getting possessed by Fettel

F.E.A.R. 3 was built for co-op and not just the special modes outside of campaign which are co-op, playing with a friend is so much more fun with the actually being challenges that will get XP to level up like Paxton suspending an enemy in the air while Point Man can slow down time and blast away at him.  The game singleplayer can get very difficult with out playing with someone else as the game really doesn’t scale down the difficulty of the campaign, when it realizes you are playing alone.. not cool.  But co-op is the new thing now a days and you almost can’t get it wrong, while I don’t hear any complaints from people when it is added to a game.  Although in certain cases like in F.E.A.R. 3 and Operation Flashpoint: Red River, the once online versus has been replaced with the co-op.  Now here my deal on it, co-op is almost always a blast for most games but it has an end to it, you can fight off waves upon waves of Zombies in  Call of Duty: Black Ops but unless you are exploiting a glitch or something, everyone will eventually die.  With online versus, or multiplayer it never ends, nothing is predictable, anything can happen and you only stop when you must or you just get bored or need a break.  That kind of multiplayer, you don’t always see though, that’s called super fun, easily addicting, featured packed multiplayer.  Now if you don’t get that right in a game, people just are not going to play it.  So if you had to choose the almost always fun co-op or take the risk of a games multiplayer sucking, I think many would choose the co-op.  I never thought F.E.A.R. had bad multiplayer but looking at numbers  everyone is usually playing the top 5 to 10 games online with the top 5 rarely changing, while the lowered end changes so often.

Having multiplayer and co-op in a game is ideal, but I think that if it came down to choosing one over the other, you might be surprised at how many people pick co-op.  Anyway I think it was a good move to include all the co-op in F.E.A.R. 3 rather than the multiplayer from the last games.  While playing singleplayer or co-op your characters level up simultaneously, by kills, streaks of kills, headshots, the online mode objectives, but most of all the challenges that will award you a ton of XP and keep getting harder.  Each level you complete in co-op, will see each players stats and which one did the best naming you the Favorite Son.  There are two different endings in the game which are obviously Point Man’s or Paxton’s just playing as the character in singleplayer will show their ending once beaten, but I am still not sure or not whether you can get an ending depending on who was the overall favorite son through out the a co-op campaign.  Point Man sticks to his guns and his slow-mo ability which I renumber saving my co-op partners ass a few times as he show SLOW-MO!  Paxton has more special abilities but is difficult to get used to as he has all physic abilities, one of them being energy blasts that he can shoot from his hand but more effective is his death grip he forces enemies into.  Even then Paxton most unique and strategic moves is his ability to posses his enemies which he will be able to use that body forever, but can be great to navigate with and even use for cover you say find an enemy in cover.  You will need your psychic energy is charged and be in the right range to possess someones body.

Sometimes a gun just isn’t enough, got to have a Mech

The online co-op in F.E.A.R. 3 is also a lost of fun to, especially because you can now play with up to 4 players in this mode and not just 2.  But bye bye supernatural abilities, as there not entirely gone in all mode, but trust me it is still fun.  There are four online multiplayer modes where  there is even a competitive mode.  The modes are Contractions, Fucking Run, Soul Survivor and Soul King.  Fucking Run could not be more self explanatory as all the people your are playing with have to fucking run and not stop for anything.  This is because if you look back, you will notice what looks like a giant fog called Almas wall which will end your life if it catches up with you.  Did I mention enemy soldiers come out from the woods to try and slow you down too and if anyone dies, it’s game over.  In Contractions it is almost identical to the Zombie mode many shooter fans have played Call of Duty: World at War and Black Ops where you have wave after wave of Almas minions which are just ugly as zombie to Soldiers.  Contracted any hits will bring another wave of enemies and you will have to build back up barricades as well as go into the danger zone to bring back new weapons or ammo to the safest area of the map, usually indoors.  Soul Survivor starts off as a cooperative mode fighting enemies together until Alma chooses a player and once you look into her eyes in is over.  That player is now against his former team-mates and must separate the rest of the team to take them out individually as each player is taken out they join the corrupted side.  In Soul King, all players start off as Specter Ghosts, and posses as well as kill as many soldiers as you can.  Every Soldier that is kills drops a soul that must collect as the player with the most Souls wins the round, depending on how many rounds the host sets the game up for among other tweaks that can be changed depending on the mode.  If a player dies they lose half their souls and can be picked up by other players.  If you buy F.E.A.R. 3 new, you get a code for more maps, as you cannot play the same map in another mode.  So it’s nice having more maps to choose from as the game ships with only three maps per mode, leaving much room for DLC.

