Despite the fact that the title F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin has more punctuation marks than a heroin addict, there’s more to this action/horror/shooter than meets the eye.  During a time when shooters like Half-Life 2 and No One Lives Forever were being declared the best EVAR, Monolith’s original F.E.A.R. on the PC and later the consoles, was a revolution in kinetic, frenetic gunplay. Fierce, loud weapons, coupled with destructible environments and an AI enemy that constantly surprised, allowed the original game to rise above the medicore level design and convoluted plot, to take its place amongst the best shooters of all time, in my opinion.  F.E.A.R. took what you knew about shooters, shot it full of amphetamines and kicked your ass.

That’s a lot for the sequel to live up to. Find out if Monolith’s F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, published by WB Entertainment, rises to the challenge or sinks under the weight of expectations and convoluted storytelling.

Right off the bat, you don’t need to know a darn thing about the original game to play the sequel.   Monolith did a pretty good job at giving you enough information about the story and the people in it to keep you interested.  Information is passed along in a Half-Life/Bioshock hybrid. All the cutscenes are done in first person, but you’ll pick up intel along the way that fills in the gaps in the narrative.

The story, at least in the beginning is pretty straight forward.  You’re a part of the U.S. Military Special Forces and you’re sent in to secure a member of a corporation that accidentally caused the events of the original F.E.A.R. After playing through the first level, you’ll be surgically altered, which will allow you to slow time, which was a signature of the original game.

Before going any further, I do have to recommend that you play the game on the hard difficulty.  At the hard difficulty level, the AI is just so much better.  At the normal setting, any person, I mean ANYBODY that has played a FPS before will breeze through this game.  Hard definitely ratchets up the tension, AI awareness, tactics and provides a much more enjoyable experience, which may have accounted for some of the mediocre reviews you may have read before the game came out.

The singular gameplay mechanic of F.E.A.R.was the ability to slow time.  F.E.A.R. 2 returns with the slo-mo ability intact and also gives you the ability to move items within the envrionment to use as cover.  While not as useful as it sounds, when facing multiple enemies, tipping tables over or pushing carts between you and your enemy can be useful on the Hard difficulty. When you couple those two abilities with rock solid gunplay, a signature of the series, and you’ve got yourself a winner on a basic, shoot-em-up level.  There are several other factors that take the experience to the next level in F.E.A.R. 2.

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