F.E.A.R. (video game)
F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon is a first-person shooter survival horror video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Vivendi Universal Games and Warner Bros. Games. It was released on October 17, 2005, for Microsoft Windows, and ported by Day 1 Studios to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. TimeGate Studios has released two expansion packs, F.E.A.R. Extraction Point in October 2006, and F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate in November 2007. A direct sequel titled , was released in February 2009, and a second sequel, F.E.A.R. 3, was released in June 2011, which was developed by Day 1 Studios.
The game's story revolves around a supernatural phenomenon, which F.E.A.R.—a fictional special forces team—is called to contain. The player assumes the role of F.E.A.R.'s Point Man, who possesses superhuman reflexes, and must uncover the secrets of a paranormal menace in the form of a little girl Alma.
F.E.A.R. was well received by critics, scoring 89% on GameRankings, and The New York Times calling it "as thrilling and involving as Half-Life." A "Director's Edition" DVD version of the game was also released. The DVD included a "Making of" documentary, a director's commentary, a short live-action prequel and the exclusive first episode of the promotional P.A.N.I.C.S. machinima. A
related Dark Horse comic book was also packaged with the DVD. Along with the Director's Edition, F.E.A.R. Gold Edition was released. Gold Edition included the Director's Edition and Extraction Point. F.E.A.R. Platinum Edition features the original game and two expansion packs.
Gameplay
F.E.A.R. simulates combat from a first person perspective. The protagonist's body is fully present, allowing the player to see his or her character's torso and feet while looking down. Within scripted sequences, when rising from a lying position or fast-roping from a helicopter for example, or climbing ladders, the hands and legs of the protagonist can be seen performing the relevant actions.A prominent gameplay element is "reflex time", which slows down the game world while still allowing the player to aim and react at normal speeds. This effect is used to simulate the character's superhuman reflexes. Reflex time is represented by stylized visual effects, such as bullets in flight that cause air distortion or interact with the game's particle effects. F.E.A.R. lead designer Craig Hubbard stated that Monolith Productions' primary goal was "to make combat as intense as the tea house shootout at the beginning of John Woo's Hard-Boiled." He continued on to say that "defeat... enemies... with style" was crucial to this goal and that reflex time plays a large role in "mak the player feel like they are an action movie hero."
The game contains weapons based on non-fictional firearms, such as pistols, assault rifles, and submachine guns, as well as entirely fictional armaments like particle beam weapons. Each firearm differs in terms of ammunition type, accuracy, range, fire rate, damage, and bulkiness. The latter characteristic is crucial, as more powerful/specialized weapons tend to be more cumbersome and slow the player's maneuvers. Unlike other games of the genre where lighter/smaller weapons tend to be useless, F.E.A.R. does not scale guns on a curve, so any firearm is potentially deadly in most situations. Monolith Productions stated that it aimed for "... a balanced arsenal where each weapon serves a specific function", rather than "... just going with a bunch of real-world submachine guns and assault rifles." F.E.A.R.
Compared to other shooters where melee is usually a last resort, F.E.A.R.'s melee is a viable instant-kill alternative for taking down enemies. The stocks of all firearms can be used in close combat. Lighter weapons, while being less powerful, allow the player to move around more quickly, increasing their chances of melee. Movement speed is maximized if a player holsters their weapon, which also allows them to engage in hand-to-hand attacks with maneuvers including punches, kicks, and slides.
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Multiplayer
F.E.A.R.On August 17, 2006, F.E.A.R.
The PC version of the game used the PunkBuster program to prevent cheating. However, in December 2007, Even Balance discontinued PunkBuster support for F.E.A.R. in favor of the second expansion, F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate. While PunkBuster-enabled servers will still check for and protect against known cheats, the program will no longer automatically update. Because of this, many players with an outdated version of PunkBuster are unable to play in PunkBuster-enabled servers without being automatically kicked from the game.
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, just like the PC edition, only have online multiplayer. There is no split-screen local play.
Plot
In the year 2025, the military contractor Armacham Technology Corporation has developed an experimental unit of telepathically controlled clone supersoldiers known as the Replicas. Their psychic commander Paxton Fettel goes rogue and takes command of the Replica prototypes, seizing control of the ATC headquarters in Fairport, Washington and killing all occupants.A covert special forces unit, F.E.A.R., is deployed to Fairport in response to the crisis. The team is commanded by Commissioner Rowdy Betters, and consists of Spencer Jankowski, Jin Sun-Kwon, and the newly-minted, unnamed Point Man. The team's mission is to eliminate Fettel, operating in conjunction with Delta Force. Fettel is located by means of a satellite tracking device and hunted by F.E.A.R. but manages to evade capture. F.E.A.R is later joined by Delta Force operatives led by Douglas Holiday to assist them in capturing Fettel. Over the course of the night, Jankowski mysteriously vanishes and the Point Man witnesses unexplained, and occasionally life-threatening, paranormal phenomena, including increasingly-vivid hallucinations that frequently afflict him, all of which are centered on a red-dressed little girl named Alma.
