If you're looking for a somewhat mature, gory action game, then Cold Fear's your game.
For instance, Ubisoft, a French company, has dedicated themselves to presenting the visions of writer Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell with various degrees of innovation in game play such as stealth and sharp shooting. However, when Capcom, a Japanese company, came around with their so called Maltese Falcon of gaming Resident Evil 4, which took the sharp-shooting element of Splinter Cell and applied it to the clustered combat tactics of a hopeless, unlikable scout, suddenly Capcom becomes so widely successful that they use that aiming system in every action game they make as if it was THEIR idea.
So it comes to no surprise to me when Ubisoft releases a game that DIRECTLY rips-off Resident Evil 4 that, to me at least, is a way of saying "you ripped us off, now we're ripping you off! Mange notre merde!!" Of course the end result is a game that's kind of stuck between being an atmospheric horror game and a leap into a gun blazing action spree that is fun for awhile, but sometimes feels like a waste of time.
So here's the plot: a Russian whaler boat is left in the Atlantic Ocean during a storm and a special division is flown in to investigate it, but the video feed each special ops-man is wearing reveals that there's something evil on the boat and it demonstrates this by mutilating the entire team. The US Coast Guard is called in and a team consisting of six or seven generally faceless men with invisible targets on their backs and one Tom Hansen, a grizzled sometimes competent, but otherwise childish Coast Guardsman with little to no background information. Tom is separated from his team and has to endure whatever monstrosities lurk on the boat as well as finding out what's going on via the help of a CIA agent.
Don't be too concerned with the plot because despite a few clever ideas, the plot pretty much goes into the realm of Predictable Land with a lack of lucid explanation regarding the motivation of certain characters and an evident lack of twists. Which seems to be a norm in recent works of the most recent French horror games: they all proffer unique and ultimately interesting creature ideas from New Nightmare to ObsCure, but the plots seem to go absolutely nowhere despite showing signs of otherwise competent writing.
The game play to Cold Fear is a little jarring as we're stuck in the boots of Hansen Fruit Juice who handles pretty well and he doesn't run too slowly, but is bugger-all to aiming as the camera zooms in on his shoulder so he can aim precisely at various targets which immediately sacrifices any and all viewing space around him as aiming a la Splinter Cell only works in a game LIKE Splinter Cell where you're hiding in the shadows most of the time and don't have to worry too much about enemies creeping up to a spot that's normally within your field of vision and flanking you every now and then. Then there's the fact that all but one of the many weapons you get comes with a laser sight making it incredulous to expect the main character to survive the ordeal without a long red laser pointing at his enemies heads, even when he's armed with a shotgun.
Of course this problem can be solved with the fact that you can switch between two camera angles: one puts you behind the character's back while the other is a normal camera angle that follows the character from a certain position and gives him a good idea of what's around him. However, this angle doesn't help in combat much as it changes the aiming controls completely and although you can walk while aiming, the second camera angle doesn't allow you to aim automatically at enemies above or below you. Thus the game pretty much forces you to use the shoulder aiming camera for the most part which is a little unfair, but I went into this knowing it was a rip-off, intended or not.
One aspect that's interesting is the simple fact that you're environment is always shifting seeing how you're usually on a boat in a storm and sometimes its necessary to hold on to something without slipping and falling over-board. This does add a unique aspect of play especially in that you can still aim and fire while gripping a hand rail, but sadly it only comes in every now and then. At times it will pop in during outdoor combat in which Tom will slip against the wet deck and will have to button mash his way over the boat's edge only to go back into the fight. On other out-doors occasions you will have to avoid getting swept into the ocean from huge tides that will push up over the exposed corridors.
All of this is a pretty fun challenge, but if anything it feels a bit like the days of playing non-stop play-throughs of Project OverBlood where half the time you're facing a natural disaster that suddenly comes out of nowhere and as challenging as it is it's hard to be afraid of something as life threatening and natural as a sewer flood or earthquake in a game. If anything, it would've made more sense for the game to capitalize on the whole death by Atlantic Ocean storm idea and called the game something generic and intimidating like DEATH TIDE so as not to confuse it with an older, better game, but I digress.
Also, because you're on a ship, you can shoot off valve handles containing either gas or steam and both of which can work in your favor in combat as shooting a red valve releases a quick burst of flames while shooting a green valve releases a pressurized burst of steam which launches the valve at unsuspecting enemies.
