Cold Fear is just a great game and is worth at least playing through once.
Now for the gameplay, Cold Fear plays like Resident Evil 4. Indeed this is true, but while your on the boat it tips left and right and you can loose your balance as the ship is rocking. Sometimes if your outside, you can fall into the water! You can tell because of a "Resistance" bar, it lowers when you run which risks on you tripping over or losing your balance. The aiming in Cold Fear is really good and is good usage of the mouse support. You simply click on the right button to raise your gun out and fire with the left button. Aiming is simply a breeze and you can move around as well. There is, however, one big flaw I've noticed throughout the game. Because you can't change camera angle while moving, you can only see what the game wants you to see. The only way you can have a free look around is if you have your gun out. It's a bit annoying because you have to remove your gun to run. The enemies in Cold Fear seem to be zombie-mutant like and they attack you with knives and stuff like that. Sometimes if they grab you you can do a critical hit back by tapping the action button and then shooting at the right time. There's also other enemies like soldiers and these parasite things but there's not really alot of enemies in the game. Oh, and the only way you can destroy the mutants is by removing their head. Most enemies can be beaten with very little bullets.
Cold Fear tries to scare you by breaking lights, opening doors without warning, and making enemies pop around corners in one second. Unfortuantly, this didn't scare me, but it might scare you or your children! ;)
The weapons in Cold Fear are standard weaponery, such as the handgun with a torch built on it, a shotgun, a rifle, a grenade launcher. All the typical shooter weapons are in here. You can also do a melee attack on all of the weapons too. Running out of ammo can be a problem but thankfully enemies drop either ammo or health for you.
Cold Fear is a pretty short game. You could probably beat it on your first go between 4-6 hours. After you've beaten it, you unlock a hard mode and some artwork. Other than that you don't get anything else. I'd say Replay Value is the game's weakest point. However, you could always make mods for the game if you want to extend its lifespan.
The graphics in Cold Fear are pretty good. If you have a fairly high end graphics card you'll be able to play this game with a rock solid framerate. The environment detail is amazing, such as the waves and the boat rocketing and even the lighting effects. Unfortuantly, the character models leave alot to be desired, as they seem very PS2 gen which isn't good for a PC game. The sound is another strong point, but weak as well. The atmosphere sounds are amazing such as the crashing waves and the strong winds, but the voice acting is pretty bad and annoying. If you have surround sound you'll no doubt appriciate the sound in this game.
So, Overall Cold Fear is a solid shooter. It's probably the best version of the game, because of the mouse support. However, if you want to go for second best then go for Xbox. Like I said before, you should at least play through the game once, and appriciate some of the immersive parts of the game. It's no Resident Evil 4, but a good attempt and you can get this game really cheap now! You might as well get it!