F.E.A.R. 3 Review (Spoilers)
Warning: The following review contains spoilers. Reader's discretion is advised.
F.E.A.R. 3 (or F.3.A.R., if you prefer) is a first-person shooter, psychological horror developed by Day 1 Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the third installment of the F.E.A.R. franchise and picks up right where Project Origin left off.
Day 1 Studios is a former video game development team that was founded in 2001. They were recently bought out by Wargaming.net and rebranded Wargaming West. Day 1 Studios also worked on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the first F.E.A.R. and was put in charge of development by WB instead of Monolith for the third. Why on earth the WB changed developers, I have no idea. But the change of development team certainly shows, doesn't it? I've been through F.E.A.R. 1 and F.E.A.R. 2, so let's endure the nightmare one last time. Or at least until F.E.A.R. Online comes out.
F.E.A.R. 3 brings back the Point Man and Paxton Fettel allowing us to take control of both either in single player campaign or through co-op mode. Of course, you do have to complete the game with Point Man before you can play as Fettel. The game offers you the ability to play co- op online with a friend or invite someone over to play on a split-screen. Something I haven't seen done in a video game for way too long. Unfortunately, I couldn't get anyone to play co-op with me so this is mainly going to be a review of the single player campaign and online multiplayer.
We kick things off with a recap of the first two games with narration from Fettel. I love it when a game shows you better games you could be playing. Point Man and Fettel are sons of Alma Wade, all three of which were experimented on by Armacham. A multi-national conglomerate which serves as the secondary antagonist of the game after Alma herself. Point Man is being held in a prison facility until Fettel possesses one of the guards and helps him escape. This is drastically different from the usual mission briefing before throwing us into the thick of it.
Point Man plays the same way as we're used to from the first two games. Taking cover has been improved by allowing us to look around corners and slowly letting us rise up to look for enemies. With the touch of the fire button Point Man will automatically stand up and start shooting. Apart from that not a whole lot has changed from the second game.
Fettel only plays as Point Man when you possess a human body. Otherwise you're just a ghost who blasts red energy and can string people up in the air to either possess them or just blast them to oblivion. But for some reason you can still die like a normal person. An advantage with the body possessing is that in addition to going into soldiers you can enter the bodies of more powerful enemies giving you an edge in battle that the Point Man simply doesn't have. If they die Fettel will be just fine, and there's nothing like taking a body and not giving a trout.
I'm sad to report that Alma Wade takes a backseat to this guy. The monstrous manifestation of Harlan Wade. Or the memories of Harlan Wade, I should say. Harlan is the father of Alma and the one behind the experiments of both her and the brothers. He's also responsible for putting Alma in the vault which led to her death. And the “Father of the Year” award goes to...
Harlan appears as early as the first mission and is constant throughout, eventually being something that you would have to face by the end of the game. Unlike most of Alma's appearances, the monster can hurt you when he appears. However, you can keep him at bay with bullets, which is something you really couldn't do when Alma was haunting you. While I do like the background provided on the brothers, and the idea of Alma's father being the thing they all fear, he just isn't scary. His design looks like something you'd see from Doom. An experimentation you'd shoot at and then go on your merry way, not something you end the game on.
Alma has undergone quite the design change since F.E.A.R. 2. Tearing off the sleeves on her dress and making her look more like a zombie child. This might not have been so bad if they didn't constantly show us the F.E.A.R. 2 design in the cut-scenes which looks so much better than this.
After having raped you in the last game, Alma is pregnant and about to give birth. Her contractions are enough to literally plunge the world into hell and give life to creatures that only existed in hallucinations before. Hence, Harlan Wade's monster form and the enemy called “Scavengers.” As for Alma herself? She does smurf all in the whole game. There is no buildup to her first appearance or any of her appearances. She just pops up during random spots of the game, looks at you and then disappears. Granted, Alma does a lot of that in the first game too, but it was only after you saw her kill your whole squad and chase you down a hallway with everything blowing up around her. The most you get in this game are contractions that act like nuclear explosions.
