F.E.A.R. is good but doesn't contain much... fear.

User Rating: 7.5 | F.E.A.R. PC
NB: I am reviewing this game in 2008 - three years since it was released, so it's possible that it was better then.
The thing is, F.E.A.R isn't all that scary... not until you get to the end, anyway. When you do get to the end, you might want to get a clean pair of underpants. Yes, the decent scares are pretty much left until the last mission, or 'Interval' (of which there are eleven). There's the warped perception which is slightly overused throughout the game, and the apparitions of the walking dead and the girl with the long black hair covering her face (similar, as I'm sure you've heard, to the ones from Ring/Ringu, Shutter, The Grudge etc) and lots of blood-streaked walls in drab corridors. This imagery isn't really effective until the last interval because there's not really a sense of creeping dead or survival horror that was so effective in the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series. Of course, this is an FPS, so it's gotta be action action action.
The sounds are what standout in this game. They're not overdone, and they effect you in the way that you'll be spinning around with your gun outstretched going, "What Was That?" So, impressive sound design.
Level design, however, is less impressive. In fact, it's not impressive at all. The aforementioned drab corridors are unfortunately de riguer in standard FPS games, and the factory/office building/ military complex settings are defintiely getting old now. You have seen it all before countless of times. Quake and Doom did this many years ago.
Unless you play the game on one of the harder difficulties, it's not really worth it, and this is one of the game's flaws: the soldiers you fight are either super soldiers or dumb lugs.
Having said all that, the actual firepower and shootouts are really cool. It's a tactical shooter; and by that I mean you'll be wanting to duck behind crates and cower behind walls and use the Q and E buttons to peek around corners and use the Left Shift to zoom in to get a better shot: because of the armour these goons can be hard to take down.
Strangely enough, I found the dual pistols amazingly effective in shootouts. They're more accurate than a lot of other guns in the game and reload quickly. There could have been more guns, too. But when you first fire one in F.E.A.R it feels really good to hear that blast.
All up, an atmospheric shooter, though kind of standard.
Killer end scare in the helicopter, mind.