The Virtual 100 – Game 6
Well, this one was completely unplanned, but somehow I got wrapped up in it and finished it off, and here we are.
To be fair, I played and beat FEAR waaaaaay back when it came out on the Xbox. But back then, PC to console ports were usually hit or miss, and us Xbots or Sony Ponies never really knew if we were getting the true experience. I distinctly remembered games like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 being somewhat butchered in order to run on them, and FEAR probably wasn’t any different. FEAR was kind of a physics and particle effect show-piece at the time, and it was pretty demanding in its day.
One of the things I like the most about modern PC gaming is that there is a bit more of a cohesive standard these days. Back in the DOS and Windows XP days though… you never knew what you were gonna get. I had a few games back then, but my HP wasn’t exactly a powerhouse, even by HP standards, and performance was usually pretty poor. With platforms like GOG and Steam, I’m getting to go back and experience these older games, with settings maxed out, and enjoy them the way they were meant to be enjoyed, and my PC barely even breaks a sweat.
One of the things I don’t like about modern PC gaming is that a lot of these older games were never designed to run on multi-core processors or GPU’s, or programmed to circum-navigate Windows 11’s wonky architecture, so getting them to run on your rig can be kind of a pain.
FEAR was one such game. It has been a while now, so I can’t remember exactly what I needed to do in order to get the game to run properly on my system, but I’m fairly certain it consisted of a third party mod or patch, or the editing of an ini file. I’m not sure, but I did get it to run eventually, and for the most part it was an excellent experience, the only weird side effect being that the screen would momentarily go black for a second whenever I hit an in-game checkpoint.
There were two expansions, Perseus Mandate and Extraction Point, that also required jumping through such hoops. I didn’t mod these back then, and when I wrapped up FEAR’s story, I went to jump in and encountered the same errors as before. I didn’t have the energy to try to get them up and running, so this write-up will only talk about the main game.
FEAR, or First Encounter Assault Recon (a title that can be both redundant and contradictory at the same time) includes a story that, if you’re not paying attention, can be downright nonsensical and confusing. It’s not that it’s all that complicated of a story, but it is told through flashes and quick cuts and laptop hacks and such, and if you miss any of it, or are playing with the sound turned down so as to not disturb others in the household, all you know is that you’re running forward shooting anything that moves.
I felt like I had a decent grasp on the plot, but I consulted the almighty Wiki to fill in the gaps.
FEAR is an acronym for a team of military special forces that were formed specifically to deal with supernatural threats. This is interesting because, in order to justify the funding of such a group, you’d think there would be a precedent, yes? If you’re wondering what the catalyst for this is, I don’t think we’re given an answer. But apparently, supernatural shit exists and is enough of a pain in the ass for the military to form a special group to handle them. They’re sent to a facility to shut down a private military group from performing their own nefarious actions.
This facility is full of stormtro— I mean, Replica Soldiers. These guys are clones, but rather than having free will, are a bit of a hive mind. They’re supposed to be controlled psychically by a single commander, Paxton Fettel. The problem is, Fettel is also batshit insane and uses the soldiers to take over the facility. This turns out this guy has a telepathic link with a woman named Alma. Alma was a powerful psychic and telepath as a child, and the entire facility and Project Origin was built around her, and she’s been imprisoned for decades inside this secret lab.
Anyways, stuff happens, Alma gets loose, shit hits that fan, and the entire goes up in a nuclear explosion.
That’s the basic gist of it. If you need details, hit up the wiki like I did.
Let’s be honest, the story isn’t really all that important. It only exists to tie together what have to be the most complicated buildings ever created. If there’s one thing that absolutely cracks me up about this game, it’s that the office buildings and apartments have to be the most obtuse, weirdly assembled collection of hallways I have ever seen in the history of gaming. They can’t possibly exist within the confines of four walls and a ceiling. It has to be its own pocket dimension. Like a Harry Potter tent.
And they don’t even make sense. Why would there be a corner desk and computer at the junction of two offices? Why would there be a lobby waiting room, on the fourth floor, at the end of five hallways, with no other doors? What are you waiting for? Another wonky head-scratcher, for example, would be an office whose only access is through a utility closet. I’m not saying the door is blocked by rubble, or locked, and the only way to get into it is through a side closet. I’m saying it’s the only way in.
Sometimes if a game has randomly generated maps, and it uses a set of tiles in order to snap everything together, you can get some weird arrangements. But I remember map editors like Unreal back in the day, and those collections of hallways and rooms were usually snapped together manually and then populated with assets. Whoever did this back in development didn’t give two shits if it made sense, that’s for sure.
As far as gameplay goes, there’s a reason it took me about a year to finish this up. It’s a pretty repetitive game. The enemy types don’t vary much, and while there are a few different enemies that get thrown in late-game, they don’t really stick around long, and the SWAT/Police officers that come in later are pretty much just a skin swap on the Replicas.
On top of that, while the gunplay is fine, and was pretty good for its time, it just isn’t terribly exciting in this day and age. The guns work well enough, and it’s a mouse and keyboard setup, so controls aren’t really an issue, but gun accuracy is inconsistent it seems, and bullet damage doesn’t always seem to give the same results from one fight to the next. One soldier might take a few shots from the submachine gun and drop like a sack of potatoes, but his buddy right next to him might absorb an entire clip before he goes down.
This might all be my imagination, though. It’s not like I busted out the analytics or anything.
Ultimately though, it was the ridiculous level design and never-ending hallways that would ultimately make me feel as though it was enough for one day.
So it took me a long time to get through it, and it just so happened that when I booted it up after starting this whole Virtual 100 initiative, I only had about two or three chapters to go before it was all said and done. So it seems like a quick turnaround for Game #6 when in fact it was a long time coming.
There’s not a whole lot else to say about FEAR. It’s still a decent time, but there have been so many other, better shooters that have built on what it started. Even its own sequel is a day and night comparison.
But that’s a write-up for another time. For now, it’s another square on the grid and another ten bucks in the bank.