Laptops found in the course of the mission, remotely hacked by Commissioner Betters, provide details regarding Fettel's background; as a part of ATC's "Project Origin", he was raised to become a telepathic commander of the Replicas and that he is the son of Alma, a powerful psychic. The files mention something called a "Synchronicity Event", in which a comatose Alma telepathically linked with Fettel when he was ten years old and resulted in several deaths. The files also mention the existence of another child of Alma, who was born before Fettel.
All clues lead F.E.A.R. to believe Fettel is being controlled by Alma, who was locked in the Origin facility when ATC closed down the project owing to the danger the woman posed; Fettel is searching for that same facility to free his mother. The Point Man travels to the abandoned structure, fighting back both the Replicas and ATC guards, who have received orders to cover up the whole affair. When the protagonist comes to finally face Fettel, he is drawn into a hallucination where the Point Man is Alma's first son and is thereafter enabled to kill Fettel himself. Fettel's death results in all Replica forces shutting down.
Alma is nonetheless freed when her storage chamber is opened by ATC researcher and leader of Project Origin, Harlan Wade, who felt guilty over the company's treatment of Alma and who was actually her father. The Point Man is then called to sabotage the structure's reactor, running a gauntlet against Alma's ghosts before the whole location explodes. In the aftermath of the detonation, a Delta Force Black Hawk helicopter extracts the Point Man from the rubble, rescuing him. While he and the survivors of the F.E.A.R. team survey the results of the explosion from the helicopter, Jin wonders what happened to Alma. Just then, the helicopter loses power, and Alma is seen pulling herself up into the cabin: the destruction of the Origin facility has not stopped her quest to get closer to her son.
After the game's credits, the player can listen to a phone call between a mysterious senator and ATC president Genevieve Aristide, which offers some further explanation: the woman considers the project under control and deems the "first prototype" a success.
Development
F.E.A.R. was announced at an E3 2004 pre-show, though its existence as an untitled project was revealed prior to this announcement. The game's first trailer later premiered at E3 2004 and was well received by critics. During the E3 2004 showing, F.E.A.R.During 2005, F.E.A.R. made playable appearances at Consumer Electronics Show, Game Developers Conference and E3, all of which were well received. Its showing at E3 garnered it the Game Critics Award for "Best Action Game". After the release of a single-player demo, Vivendi allowed gaming journalists to play through the first four levels of the game, which received even more positive reaction than before. F.E.A.R. eventually released on October 18, 2005. Alongside the basic CD-ROM edition, a "Director's Cut" DVD version of F.E.A.R. was released with a number of extra features. A Dark Horse Entertainment comic book and a series of live action vignettes help clarify a number of plot elements depicted in the game, while the "Making of F.E.A.R." and "Developers' commentary" documentaries offer several insights and trivia into the game's development through interviews with employees of Monolith Productions and Vivendi. Also included is the exclusive first episode of the F.E.A.R. machinima, P.A.N.I.C.S., created by Rooster Teeth Productions.
Over the course of the "Developer's roundtable commentary", producer Chris Hewitt reveals, "We had a whole level in the game where we had this car chase sequence we spent about two months on that thing...." "ut the car chase sequence didn't work the way we hoped it would", adds designer Craig Hubbard, commenting on the choice to remove that level from the game. Hewitt also comments that, "Actually we started off with two villains, and was one of them until we merged them together...." Craig Hubbard also remarks that "... his jacket actually used to belong to another villain we had in the game named Conrad Krieg, whom we combined with Fettel pretty literally."
Atmosphere
A core element of F.E.A.R. is its horror theme, which is heavily inspired by Japanese horror. The design team attempted to keep " psychology of the encounter" in the player's mind at all times, in order to "get under skin", as opposed to the "in your face 'monsters jumping out of closets' approach". Lead designer Craig Hubbard stated in an interview that "horror is extremely fragile... you can kill it by spelling things out too clearly and you can undermine it with too much ambiguity". He remarked that he attempted to strike a balance with the narrative elements of F.E.A.R., to give players "enough clues so that can form own theories about what's going on, but ideally be left with some uncertainty". Lead level designer John Mulkey stated, "Creating expectation and then messing with that expectation is extremely important, predictability ruins a scary mood".The main source of the game's horror is Alma, a ghostly little girl. Craig Hubbard remarked that "a guy in a mask chasing co-eds with a meat cleaver can be scary, but on some level you're thinking to yourself you could probably kick his ass if you got the drop on him...but when a spooky little girl takes out an entire Delta Force squad, how are you supposed to deal with that?" While Alma has been compared to the character Samara from The Ring, Craig Hubbard stated that she "... was born out of a tradition of eerie, faceless female ghosts..." and not "... as an answer to any specific movie character." Hubbard acknowledged that Alma "... admittedly bears some visual resemblance to the ghosts in Dark Water or Séance", but "... creepy little girls have been freaking out since The Shining." Developers Dave Matthews and Nathan Hendrickson say the name 'Alma' comes from the character Alma Mobley in Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story.
