Experiencing F.E.A.R.

I completed F.E.A.R. a few nights ago. Monolith have continued to demonstrate their capacity to develop immersive and entertaining games with high production quality. Aside from one significant frustration, which I will address later, F.E.A.R. is an excellent FPS game that has made a significant contribution to the continuing evolution of the genre.

While many FPS games are enjoyable, that is, after all, why we buy them; F.E.A.R. also produces a genuine emotional response, which is rare in the genre. In many ways the potential and value of emotional engagement is yet to be fully released by developers. F.E.A.R., through an effective combination of great pacing, excellent use of ambient sounds and music as well as scripted incidences caught out of the corner of the eye, was able to create an emotional response. Uncontrollable shivers ran up my spine at least a dozen times while playing it and I experienced constant goose-bumps for the last fifteen minutes of the game. I can’t recall experiencing anything of this magnitude in any other game that I have played.

Combat is brilliant in F.E.A.R., due in large part to the excellent A.I. which is the best I have played against. Squad behaviour seems co-ordinated and battle sequences (bar boss-style sections) are different each time they are replayed. This suggests effective AI as opposed to heavy scripting. I just love the way the enemy soldiers talk to each other, even to the point of warning squad mates of your actions, “He’s flanking us” and “Flashlight”. The AI causes the soldiers to take cover, and under heavy fire, they will reach around a corner or over an object and blindly shoot. They will even knock objects over to create cover. Hit an enemy in the leg and he will hobble away looking for cover and yell for support. The arrangement of structures that can be used as cover and presence multiple paths through combat areas promotes considered strategy and requires the use of slow-mo.

Monolith’s implementation of slow-mo is the best that I have yet seen. On-screen distortion of geometry, colour and sound in conjunction with proliferation of particles makes for an intense experience.

F.E.A.R. multiplayer, while not offering anything new, is great fun. My initial impressions of the maps while wandering through them alone were mixed, but in a LAN environment, the game play and effects make for great fun. Melee attacks are an unexpected joy!

My only reservation for an otherwise brilliant title, relates to elements of the environment design. Aside from the combat areas, the environment design lacks some imagination. While the decorations are appropriate and the lighting is nice, the halls and rooms that connect the set-piece arenas lack variety, particularly in the Armacham building. The arrangement of connecting spaces is, at times, inconsistent with real-world environments. These sections are highly reminiscent of level design for old-school FPS where frame rate management necessitated the use of corners to reduce visible distance and therefore number of polygons that had to be rendered. As a level designer, this element of the game frustrated me. Monolith’s excellent "No One Lives Forever 2" had great environment design that consistently and entertainingly created a sense of being in the real world (including a very kitsch, 60’s style underwater secret lair). It is disappointing, therefore, that the areas connecting the combat arenas in F.E.A.R. are so pedestrian.

I suspect that pedestrian sections in the level design are the product of two factors: firstly, the engine technology and secondly the level design development model utilised by Monolith. The “Making of” video on the Special Edition DVD indicates that the level designers created the environments with only simple geometry so that they could focus on gameplay; decoration of the spaces occurred subsequently. I have used this development model professionally and I think it is effective for ensuring entertaining gameplay. The only downside, the evidence for which I can see in F.E.A.R., is that a level designer can become desensitised to which elements of the map need to be redeveloped. It is plain to see that the arenas and set-piece areas are well considered, but the connecting corridors are composed of relatively simple geometry with inexplicable floor and ceiling height changes; many rooms lack logical function or placement. To me this suggests either a lack of time to redevelop these sections, or more likely, a form of induced complacence whereby the level designer can no longer see that specific sections of the level need redevelopment. Now, don’t get me wrong, I applaud and have a lot of respect for the efforts of Monolith’s level designers – they have created a fantastic game. I am not being critical of thier efforts. My comment is instead concerned with identifying the only down-side to this development model. The solution to this problem, from my point of view, is to have one level designer create the gameplay and a different one decorate the map (there are some downsides to this suggestion that I will not go into here).

I do not, however, want to detract from the quality of F.E.A.R.. It is one of the premier titles of 2005 and will take its place as one of the great games in the FPS genre, due in large part of the gameplay and AI. Kudos to the Monolith team; they have created an entertaining game that does indeed induce fear.