Title: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
Release Date: February 10, 2009
Platform(s): Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Windows PC
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Developers: Monolith Productions
Genre: First Person Shooter, Horror

  F.E.A.R. 2 is now one of my personal favorite games on the Xbox 360, if not of all time. Why? Because it’s loud, violent, spooky, and has a multiplayer that can keep you entertained for hours upon hours. It’s not revolutionary by any means; but it is an excellent and fun game that takes the best things from the first F.E.A.R. game and adds some new things that make it a fresh experience. Combining spooky and dark, but excellent and crisp graphics along with a great story and loads of fun achievements, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin certainly deserves praise.

  Single player campaign was the first thing I was looking forward to. I thoroughly enjoyed the story of the original F.E.A.R., so I had high hopes for it’s sequel. The story places the player (Micheal Beckett, a Delta Force operator) in a war between opposing armies. He has a strange connection between the F.E.A.R. poster girl, Alma. Throughout the game the connection begins to grow for various reasons, causing the disturbances from Alma to become more violent and detailed. He is essentially the usual “best of the best” protagonist; but who really minds that?

  It isn’t the longest, most detailed story I’ve seen in a video game. Although it’s somewhat short, it’s quite enjoyable. Alma’s random encounters with the player are fun to watch and sometimes can make you jump out of your skin if you’re not careful. F.E.A.R. being a first person shooter and horror title, I really never expected the deepest of storyline anyway. Voice acting is terrific in my opinion, though. No real complaints here except that I wish it were a longer story. Knowing more about Alma and the player’s relationship would have been nice; and the cliffhanger at the end makes it ever so tempting to purchase a third game if it’s ever to be released.

  The gameplay in F.E.A.R 2 is excellent. Fighting is quick, smooth, and of course, violent. There are a lot of cool elements that make the action unique. For example, you can slow down time and roundhouse kick and enemy to death. Or you can slide tackle them and then do a jumping kick to take out their teammate. These moves take a little getting used to and sometimes can mess up if you’re not accurate with your button pressing; but they’re overall simple to use. Aiming is as sharp and true as any other first person shooter on the market (E.G. If you shoot a person in the head, the head explodes just like it should.).

  Smart and threatening artificial intelligence is another important element that many games lack. Fortunately, Project Origin gives the player a challenge when fighting enemies. The enemy A.I. is quite intelligent and will kill you before you can even turn around if you don’t keep your eyes open. Of course, if you play on a lower difficulty setting, the A.I. is going to dumb down; but on harder difficulties it becomes a much larger challenge to take on four or five soldiers at once. Enemies will barrel roll, throw down cover, throw grenades and work together to take you out as quickly as possible. They still don’t compare to real players in multiplayer, of course; but they will most certainly kill you at the first chance they get.

  Realism is one of the biggest things in F.E.A.R. 2 that made me enjoy it so much. Climbing, falling, kicking, shooting, and strafing all feel like you’re really in the scary, little world that Project Origin places the character in. Moving around feels far more realistic than it does in Call of Duty or Halo 3; and so does the shooting. When you mow down an enemy with your submachine gun and he explodes into pieces, you will probably find yourself laughing or shouting at the screen the first couple of times. It really does feel like you’re taking down the soldiers in single player and the enemies in multiplayer.

  I was very curious about how F.E.A.R. 2 would work with multiplayer. I had never even really thought about playing the original game’s multiplayer because I had games like Quake 3: Arena and Call of Duty to keep me entertained at the time that I played it. Now that I look back, I kind of wish I would have at least checked it out. Online play for F.E.A.R. 2 is extremely fun and just as violent and satisfying as the campaign. Most of the game modes are stereotypical first person shooter games. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Search and Destroy are all present. With different titles and a few little twists, they are somewhat different; but they remain the same basic games you see in something like Unreal Tournament. Although they have the same games doesn’t mean that they aren’t as good; if not better.

  You can either play simple, unranked matches in Player matches, or you can build up your experience level and gain achievements in the Ranked matches. Achievements can only be gained in the ranked mode, which is a little disappointing; but it doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway. There is no real party system like in Halo or Call of Duty, however. This makes playing with friends more difficult because you can’t just join up and go play together in a Player match. You can, however, host ranked matches, and your friends can search the criteria in the Custom Match menu. This Custom Match menu allows you to search for specific games based on whatever game mode and map you want to play. Combining this along with the Host feature allows you and your friends to rank up on any game mode, map, and with any number of people (with a minimum of usually four and up, depending on the game type). This makes it a far more personal and versatile multiplayer experience than Halo 3 or Call of Duty.

  Like Call of Duty, you can customize your player with three “Loadouts”. Loadouts allow you to choose what armor and weapons your player is equipped with during online matches. These are managed by a simple, but effective, point allocation system. You can choose from three basic sets of armor, an array of weapons and grenades, and whether or not to carry a health pack. All of these cost points, and you can always go back to edit the Loadouts to use the points on something else. These custom classes also work in any game mod on either ranked or player matches.

  Achievements are a very nice addition to the game and most aren’t too terribly difficult to obtain. This makes the game feel like you’re working towards something even after you’ve completed the campaign, which adds much replay value to it. They’re not few and far between like some games; but they also don’t just hand them to you on a silver platter. I would have liked to have seen maybe a few more difficult ones; but for the most part, the achievements are challenging and fun to obtain.

  Overall, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is an extremely fun game. It’s not groundbreaking, but it does have it’s own original perks and tweaks that make it more fun and versatile than many other first person shooters on the market. It’s quite creepy, but not as scary as something like Doom 3 so you don’t have to worry about screaming in the middle of the night while you’re playing at three A.M. Although, I don’t recommend doing that because you might get nightmares from all the gore…

Single Player Campaign: 7.8/10
Multiplayer: 9.2/10
Graphics: 9.8/10
Voice Aciting: 9.0/10
Overall Value: 9.8/10