In the first game you got to a point where she could cause damage to you. In the second game she raped you. In the third game she just makes a few appearances (some you won't even find unless you explore) and then just lays there at the end and dies. I get it, she's pregnant and vulnerable. So what? It's Alma Wade! The most powerful psychic in the whole F.E.A.R. universe. This woman has haunted people lives since the first game. She could render fully grown soldiers into skeletons with just a thought and her contractions wrecks an entire city and she couldn't have built a better defense to keep herself safe? In the online mode Alma will laugh and momentarily stun you long enough to get shot at by enemy soldiers with a simple appearance. Or trigger a game over entirely. The character feels more like herself in a half-assed online multiplayer than the entire main story. That's bulltrout! It's an insult to the character. It's – AHHHHHHHH!
The horror in F.E.A.R. 3 is practically nonexistent. There are a few jump scares here or there and moments where you're expecting something to pop out when nothing does, but there's nothing memorable about the horror in the game. The reason the horror in the first game worked so well is because they set a dark and suspenseful tone and never pulled away from it. All throughout you can feel the suspense rising and even when you know when the hallucinations are going to start, you're dreading it. All of the things that wouldn't work on their own succeed because it's part of a full package. F.E.A.R. 2 did away with this entirely, but it at least had the “hallway of death” when you're exploring the elementary school.
F.E.A.R. 3 has nothing. The monster that chases you isn't scary. Alma Wade isn't scary. The monsters created by Alma Wade are not scary. What little buildup there is in the game isn't the least bit scary. The reason F.E.A.R. stands out from all the other FPS games in the world is because of the scare factor and Alma Wade. Take that away and all you have is another FPS that's bound to get lost in the shuffle.
F.E.A.R. 3 has eight levels overall and several different enemy types to battle. Ranging from soldiers, cultists, cyborgs, mechs, helicopters, and Alma's apparitions. Everything is thrown at you except for the kitchen sink. Soldiers say the same exact lines over and over again you'd think they had a limited vocabulary. I know the game introduces some new weapons, but they honestly don't feel all that different from the firearm choices in F.E.A.R. 2. Only ones that stick out is the highly useful riot gear and the shredder, a weapon designed for taking out fast targets that you can only get if you pre-order the game.
Achievements in the game are so easy to get they require almost no effort on your part. I guess that's more of an industry problem than a game problem, but I was earning achievements by complete accident for just playing the game. The only ones you really have to go out of your way to get are psychic links (like the corpse five pictures ago) and the Alma's dolls, and the former isn't that hard to miss. At the end, the game counts up the points you've earned during the struggle between Point Man and Fettel and decides who wins the conflict based on that. So it's probably more exciting to play multiplayer than be on your own since I knew who was going to win the conflict from the get-go. I would have preferred if they just made Fettel/Point Man the final boss depending on who you play as in single player.
There are cut-scenes that play before and after each level, which is different from the previous games that largely told the story through gameplay. I actually don't mind this all that much. The story itself isn't bad, just the way it's executed through gameplay is terrible. Fettel easily steals the show and the best scene is when the brothers meet Beckett. I do have one gripe, though. For the first time ever in the games we see the Point Man's face, and that's it. He doesn't talk, he isn't much of a character all all. He's just a blank slate. Of course he's that way because in the first game the Point Man is meant to be an extension of the player to immerse yourself in the story. But every time we see his face here it just takes you out of the moment. If you're going to show what he looks like why not go all the way and give him lines and a voice actor? They did it for Becket. Otherwise, stick to showing the Point Man from a first-person perspective. Because by the end of the game it was tiring to see him just standing there with a dumb expression on his face.
After the Campaign we have the multiplayer online mode, which I only got to check out because they have a solo mode you can try. Since no one was online for me to interact with. How telling. The online multiplayer gives us four modes overall where you're either surviving wave of enemies, surviving other plays, or fighting each other. Look out for Alma because she will smurf your trout up if you get in her way.
There's really nothing here that grabbed me. Maybe it would have been more fun if I had others to play with, but I can't imagine sticking around for long. If there's one thing worth checking online it's to find someone to play co-op with you in the main story, as I have to imagine it's a lot more fun going through the campaign with a friend than on your own.
Conclusion: If you play F.E.A.R. for the horror aspect and Alma's story, then F.E.A.R. 3 is only going to be a disappointment. If you play solely for the FPS elements, then F.E.A.R. 3 improves on some of that while still feeling like an upgraded F.E.A.R. 2.
Skip it.
