Don't F.E.A.R. the Reaper

Welcome back to the blog, myself. Why, thank you, myself!
And welcome to the readers, welcome to another post about gaming and whatever else comes to my mind (not a whole lot else, I must say.)

As you probably get from the obvious reference in the title, this post's gonna be about F.E.A.R. 2, which I recently got a hold of and played through pretty soon after. If I say I'm a usually slow gamer when it comes to finishing them and at the same time mention that I had finished Monolith's most recent bloodfest within two weeks after I got it, you can guess that it's pretty short. It's not rare that a lot of big titles are lacking in length these days, still it's better to end the fun while it's still fun and not have it end with the player loudly shouting in joy that it's finally over.

Anyhow, let's skip on back to the topic. F.E.A.R. 2 : Project Origin is the true sequel to the 2005 title F.E.A.R., which gained wide attention and praise for its intense and fast action, its shiny, sexy graphics and the über amount of gore and blood. Since then the hit FPS has received two expansions, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate, of which neither I've actually played. From what I've heard, they're pretty much the same as the original game, save for a few new weapons and new levels, of course.
F.E.A.R. 2 differs a lot more from its origin than the expansions seemed to. You no longer play as the anonymous 'point man' from the first installment, instead you play as (the awfully quite) Michael Becket, who's part of a special ops team sent out to find Genevieve Aristide before the Armachan black ops kill her (she's seen too much, basically.) It proves a bit trickier than expected, but your team deals with it nice and smooth. Soon after having retrieved Aristide, the event from the ending in F.E.A.R. occurs. The majority of the remainder of the game takes place in the ruins left behind by the operation at the Armacham facility and that's when the story really takes off.

The game engine has had a pretty nice overhaul, showcasing some very interesting visual effects such as the more common motion blur effects as well as some new ghost effects. Monolith have also become better at using the physics engine to produce some eerie atmospherical effects.
The enemies are pretty much the same as they are in F.E.A.R. You've got the usual cop-like-dressed forces that try to stop everyone who's seen anything related to Armacham's experiments and, of course, the replicated soldiers. The gameplay has been expanded with the addition of the occasional (and actually not-so-annoying) quick time events and a bad-ass power armor that you get into every now and then and literally blow the shit out of everything in sight.

Overall, I liked the game and found it a worthy addition to the F.E.A.R.-universe. It had the elements that I liked about its predecessor and added some nifty little details and things to enhance what was feeling a bit aged in the original in comparsion to today's standards. Though, it was unfortunately rather short and it wasn't exactly as spectacular graphically as the first one was when it came, not that I think graphics matter much though, but you get the picture. One thing that comes to mind that I thought would've been improved was the shadows. It becomes more common that games use soft shadows instead of the hard-edged, unfiltered stencil shadows, which F.E.A.R. 2 still uses, but it's not exactly a huge atmosphere-killer.

I'd recommand any fan of the first game to go and grab this worthy sequel, despite its lack of length and mere surface depth in terms of the storyline and how it's told. It's a fun and bloody action shooter with a cool gameplay twist (the slo-mo effect/reflex implant) and an interesting continuation to its elder sibling. For those who haven't tried the first one out either, I'd recommend getting F.E.A.R. 2's collector's edition. Not only do you get the sequel in a fancy case, you also get the first game as a bonus. Yay!

Well, I guess that's all for now. Sorry I kept it strictly to the review, but I'm way too unfocused to type some random rambling right now. Stay tuned till next month or so, for another oh-so-exciting (sarcasm much?) addition to the blog. Thanks for reading!

Until next time...
/Marcus out.