The ultimate shooting game... and it creeps you out, too!!
FEAR has it all: sound, graphics, story, dificulty. And it is not only a good shooting game: it rivals Silent Hill on the spook department, because FEAR does justice to its title: it certainly gives you the chills!!!!! I'm not afraid to admit that more than once have I jumped from my seat in terror. And it keeps that way, you know.
I say that last thing because I heard once that Doom 3 creeped you out so much that you couldn't play it at night. It was absolutely true, but by the third level, spooks were reduced to the minimum and were even redundant. FEAR does no such thing. The first level is great, the second, great. And so on, and so on. They rarely go with the same method to scare you twice.
The AI in FEAR is something you NEED to write home about. Never have I seen such intelligence from my foes. They duck, jump, take cover, use furniture as covers, throw grenades, help each other, communicate, take lost of bullets to die, call for backup, ambush, hit you when you're close. Everything I could ever say falls short to compliment the brilliant AI that the programmers built for this game. If you're tired of the easy to kill alien foes and want to kick some human ass, this is ABSOLUTELY your game.
Sound. I hate it. It is too good. It sends chills down your spine... at one moment, total silence, then, EEEEEEEK!!!!! Sound has proven to be very effective when recreating a dark scenario. It makes you imagine things, things that could not be there, or be just around that shadow filled corner. By the time you reach that corner, your heart will be beating so fast you'll need a CPR in a minute or two.
One thing that FEAR tends to fall short is the gun department. I'm not saying that it has little variety (it has just enough for you to drool), but since the game is so real, guns act like in real life too. So the shotgun is absolutely ineffective at long range (and I mean asolutely because it does NOTHING!), pistols will die soon enough, and there is no sharpshooting weapon worth keeping (I HATE that!! I love sharpshooting!!!). At the end of the game, trust me there is one gun you'll ever need. This doesn't make it less exciting. Testing weapons as the enemy drops them will always be fun. Oh, I forgot.. you can only carry three guns at one time, so choose wisely!
As I said, FEAR is a great game. It is almost perfect. But such perfection requires power. I have a very respectable processor (64-bit), a PCI Express 128 Mb Card, and 512 Mb RAM, and the game uses it all, and not even close to the highest resolution. But if you have that horsepower, believe me, FEAR is the game for you.
I hope this worked for something. Sorry about my english, I'm from Argentina.