(Over)dosing Fear
True to the motto 'better late than never', we bring you the review to 2009's first scary game. Find out inside why this is not just another scary movie.
Published: March 1, 2009
Once I start speaking of playtime I have to eventually talk about multiplayer. Let me start by saying that the servers are not as cranked and full as you might expect or hope for them to be. Which unfortunately is a pity, because overall multiplayer is a decent addition to the good single player campaign. The game offers a variety of standard modes plus some interesting additions like Armored Front, which basically lets two teams compete for five control points which have to ALL be conquered in a sequence while giving each team (consisting a maximum of 8 players on each side resulting in 16 player matches at max.) an Armored Suit.
There's also a leveling system, though it's neither very deep nor very rewarding. It also takes a bit of time getting used to, and even a couple of hours in sometimes still feels a bit weird. Fail safe is a 'defuse da bomb' kinda mode which is also pretty decent. In total there are 7 modes which is not overwhelming though enough to keep you motivated on getting those multiplayer trophies which might end up taking you quite some time. I certainly had my fun online, and the people we met there mostly agreed when asked what they thought via voice chat. Still, it needs to be mentioned that we dealt with some occasional connectivity issues, and the party system did a good job of kicking us out of a lobby and away from the players we had just had gotten used to playing a couple of rounds with.
From a technical standpoint Project Origin has its ups and downs. Thankfully the ups exceed the downs. The graphics and sound design are mostly superb with some small graphical hitches and the occasional blurry texture distracting from the overall high production values. Animations have pretty hight standards as well. Furthermore this game is just exceptionally detailed. Be it cars that pass by a few hundred meters below in the city when looking down from a sky scraper's terrace, or simply sparks flying off in all directions from a broken electricity pole. Speaking of sparks, the lighting effects are some of the best we have seen this generation, but that is to be expected from a game that uses light in order to create a tense atmosphere.
The supernatural effects itself are quite astonishingly well done and water has seldom looked this invitingly wet and perfect, not to mention the smile on my face when my virtual goggles became wet for the first time (similar to the blood effect, though done even better in my opinion). As mentioned earlier the physics are done very well too, though the ragdoll somewhat stands out on its own -- it's just that good. The downside is however, that the framerate occasionally takes a steep hit and drops to around 19-20 frames per second, weirdly enough this happened without a single enemy around. It never made the game unplayable for me, though it certainly did make me wonder how much better the game would have looked and felt if the frame rate had been optimized.
In the end F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin does a lot of things right and only a few things wrong. It offers a unique and memorable experience, that despite some technical shortcomings, its relatively short duration, and to some probably too easy difficulty, is worthy of your time and money. This is one of the year's first really good shooters and it certainly does deserve your attention. So go run, and get yourself a dose of fear right now!
