F.E.A.R. Demo

[Softball]

F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) is an intense combat experience with rich atmosphere and a deeply intense paranormal storyline presented entirely in first person. Be the hero in your own spine-tingling epic of action, tension, and terror... and discover the true meaning of fear.

Hyper-stylized combat for breathtaking cinematic quality action
Gripping supernatural storyline for spine-tingling intensity of play
Multi-player action with multiple gameplay modes and all single player capabilities

Advanced graphics and physics for visceral movie-like experience
Enemies with special abilities and A.I. so intuitive it's like battling living, breathing players


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DLd and played this yesterday. Very impressive so far. It's a combination of HL2 (Similar Graphics), Doom 3 (Spooky Dark areas), and The Ring (Creepy ghost girl).

The AI is quite good, they take cover, call for backup, will adjust to the environment (I threw a grenade at one of them and they said "OH SHIT" and jumped away behind some cover), and they are fast! You have a headset flashlight that essentially has a timer for how long you can have it on. When you shut off the flashlight, it recharges quite fast.

There is a SLOW MOTION effect (ala Max Payne, Matrix effect) that slows down the game and allows you to take better aim at the enemy soldiers while they are slowed. At first it lasts about 10 seconds each use, and takes about 30 seconds to fully recharge it. From what I understand, you can get some equpiment in the game that will make the effect last longer than 10 seconds. To even the score, some of the enemy soldiers have the SLOW MOTION power that they can use on YOU!

In the first 10 minutes of the demo, I was in a rather large firefight with 4+ enemy soldiers, leaning around corners popping shots off at them with an assault shotgun (Pickup up off dead soldier). You can even blow off certain body parts with a well aimed shot. :shock:

There is another aspect of the game that there is some kind of poltergeist (Creepy ghost girl like the one in The Ring movie) in the game, that apparently both helps and hinders you. I have yet to run into the poltergeist face to face, but there is one area at the beginning of the demo that will give you goosebumps when you get near. Freaky stuff!

It will also have a MP aspect to it, however I do not think there will me MP COOP, only CTF, Deathmatch, and some other styles. Even so, from what I have seen so far in the demo, I am 99.9% positive I am going to get this game. I want to see if this game can beat out the ultimate scarey PC game, The Undying. That was by far the scariest PC game I have played, and System Shock 2 is a close second.

You can DL the demo at Fileplanet, or you can check out the game at their website:

http://whatisfear.com/us/

EDIT: Here is a small clip with a few of the poltergeists:
http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=ladderscene

[Jedi Master]

Yeah, I played it this weekend as well. There's one part where you climb down a ladder, and when you get off there's some ghost standing right next to you! I fired off a few rounds but it just disincorporated like dry leaves...

I think this will be far scarier than D3 or HL2 ever managed to get. They got you frightened because of your overall situation, or a BOO! moment of something jumping at you, but this one just has it done RIGHT.

I knocked off a few heads with the 10mm penetrator nailgun...neat!

There's one part where you come into a room and like 4 guys attack you. One time through a grenade caused a section of shelves to fall over against a wall, and one of them went prone and crawled through the gap! The shelves didn't fall that way the other time, so I can't compare, but I think this is dynamically scripted AI. They'll do certain predefined things, but not always at the same time or place and it will depend on other factors. I'm sure in the full game you'll see them go prone and crawl under things from time to time.
It's neat hearing them talk to each other. I attacked that group in the room with the glass window from the staircase, then ran back up it when they threw a grenade my way and waited at the top. I heard them talking to each other and it sounded so real! "I'm going to flush him out!" Then along comes another grenade, but it only went to the landing, not the top where I was.

After the triumvirate of new FPS last year (Far Cry, D3, HL2), it looks we're set for at least one more this year. Don't know when Q4 is coming out, and STALKER is turning into another Duke Nukem. Then there's Prey...

[PanzerMeyer]

Played it 3 times and I absolutely loved it. yes, I will definitely be buying this game when it comes out in October.


I actually got goosebumps during the part when you are in the empty hallway and then you have the whacked out supernatural experience.