F.E.A.R. is the name, bad jumpscares are its game

The year is 2004. Monolith Productions has just seen The Ring for the first time. They decide to make a game about it, and a year later, FEAR is released. FEAR is a FPS with horror aspects. The little girl on the cover pops up often and you are supposed to suspend your belief for the time being and pretend that that is scary. Of course I'm not going to, I'm too busy kicking physics objects all over while my guest commentators sap the rest of the atmosphere out of the game by talking about dragonball z or whatever the hell.

FEAR's main draw aside from the horror aspect is the bullet time gameplay which was all the rage at the time, and the competent AI. The AI worked as a squad to suppress and flank you. They need all the help they can get, because you can John Woo all over their asses and bicycle kick them all to death. In the end, FEAR is an average game, but if you like spooky games and decent shooting, FEAR is still worth checking out.


DAS VIDEOS

Video 1: BEAT and FBM join me for exciting prologue times, and the start of the game proper.
Episode 2: Event Triggers do not mix with FRAPS.
Episode 3, in which the shooty bits start showing up in full.
Episode 4, where we go to an office building.
Episode 5 with more office and more Mothra
Episode 6: My 50 dads.
Episode 7: Sentry guns and Skele-guns
Episode 8: punchin'
Episode 9: The boring episode (oh and a garage shootout)
Episode 10A
Episode 10B
Episode 11
EPISODE THE END ITS OVER

In this video the plot is kind of set up. The subtitles are there for your enjoyment.

Edit: I guess you need to watch it at youtube to have a chance to read them though. This embed is super low resolution.

So what really is the deal with kid sepheroth in this game.

She some kinda wizard?

Coincidentally if you pay attention to the subtitles (You will probably be talking over the actual exposition) you will find out.

The development backstory behind FEAR is kind of interesting. Apparently it was made almost as a side project by all of like a dozen dudes at Monolith, and nobody expected it to go anywhere or do anything.

Then it became a pretty big hit for a PC game and the sequel turned into this giant Cecil B De Mille operation with a dev team of like 150 people and it all went to shit.

I liked FEAR a lot at the time. The horror stuff is missable but the gunfight parts were pretty darn good.

NOPE

Two wizards, turned themselves into silly putty and then someone and molded the silly putty into the shape of little girl Sepheroth which came to (un)life when left in the light of the full moon.

This is canon now.

BEAT's canon is superior to other canons.

I dunno, I just turned on Fear 2 just to check it out (and because I'm already done recording for Fear 1) and it doesn't look nearly as terrible as I thought it was. Sure, it still has consolitis, but it looks really nice so far, and it seems to play well enough.

I knew there was a channel I meant to subscribe to but never did.

I'm currently playing through F3AR, for some reason, and while it isn't very good, it also isn't very bad. I mean, the writing is bad, really quite amazingly bad, but the shooting dudes is still pretty fun overall. That said, it's still kind of sad to see how the series has fallen, considering that the first game was cutting edge both on the graphics and AI fronts. I honestly kind of think the AI is worse in F3AR than it was in the first game! But I could just be seeing FEAR through rose-tinted glasses.

Also, the horror parts have always been kind of stupid in this series.

Episode 2: Event Triggers do not mix with FRAPS.



I think that Fear 3 is probably the best in the series if only because it ends it, and also it has the least lulls between the combat, and its probably the most fluid combat of the series. I think I mention it in this video; the AI of FEAR is really simple and they only built the environments around how they work. It becomes really obvious when every area doubles back on itself. The weapon selection in 3 (and I think 2 as well) leaves a lot to be desired though.

Edit: Youtube really wants me to turn up the gamma. It's going to have to learn to deal with it.

Episode 3, in which the shooty bits start showing up in full.

Episode 4, where we go to an office building.



Our friend Mothra is in this too.

In this video we find out that wow I really can't read.

Episode 5 with more office and more Mothra

YOU GANGSTER LEANED WITHOUT ME
why smiler I thought we was bros
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT

You do this only to yourself.

BEAT, consider this your punishment for skipping an episode ahead last time.

Also, Smiler, were you going to do the Perseus Mandate expac?

I had contemplated it, but oh god I don't think I can stand anymore of fear 1.

Episode 6: My 50 dads.



FEAR loves minor characters so wham here's another one.

I'm pitching my 50 Dads to CBS.

I think I'm onto something here.

Sorta relevant to the thread: I played through FEAR 3 because I picked it up during one of Steam's megasales ages ago, and man, that game is some hot garbage. It reads like a checklist of things present in other man-shooting games plus a hilariously out of place score counter to count your level-ups (for serious, you can't even do the slide kick till level 2) and to determine which ending you get.

The game just kind of ends too, you get the last real mission and one last little deal and then you get a scene right out of Species.

No way, aside from like one level FEAR 3 is a good game. Patito and I will show you when the time comes.

Episode 7: Sentry guns and Skele-guns





Episode 8: punchin'

Episode 9: The boring episode (oh and a garage shootout)

Episode 10A
Episode 10B




We're in the final stretch now. This is a kind of cool part, but honestly they could have cut out the boring apartment building section down a bit.

Episode 11



Oh hey a climax. Oh hey I guess I might as well explain the plot (very poorly)

The plot of this game is GROSS

And it's done. RIP Commissioner Gordon



So next on the agenda is FEAR2: The Search for More Jumpscares. We've already got some videos recorded for it so the thread for it might show up in a week. I'm not very reliable when it comes to keeping a schedule for this.

Fun fact: Youtube dinged this video for third party content because apparently Monolith actually did use a third party song in their game. It's also reused a bunch in Fear 2. I don't know what to make of this.