F.E.A.R.
Monolith Productions composed F.E.A.R.
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Engine technology
F.E.A.R. is the first game developed using the newest iteration of Monolith's Lithtech engine. Codenamed "Jupiter EX", the F.E.A.R. engine is driven by a DirectX 9 renderer and has seen major advancements from its direct precursor, "Jupiter". The new engine includes both Havok physics and the Havok "Vehicle Kit", which adds support for common vehicle behavior. The latter feature goes mostly unused in F.E.A.R., as no vehicles appear outside of scripted sequences.Graphically, F.E.A.R. uses normal mapping and parallax mapping to give textures a more realistic appearance; the latter is used to give the appearance of depth to flat bullet hole sprites on walls. Volumetric lighting and lightmapping are included with the addition of a per-pixel lighting model, allowing complex lighting effects to be developed. Vertex, pixel and high-level shaders, including a host of additional special effects, are also featured in Jupiter EX.
F.E.A.R is notable as the first game to use the popular "GOAP", "Goal Oriented Action Planning" technique in its AI system. GOAP is a technique that allows the NPC enemies to move beyond simply reacting to the player, to actually planning its goal of defeating the player
Reception
Prior to release, F.E.A.R. garnered large amounts of attention from video game journalists. Upon release, F.E.A.R. received critical acclaim, with Computer Gaming World calling it "... one of the year's top single-player shooters..." and PC Gamer regarding it as "... the first game to convincingly channel the kinetic exhilaration of 'John Woo violence' in the FPS format."IGN claimed that "Monolith forges new shooter territory with some truly freaky elements, challenge, fun, and beauty." GameSpy praised the game's plot, later awarding it their "Best Story" Game of the Year award. The New York Times thought differently, stating "I was never quite clear on what was going on in the game. I knew my goal—track down a psychic, escort a corporate executive's daughter out of danger—but I didn't ever care who these people were nor did I understand their motives." The game has also received criticism for its system requirements, which called for an extremely powerful PC for its time. The Xbox 360 port has also received positive reviews, almost as favorable as the PC version. The multiplayer and instant-action mode were praised for better gameplay, but the control scheme was negatively viewed. Reviews have also stated that it lacked bonus features, despite the new mission included in the game. GameSpot gave the game 8.6. while IGN rated it 9.1
F.E.A.R. won PC Gamer USs "Best Action Game 2005" award. The magazine's Logan Decker wrote, "With its brutally cunning AI and siege tactics, F.E.A.R.s intense and prolonged combat makes mission goals easy to forget as you're crouched beneath a file cabinet with a far more immediate objective — survival, by any means necessary." The editors of Computer Games Magazine presented F.E.A.R. with their 2005 "Best Sound Effects" award. It was a runner-up for their list of the year's 10 best computer games.
The PlayStation 3 port received less favorable reviews than the other two versions, but still had positive reviews overall. It contained a different longer bonus mission than the one included in the Xbox 360 port, but the chief complaints of the negative reviewers were downgraded graphics and long loading times. GameSpot has given the port a 7.1, making it the third lowest rating of the F.E.A.R. franchise in GameSpot.
F.E.A.R.s computer version received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom.
Expansion packs
An expansion pack titled F.E.A.R. Extraction Point was released by TimeGate Studios on October 24, 2006. The second expansion pack, F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate, also from TimeGate Studios, was released in November 2007. F.E.A.R. Files was released simultaneously for the Xbox 360, consisting of both Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate.Sequel
Monolith Productions announced a sequel to F.E.A.R., which is titled after Monolith and Warner Bros. regained the rights to the F.E.A.R. name. Prior to September 2008, the sequel was not to be titled F.E.A.R. 2 due to Vivendi's ownership of the F.E.A.R. name. The game was instead to be called Project Origin, which is a name derived from a contest to name the sequel. The sequel focuses on a different character. Monolith Productions published the game with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, which purchased the studio in 2004 while development of F.E.A.R. was under way, after which Vivendi Universal was dropped as a publisher. Vivendi Universal published the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ports of the original game, developed by Day 1 Studios.P.A.N.I.C.S.
In 2005, Rooster Teeth Productions created P.A.N.I.C.S. or PANICS, an acronym for People Acting Normal In Crazy-Ass Situations, is a comic science fiction series based on F.E.A.R. The series was produced primarily by using the machinima technique of synchronizing video footage from video games to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio. The series was produced at the request of Monolith Productions as a part of a tie-in with the Director's Edition of F.E.A.R., which the Rooster Teeth team used to produce the series. The mini-series consists of five episodes. Four of these have been released on the Rooster Teeth website, and one — episode 0, a prequel — originally shipped exclusively with the F.E.A.R. Director's Edition DVD. It is also included with the game's digital release on GOG.com.The story centers on a newcomer to Bravo Team, a special military group formed to battle supernatural enemies. As the series begins, Bravo Team has been sent into a military facility at night to investigate the reports of paranormal activity from within. This is a parody of the main scenario used in F.E.A.R.