The F.E.A.R. games were never really nailed down to one genre, whether it was a first-person shooter, survival horror or supernatural thriller.  Still it would be hard to bin down though in F.E.A.R. 3 the guns mechanics are smoother than ever giving the same s0lid feel as all the most played FPS’s today, so that aspect is better obvious more so while playing as Point Man.  However now that you can play Paxton many people prefer him instead and his unique abilities he brings to the game.  The thing is that I did feel that this game was indeed scary, but not as much as the previous ones.  This was also surprising with horror film vets working with the developers, such John Carpenter and Steve Niles, the actual co-op were actually inspired the films had done.  The game is a ton of fun though, especially in co-op and I CANNOT stress that enough.  You are buying a whole different experience if you get it with no plans to play with anyone.  You will be happy the game still gets scary at points as entering Alma’s w0rld, it’s hard not to and with the multiple endings as well the XP system you want to play the game more than once at least.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.

Here is the trailer for F.E.A.R. 3 explaining how the co-operative Contractions Mode works.  You will need a good team for this as you scavenge all the weapons you can and keep an eye out for Alma as she roams the map unsuspectingly waiting to spring on someone she spots.  F.E.A.R. 3 is out June 21st for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

F.E.A.R. 3 will have a scoring system in the game.  It will apply modes like co-op where you will compete for points by completing a different tasks, like harvesting corpses or stabbing three enemies in the back among others. This new challenge-based scoring system, gives you the option to work together for a high group score, work alone to score points or even back-stab one another to steal points and kills. You have many options in co-op when it comings the scoring system. The trailer explains it above.. check it out.  F.E.A.R. 3 will be out on June 21st in the US and June 24th in the UK for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 as well as the PC.

Warner’s released a new trailer for F.E.A.R 3 and it’s really dark and scary.

The trailer’s meant to give you an insight into the story of F.E.A.R if you’re yet to try the previous games out. It’ll fill you in, in vintage F.E.A.R style.

F.E.A.R. 3 is out next month for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC and is in development by Day One Studios.

Watch the trailer above.

A new F.E.A.R 3 multiplayer trailer’s been released. It’s full explosions, monsters and what not.

The game’s looking promising already, but we still are in two minds whether it’ll be able to live upto the expectations.

The multiplayer looks like fun and the trailer’s pretty neat.

The game releases for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Watch it below.

Fear 3 is shaping out to look pretty good and the series just seems to keep getting better with each game released.  More scary and a better shooter all around especially for being a horror one. John Carpenter and Steve Niles have a hand in the story of the game and if you don’t already know, John Carpenter is the horror legend with his Directing credit on the original Halloween film as well as his work on many other films.  Check out the trailer below, featuring some of the new story elements in the Fear 3.

The latest video developer diary for F.E.A.R. 3 covers the sights and sounds of the game.  It also proves that good old Alma chick is back and talks about how the environment is mixed with the sound of the game to add to its creepiness. F.E.A.R. 3 will be out May 24th for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

Source

Warner Brothers Interactive along with Fear 3 developer Day 1 Studios have released a new trailer for FEAR 3.  The trailer showcases that you can play as Paxton Fettel in the game, in all story levels after you’ve played a level as ‘Point Man’. F.E.A.R. 3 will be out this May for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.