F.3.A.R.

Sorry, it seems that I've been slacking off the shooter promise for a bit. Let's get back to work with the next F.E.A.R. installment.

Screenshot from F.3.A.R., showing a armored truck crashed into the front doors of an airport

Somehow F.3.A.R. (that would be F.E.A.R. 3, but someone decided to get unnecessarily creative instead) felt different than the others, and I think it's mostly because it was more of a family story than the others. Unfortunately, the family is rather... sick, weird, and homicidal. The player's character, Point Man, who someone forgot to name better, is seen in the cinematics for the first time in the series. However, he remains mute. His brother, Paxton Fettel, appears with a lovely bullet scar on his forehead, due the events in the first game. No one else can see him except Point Man and Fettel does not shut up, leading me to think that Fettel is some kind of refection on Point Man.

Gameplay is mostly similar to F.E.A.R. 2, but I think there were several more mechanical walkers this time. Every portion of the story gets boring, because whenever a new chapter starts, you were just conveniently knocked out or some other thing happened such that you start out with only a pistol at first. At some point, invisible apparitions come up to you, and become visible just as they slap you around. If you happen to be in an area with them, you need to go through all of them before you can heal up, which I think is completely contrived crap. Then there are the hellhounds, which come out of nowhere (portals appear on the walls?), and glow when they are almost dead.

In the end, it's no more memorable than the first two games (which weren't that memorable to begin with), no matter how pretty the game and its pre-rendered cinematics may be.

Since you've made it this far, you might be interested in reading:

Screenshot of F.E.A.R. 2, showing ghosts in a destroyed city — F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

I'm just going to get this out of the way up front: it looks like I'm going to be playing a lot of shooters, and I've already started. In that same Humble Bundle that had F.E.A.R., it also had the others in the series, so I'm more or less just going down the line.

Screenshot from Extraction Point, showing Paxton Fettel in a church surrounded by Replicant soldiers — F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate

I played some more F.E.A.R., in expansion form. In as few words as possible, it's just more of the same. Extraction Point was the first expansion, so I figure that I'll start there.

Screenshot of FEAR, showing 3 bloody skeletons on the floor — First Encounter Assault Recon (F.E.A.R.)

Back when I started hardcore gaming, as opposed to just being casual, the first FEAR game came out. It was meant to be a horror game, but I didn't find it all too scary. It was also meant to be a series, but I didn't have much willpower to get the subsequent games, until a little while ago, thanks to the Humble Bundle.

Screenshot from Mirror's Edge, showing Snowden Plaza — Mirror's Edge

I mentioned that I would be playing a whole bunch of shooters. Actually typing that made me depressed, so I decided to take a detour and play a not shooter instead. Parts of it ended up being creepier than F.E.A.R. if you can believe it or not. But honestly, that's not a tough thing to do.

Screenshot of Papers, Please, showing a multitude of documents and a man with killer sideburns — Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a bureaucrat simulator where you man a border checkpoint in a fictional totalitarian country during the late cold war. Gameplay mostly involves examining people's passports and other entry documents and calling 'gotcha' on them. Otherwise, you let them through if you can't find anything or you're lazy.