Scary Pc Games

FEAR 3 Review

The F.E.A.R. series has always relied on two major factors as selling points: excellent enemy A.I. and plenty of "gotcha" scare moments. Neither of those show up much in F.E.A.R. 3 . Instead, this F.E.A.R. is retooled to allow for cooperative gameplay across the full single-player campaign, and it sure looks pretty -- but it just isn't much for the scares anymore.

And hey, that's OK. I mean, it's a little weird for a game literally titled F.E.A.R. to not be that scary, but whatever -- F.E.A.R. 3 is still a pretty darn enjoyable first-person shooter, especially if you get someone to play with you (or if you delve into one of its rather innovative multiplayer modes). The campaign, though, follows all the standard FPS tropes: You start out escaping from a highly fortified insane asylum, and move on to a blighted cityscape in which you fight all sorts of psychic and physical phenomena. You can play as either the series' usual protagonist (the gun-totin', bullet-time-usin' "Point Man") or his brother (Paxton Fettel, an insane and very powerful psychic). And, if you've got a friend, you can co-op through the entire campaign. The Point Man is a very direct and traditional guns-'n'-grenades-style guy, while Fettel is mostly spectral, and aids the Point Man by psychokinetically throwing objects at enemies, teleporting, and even possessing the baddies' bodies.


The story continues where F.E.A.R. 2 left off, which is to say that it's so overwrought with angst-cum-horror tropes that it might as well be a Nirvana video directed by Wes Craven or something. It's not good, is what I'm saying, kids. Anyway, you spend most of your time fighting F.E.A.R.'s trademark A.I. soldiers who haven't had a particularly large A.I. upgrade since the original game. They still provide a decent challenge, but with F.E.A.R. 3's new, ubiquitous cover, gunfights become pretty formulaic: find a piece of cover, get behind it, pop up and bust some heads, get a grenade thrown at you, run to another piece of cover, boom, repeat. Gee, scary ) two-player mode, but that's not a huge deal. F.E.A.R. 3's dedicated multiplayer modes, though, have some really nifty ideas built in. The first mode (called "F***ing Run") sees four players fighting through waves of enemies while a wall of psychic energy (which instantly kills whoever it touches) constantly pushes them onward.