games: FEAR 2 - Project Origin
It’s been a while since Alma has first brought her clichés of pasty skin and greasy hair Japanese horrors to us all in the form of First Encounter Recon, which is a thoroughly enjoyable shooter with a convenient abbreviation. It picks off where the original left off with a bang.
The levels of fear are extremely complicated and unless you’ve played the first game, you may not know what the hell is going on. Thank God the developers have scattered a lot more “intel” throughout the levels to help fill in the blanks.
The levels may be a little grey and although there isn’t much in the way of things to do (apart from walking around a corridor and killing everything in sight) Fear 2 does at least have slo-mo bullet time and hallucinations. If watching someone smoke on TV makes you crave a cigarette, then Fear 2 might just make you crave a sheet of LSD.
This sequel fixes some of the shortcomings of the first game – you’ll get to explore the town that was blown up in the original and ride around in one of Armacham’s mech suits for a couple of levels.
Alma has been released from the prison of amniotic fluid where she spent the first game and thankfully, if you couldn’t care less who Alma is or why she’s on your back so much, it’s still a great solid shooter performance.
The story is great with some cleverly revealed twists…you’ll just have to play and see. The script is pleasantly surprising too and the banter in your squad is enough to make you like them- before they’re sliced up by a needle and dragged into Alma’s brain dimensions.
Project Origin isn’t breaking any moulds. As generic as the fighting action has become it’s a game that’ll stick with you, for the storyline and the ending. If you can take the old-school gameplay, keycards and all, Fear 2:Project Origin gets 4 stars!
For the best of the rest:
Gamesblog:
The first FEAR taught me to be very frightened of little girls. The second FEAR has taught me that those little girls often grown up to be weird naked women of pure evil. I guess that’s a good lesson to learn.
PCAdvisor
The first FEAR shocked gamers with horrific imagery, bloody shootouts, and razor-sharp action sequences. The series is most notably known for the little girl in a red dress, and it was later revealed that this little girl, Alma, had powerful psychic abilities that could destroy the world.
Gamespot
The image of a pasty-skinned, greasy-haired young girl has become an iconic one in horror films like The Ring, and the original F.E.A.R. introduced a similar figure with great success. Of course, that game gave its ghostly visions a chilling context, drawing you into the unnerving story of a paranormal prodigy named Alma and the horrific suffering to which she was subjected. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin returns to this fertile universe, but rather than scrutinize even darker reaches of the soul, it merely skims the surface, offering up a series of eerie visions without delivering a good mystery to bind them together. The good news for shooter fans is that the bullet-blasting core of the experience is sound, propelling you forward with enough intensity to keep the single-player campaign engaging. Most of what’s here has been done better before, but the unspectacular elements have been stitched into an enjoyably moody first-person shooter that relies on rock-solid mechanics rather than true inspiration.
The FEAR 2 Demo came out today. I got mine and it’s awesome! I got it from filefront
http://files.filefront.com/FEAR+2+Project+Origin+PC+Demo/;13056438;/fileinfo.html