Unfortunately, like 4Resident Evil, Cold Fear forces you to protect an innocent young, A-named, short-haired woman in this case Anna who is in no way useful in combat which is highly contridictive because she's apparently a Red Army soldier judging by her dog-tags and evident knife which she never uses. However unlike Ashley, Anna isn't a total brainless unlikable tw@t who pretty much knows how to stay out of danger and is one of the few characters in the game who, despite being 2 dimensional, is interesting and somewhat enjoyable, especially in that she wasn't designed to give the players a shallow and invalid reason to protect her such as the promise of seeing her skirt fly up (because Anna wears pants). Thankfully Ubisoft seemed to realize how infuriating the role of being the protective alpha male is in action gaming, so the times you do have to escort Anna are thankfully few and far between.
The enemy AI proffers plenty of challenges and some unique enemy designs such as enemies that strictly hide in the dark and will only attack you there and enemies that turn invisible unless you happen to shoot a path of steam in front of them, though some of them do seem copied from Carrier and Deep Fear what with the enemies turning invisible from the former and there are some enemies like the raspy, chicken legged one-armed, nameless no-necked monsters from the latter. For the first part of the game though you face up against uncountable zombies who have enough brain power to use melee weapons on you, again something you can't do, but when close up, you can head-butt them with your elbow or the butt of the gun so there is that part. Audio wise, the game works in most areas.
The sound is very well detailed and at times proves is detail by having squishy enemies sound squishy and flexible. The soundtrack offers a mostly techno soundtrack loaded dramatic gun fight tones that serves mostly to intensify combat and proves so by having the music spice up when enemies are on the prowl. One moment that demonstrates the gun fighting them is just about the only qualified boss theme in which you go up against a group of surviving mercenaries holed up in a warehouse and mercs are shooting at you in practically every direction. Simultaneously the techno soundtrack does introduce some surprisingly atmospheric tones that fill the requirement for fear. When you encounter a dead whale (you do explore a whaling ship), the atmospheric part of the soundtrack kicks in so hard that you can feel the impact of the scene.
One thing I really didn't like about the game was its inability to tell a good story or to write memos you collect for atmospheric purposes. It was sad seeing a Silent Hill game that wrote childish and otherwise pointless memos attempting to take themselves seriously, but Cold Fear has this atrocious idea that memos were written to pass as game play tutorials, most of which indicate hazards or game play tips you come across such as warning memos about the valve handles. I guess this is balanced somewhat by the memos that actually elucidate on what you're fighting, particularly the gooey exocels and exocelian creatures, but none of which serve to REALLY enhance the atmosphere or plot.
Like Resident Evil Quatre, it's hard to find characters really worth rooting for almost to the point where the game is borderline Resident Evil: the main characters include Tom, Anna, Jason the CIA agent and Anna's seemingly phantasm-esque dad. That's it, everyone else has about an approximately twenty second life span. And even though I stated earlier that Anna's much better than Capcom's idea of a president's daughter which seems to reflect every blonde female character in gaming, it's still hard to really attach yourself to them.
The game seems to reflect this philosophy by having the main character Tom go from being a seemingly mature adult to a total blazing moron like when he bickers with Jason over the head-set or when he steals the last line of the game by making fun of the person grieving next to him in what can be quite possibly the dumbest last line for visual media since The Devil Fish. Or any film starring Joe Don Baker as a gun totting action hero for that matter.
Despite these gripes, I approve of Cold Fear especially over Resident Evil 4. At least Cold Fear actually has a lucid idea of demonstrating fear and delivering atmospherics on a much more frequent/less questionable basis and at times it actually tries to take itself seriously. It doesn't compare to other games of the old Survival Horror genre as Carrier and Deep Fear prove far more personal and thus far scarier and at times far more thought provoking than Cold Fear, but comparing a gun-totting game trying to be a horror game to actually horrific games is like comparing the mandibles of a Daddy Long-Legs to an Australian Mouse Spider.
So all in all, if you're looking for a somewhat mature, but still fun gun-blazing action game with a slight touch of horror and heavy gore then Cold Fear is the kind of game you should get, though don't be too surprised if the experience feels a little short.