We've talked about this game briefly in, I think private, in a dark alley at midnight when the city was asleep, but I'll reiterate my points here too: I think F.3.A.R. is a good shooter, but it's not a good F.E.A.R. The shooting is fine, and I was never bored with it. The brief amount of time I spent playing both the co-op and the online multiplayer was definitely enjoyable, but it's part of a series that focuses on scaring the holy living hell out of you and literally has the word fear in its title. It should be scary.

I felt that the series has fallen off since the first, anyway. I consider the first F.E.A.R. to be one of my top 25 games of all-time, and certainly one of my favourite horror games of all-time, but the second one did it less for me and the third one didn't make me jump once. I boil it down to the gimmicks they used in the first just not being done as well in the second, piled onto the fact that I was used to them at that point. F.E.A.R. 2 was still a good game, though, and it kept the suspense and horror.

Going into F.3.A.R. as a fan of the series is certainly disappointing, especially for you ToriJ because you seem to remember plot lines better than I do. I don't have the, uh, problem, of getting caught up in continuity or anything between games, movies, or books in a series because I have a terrible memory. I mostly just remember key moments or parts that really stuck out, but the intricacies of a story are lost on me pretty quickly.

So that pretty much applies to F.3.A.R. as well. Like a lot of things, I mostly just remember key points about why I liked or disliked a game, and with F.3.A.R. all I remembered until this review was that it was an okay shooter but wasn't scary at all. I could separate myself from that, and view it as it is, but as a fan of the series it is a disappointment in that regard.