F.E.A.R. Project Origin Mini-Review

Being a huge fan of F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon), and horror based shooters and and games in general, I was really looking forward to playing F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin. The reality of it though was I simply never got around to it up until about 2 months ago. I just did not have the time. Playing too many different games at once. Once I did play F.E.A.R. 2 though, I was quite upset with myself for letting it fall between the cracks. Something I will not let happen to F.E.A.R. 3 once it's released.

F.E.A.R. broke a lot of new ground and was simply a beautiful game to play and to look it. It was one of the few horror games I placed on the same pedestal as Doom, my all time favorite horror FPS game series. It actually felt like you were playing a movie. All you had to do was put on your headphones, crank them up, turn off the lights, and play! I must have played through F.E.A.R. a good half a dozen times since it was released. I also had a good deal of fun in its multiplayer.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is simply a wonderful sequel and one that takes its story to a whole new level. It's more immersive, has more of a scare factor, impressive visuals and graphics that take of advantage of today's more powerful computers, and the gameplay is just fantastic. Once I started playing I did not want to stop.

Now I am not going to go too much into the story of the game since I don't want to ruin it for those who may not have played it yet. What I will say is kudos to Monolith and WB Interactive for a great story that have some awesome twists and turns and an ending that, I must say, I was not expecting.

This game is best enjoyed the same way as any good horror game or movie, alone in the dark, with the volume cranked up. This game has a very immersive environment, feels like a Hollywood action horror film, and has more "scary" moments that the original. Your going to run into Alma a lot more, and she is going to get a lot closer to you. Your also going to run into more supernatural activity that will pose more of a threat to you than it did in the original, and with the games updated engine, it looks very impressive. The new engine being the Lithtech Jupiter EX with modified Havoc Physics.

This game is a must for any fan of the series or fan of horror shooters in general. Even if you never played the original F.E.A.R. you can still get the idea of the story, and if you get lost, you can always just Google it. heh

This game actually has relatively low requirements considering what it puts out. Only listing a Pentium 4 2.8GHz or equivalent CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 256MB GeForce 6800 or Radeon X700 as the minimum needed to play. To be honest though, the game is a 1000x time better when it's played on a modern dual+ core system with a HD 4000 series video card or equivalent video card, and at least 2GB of RAM. That way you can crank it all up to max and really enjoy the game as it was intended.

I actually did record some of my gameplay and threw it all together in a video. It's nothing special, just a lot of gameplay. However, there are SPOILERS in the video so considered yourself WARNED. Do not watch this video if you do not wish to see any spoilers. It does contain the ending of the game!

• http://www.own3d.tv/video/25126/

The video would be embedded here in the blog entry, but at the moment, own3D seems to be having issues with their player and off-site streaming. As soon as it's corrected, I will embed the HQ video here.

Anyway, this is a fantastic game in just about every aspect, and one that will have me playing it again I am sure in anticipation of F.E.A.R. 3!



Rated: 10/10