F.E.A.R. gave players a new slant on the shooter genre with its horror tropes offering frights as well as fights. Now its sequel is here. Think there's nothing to fear from Project Origin? Think again...
When F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon hit PLAYSTATION 3, its potent blend of shooting action and horror elements made for some great gameplay that also lived up to the title's acronym. Stunning shocks and stylish shooting. So it's no surprise to see the sequel take aim at the same aspects, albeit ramped up to make sure your journey is even more sweaty palmed than before.
Who you gonna call?
Supernatural suspense and Hollywood action are the hallmarks of F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin, with a storyline that dovetails into the first game. Exploring the city which became a disaster site during the explosive climax of F.E.A.R., this time you witness the final half hour of these events from the eyes of a Special Forces agent looking to arrest the people behind the terrible experiments which led to these events in the first place.
Loaning an air of uncertainty and spiritual menace to all this is Alma, the rather spooky girl who was experimented on in the pursuit of creating psychic super soldiers. Alma's terrifying mental abilities which threaten everything around her are the crux for Project Origin's spine-tingling tone, coupling a range of other nasty supernatural dangers lurking in the shadows.
What it means in gameplay terms is that you pick up a weapon, take on a variety of enemies of both technological and the more creepy variety, and occasionally get scared out of your wits by some freakish goings on.
Plenty to F.E.A.R.
As you would expect for a game with a more spine-chillingly sinister ambience, there's much more to Project Origin than meets the eye - and not just in a story sense, either. Artificial Intelligence has been bumped up for your foes in the field, making the blistering firefights more intense and unpredictable.
"The idea of the player crafting the combat experience is a big thing for us," says Dave Matthews, Primary Art Lead at developer Monolith, when explaining how the AI adapts to your own actions. "In trying to evolve the intelligence of the enemies, we've made them much more aware of how they interact with the environment, as well as how the environment has opportunities for combat advantages. And we want to give that same opportunity straight back to the player. So anything the AI is capable of, we made sure the player can do the same thing."
Which means both you and your foes are able to tip over objects and use them for cover, destroy the environment and change tactics on the fly. Enemies will try and take shots at potentially explosive objects around you when you're hiding, throw grenades at you if you're behind cover and attempt to find a blind spot to attack you from. They'll even drop their weapons and try to extinguish themselves if you set them alight, pulling out a concealed or abandoned gun to extract revenge if they survive.
Nice suit
On top of the weapons, there is also the Elite Powered Armour (EPA) suit to use through the varied environments. As a mechanical suit, you'll initially come across the EPA as an enemy based craft, which will rip away your hiding cover with a hail of bullets and make a nuisance of itself. Once captured, you can hop in and cause some mayhem yourself.
And don't worry too much about this technological wonder if it gets damaged - it will eject you into the combat space while it clams up to repair itself. "Now you're out in the exact same space in the exact same situation... but without the suit and a different set of weapons," Matthews explains.
Which is exactly the point - this will give you a new set of problems seeing as the environment will hardly be safe if you've taken that much damage in the first place, something Matthews is keen to stress as part of the evolving nature of the game experience in Project Origin.
Cue eerie music...
Even the tricky essential balance between all this high impact action and horror is in hand. "The horror aspect is just as important as the action aspect," says Matthews. "In F.E.A.R. we took a lot of our cues from Japanese horror. In that genre they show you some horror out of context, so you get this slow burn of information, which is unsettling as you're never quite exactly sure what's wrong. And then there's this moment of clarity where everything gets turned on its side and the grandeur of the scheme becomes apparent.
"These are the philosophies we've also taken for the combat space. In the first F.E.A.R. everything was tight and claustrophobic and it was able to create a certain mood. What we realised after we released that was it eventually became a little too much and too numbing. So we started to play with the combat space and that became a great opportunity for us and changed the basics, so now we have some tense moments which are wound down, to lull you into a false sense of security for the player.
"We use that combat mechanic along with the exploration to start to create those moments that become inconsistent, and get that moment where you think something's not quite right. And right when you expect the situation is going to happen... we're going to hit you just before that! We want those high impact moments inside of Project Origin."
Control your F.E.A.R.
With its strong blend of styles and genres, there's a lot to look forward to in F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin. And Matthews is keen that regardless of how much blasting and scares are squeezed in, the end result is an engaging experience. "We want to create these great moments," he says. "These epic, dramatic scenes, so you really feel like you have a significant role in what you're doing in the game."
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