Shhhhhhhhh....ocking!!
I stand in this shop, having a really bad impression of last year's game releases.. and my mate recommends me this game.
Now i can say that his recommendation wasn't bad at all, i was often thinking about buying this game.. but decided "no." because of it's cover. o.O
Although you hardly even began the game, you will already be scared for no evident reason. The shadows from your character draw in front of you when the light comes from behind... which gives a really creepy atmosphere. When you touch objects, rats get scared from the noise and start to run around like mental...
Before even having seen one single enemy; you know that this will be a special experience.
The graphics are quite impressing and can also run on a "low-budget machine". (AMD Athlon XP 2700+, Gigabyte GF 6600GT passive AGP, 2x 512MB Dual Channel Ram)
The animations are sweet. The blood is just about enough ;) and the "bullet-time" is very close to max payne 2 for instance.
A pitty the swiss release (germany) was censored, so you have disappearing enemies, instead of limbs and pieces of flesh lieing around. This is not only a minimal "reduction" of blood. It looks strange, and makes one feel like having spent money for an "incomplete" game. (I wonder what the BPJS thinks about movies like Passion of Christ. It's a really cuddly movie about religion 'n stuff.. you know.)
Anyway.. the most remarkable aspect of this game is the Artificial Intelligence.
I was playing on Normal Difficulty, and you've got enemies reacting really fast to your movement and actions.
For instance, you are having a firefight with an enemy taking cover somewhere on the right. F.E.A.R. will punish you with an enormous slap in the face if you forget to keep an eye to the left side or other potentially critical areas on the screen. Because there will be another enemy flanking you from the left in about 60% of the situations.
If you approach enemies, they will react brute force: And throw well-placed grenades almost instantly. The will try to pin you down in a certain spot, and are approaching extremely fast. Unlike other games where your enemies stay in their hide-outs and wont make you panic at all.
Concerning the story, you can only say good: The developers hired 2 directors you know.. they are probably pretty famous for directing horror-movies and yeah.. eeeh well.. i dont know their names actually.. but i'm sure they've got some name..
The atmosphere and shocker-moments are outstanding. And you cant complain at all. Outstanding...
"Wow!"
I thought last year was really awful concerning game releases.
This title shows out to be one of the rare exceptions.
Thumbs up for this one.