There's nothing to fear. At all.

User Rating: 2.5 | F.E.A.R. 3 X360
By SpookyJack | Review Date:
After dragging myself through the mediocre but highly playable 'F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin' back in 2009, I had insanely low expectations for the sequel, although I didn't expect it to be this bad. Let's get the positive aspects out of the way first, shall we? Tight controls and quite challenging difficulty, even on Normal. Sound design is nothing short of phenomenal; those with a 5.1 surround system or headset are in for a real treat. There, all done. Everything goes downhill from here.

NOTE: I'm (mostly) a single-player only type of person so I won't be covering multiplayer as I haven't played it. Nor am I planning to. Please refer to other reviews for said portion of the game.

PRESENTATION

After shaking my head in distaste at the terrible artwork I came across three leaflets upon opening the game's box: an online pass (which I won't even bother to redeem), a promotional flyer for John Carpenter's The Ward and a two-page pathetic excuse for a manual with a bunch of disclaimers concerning Xbox Live, PEGI and health warnings; stuff which nobody even reads.

Starting up the single player I was immediately greeted with laughable and cringeworthy voice-acting in a poor effort to gain the player's interest. What it boiled down to was this: "Your mission is to shoot stuff. Do it."

STORY

A stupid, incoherent & preposterous mess not even worth talking or caring about.

SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN

The Intervals (read: levels) got progressively more generic as one ended and the other began. You will be carrying the same two guns throughout the entire game except for a few encounter-specific occasions where the game will conveniently place a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher for you to use against a generic enemy type that requires such treatment to be swiftly disposed of. Clear the areas and advance.
Basically, there's nothing to hold one's interest other than some mildly entertaining mech shootouts (for those of you that have played F.E.A.R. 2; think of the same battles minus the excitement.)

After completing the campaign as the silent and overly generic Point Man, one can play through it again as Fettel for a slightly different, and admittedly more exciting, experience as it does spice up F.E.A.R. 3's foul-tasting main course.

Still, this single player campaign counts as one of the most tedious, unfrightening but mostly unsatisfying experiences I have ever encountered in my 20+ years of gaming.

VERDICT

This abomination isn't worth your money due to an abysmal story, piss-poor voice-acting, lackluster level design, failed attempts at horror and a cover mechanic ripped straight from Killzone 2 and 3. Though obviously not as good...

F.E.A.R. 3 - I blatantly refuse to write it the way it is advertised - is what happens when some dollar-sniffing bloke in a suit says: "Let's not break a sweat. Put in some standard shooter stuff, a prison and sewer level at the very beginning, focus on multiplayer and co-op because that's hot nowadays. And... Well, that's it. Oh no, wait! Have the consumer pay more for less as well."

Every single bloody thing about it reeks of sour milk and pus squeezed straight from a cancerous breast-like blob on life support.
This is not F.E.A.R., this is shooter #596451 with a F.E.A.R. stamp on the front of the box. A proper and final insult to fans.

2.5/10

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