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Yes, this is an older game so I don't know how relevant this review will be. However, I missed it the first time around and so only recently got to play this game. F.E.A.R. is billed as a horror/action FPS and so expect a fair amount of gore/blood throughout the single player scenario. You play the part of a newly-recruited member of an elite commando squad whose mandate is to eliminate paranormal threats to national security (LOL). Yes, that description makes it sound cheesy, sort of like Ghostbusters meets COD4 or something, but really not silly in any way. Just consider yourself a regular soldier with regular military-style weaponry who typically gets thrown into... odd... situations.
This package comes with 3 games. The first is the main F.E.A.R. game and then there are two expansions which include Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. The two expansions pretty much just give new levels and a new perspective on the main story. They also introduce some new badguys and give you a few new weapons.
I give it an overall 4/5 stars. I recommend this if you're looking for a good single-player game with a story on par with Half-Life 2 (maybe not that good, but not bad though). I can't comment on the multiplayer as I've never tried it.
What follows is a very long review. (Minion, you might want to pace yourself if you think you might get bored/distracted (lol j/k))
F.E.A.R.
The basic premise is that an experimental army of clone soldiers under the command of a single psychic has somehow "activated" and gone rogue. They've started attacking the facilities of the defense contractor that developed them and it's your job to go in and stop it. I won't say anything more about the plot at this point, other than it is freakin' awesome. There are tons of bizarre plot twists and revelations that find you mixed deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue general evilness. The plot is advanced by a wide variety of characters that you run into either in person or via various phone messages that you find in people's offices. A lot of the plot is actually explained through these time-delayed conversations that you run across which serves as a very effective means for fleshing out the plot as a whole.
Throughout the game, you experience very, VERY, creepy things. As I said before, the game is billed as horror and frankly, there wasn't a point when I was playing when I didn't have the hairs on the back of my neck raised. It's not like Doom 3 where you're assaulted on all sides by demons and whatnot. Rather, the horror is very subtle whereby you occasionally see blurry visions of a dreamworld that slowly starts to reveal horrible actions of people in the past. You'll typically go through several levels of normal FPS play where you're working to suppress these clone soldiers and not see anything spooky. You just start to relax and get into the flow of things when WHAMO you get a vision of something that nearly causes you to jump out of your seat. Thus, the supernatural aspects are always in the back of your mind and you start to anticipate them as you explore the environment. The fact that they're so far apart in the early part of the game just heightens the suspense.
The supernatural parts of the story come more frequently as the game progresses and then the boundaries between the supernatural and the natural work start to collapse and it's your job to figure out how to stop it or just how to stay alive and escape... The ending nearly made me fall out of my seat, btw. It really leaves you wanting to continue the story as it's a cliffhanger. 
The game mechanics are quite good. The AI of the bots is quite well done and you'll often find yourself having to watch your back because the guys will try to go around a side passage and sneak up behind you. You get 3 weapon slots to fill with weapons that you start out with as well as with weapons that you take from your fallen enemies. The selection is often tough but it's a little predictable given the opponents that you're facing. That is, you'll have a wave of opponents carrying gun X and then later on you'll have a wave of opponents mostly carrying gun Y. There's a very good balance of short, medium, and long range weaponry including some sniper goodies and some heavy hitting stuff for some very strong opponents later on. You also get a variety of grenades ranging from the standard dumb toss-and-boom variety to proxy and even remote detonated stuff. The additional explosives give you the ability to protect your backside as well as to set remote traps. You also get the chance to teleoperate a couple of remote gun turrets which is LOTs of fun to say the least.
One other advantage that you have, which really makes the combat awesome, is the ability to speed up your perception to 5x that of your opponents. While in this so-called "SloMo" mode, which only lasts for a few seconds at a time, you can move and shoot at 2x regular speed. Basically, the F.E.A.R developers wanted their combat to be just like the lobby scene from The Matrix where Neo and Trinity take out waves of security guards and soldiers by using their heightened perception and speed to overwhelm their opponents. Similarly, you have various melee attacks (rifle butt, flying jump kick, and low side-kick) which allow you to pretty much decimate a regular soldier in one shot. There's nothing quite like rushing a guy in SloMo and realizing that your weapon is empty and so you perform a flying jump kick at him which pretty much blasts him across the room. Good stuff.
The graphics, lighting, and visual effects are really good in this game and they really make my dual 8800 GTX SLI system work hard when I crank them up at 1600x1200 resolution. What really makes this game though is the choice of _music_. The guys who did the soundtrack for this game REALLY knew their stuff. There's a number of extremely cool-yet-creepy songs that appear only when facing a large group of enemies. I found that the music really drew me in and made the game play that much more enticing.
The game itself is fairly long. There is a bit of repetition in the levels but the atmosphere, supernatural stuff, and music solves that problem by making it NOT boring in the least. Without the atmosphere, I think this game would really drag at points in the middle.
Extraction Point
This expansion take up where you left off in the original F.E.A.R. Everything has gone to hell (almost literally) and you need to try to escape from a city that is rapidly turning into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Other than more or less providing a continuation of the previous game, this expansion pack really doesn't offer that much new variety in encounters or level design. It also, infuriatingly, doesn't really resolve any of the storyline but instead gives you a steady-state level of spooky encounters in addition to the primary ones. It's worth playing through though since the setting is still engaging and the atmosphere cannot be beat. It's as if this expansion pack was meant to be the final chapter of the first game but they didn't finish it in time for the release.
Perseus Mandate
This expansion pack kind of threw me for a loop. I was expecting that I would once again pick up the mantle of the protagonist from the previous two games but unfortunately not. Instead, I'm part of a second F.E.A.R. team who has been sent in to a secondary location to investigate additional weirdness going on with the company that created the clone army. To add to the oddity, this second character is ALSO gifted with the ability to do SloMo when in combat. WTF? It actually took me until the end of the game to realize that I wasn't even the same player as in the first game!!! Confusing. The original game's plot made it clear that you were pretty "special" by the end of the game which explained (sort of) why you had these abilities. I guess that according to this game, you're not that hot. In addition, some of the baddies start exhibiting this sort of ability as well. I guess that's what you get when you combine bioengineering with mass production, huh?
Anyway, this game does a bit better at offering some new kinds of scenarios and environments. It also adds a number of new weapons which are pretty cool. Once you finish the game it unlocks a few "bonus" rounds which are speed trials based on scenarios that you play in the game. These are fun and give you a chance to hone your combat skills on an increasingly more difficult set of opponents.
The mildly irritating thing is that the upcoming sequel to F.E.A.R., called "Project Origin", I think, will disregard the events that happened in the two expansion packs. Bleagh.
Anyway, the gold edition of this game comes with some neat bonus features like a prequel live-action movie and a VERY long developer commentary which seems like the developers talk over the running of the game through at least the first few chapters. I couldn't imagine that they would comment on the ENTIRE game (it's like 5-6 hours minimum to beat according to some review sites... it took me a lot longer because I was taking my time and exploring) but I haven't watched the entire thing yet to find out. Even with the less-than-perfect (but still good) expansions, I think that the entire pack is worth the expense and the investment.
This package comes with 3 games. The first is the main F.E.A.R. game and then there are two expansions which include Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. The two expansions pretty much just give new levels and a new perspective on the main story. They also introduce some new badguys and give you a few new weapons.
I give it an overall 4/5 stars. I recommend this if you're looking for a good single-player game with a story on par with Half-Life 2 (maybe not that good, but not bad though). I can't comment on the multiplayer as I've never tried it.
What follows is a very long review. (Minion, you might want to pace yourself if you think you might get bored/distracted (lol j/k))
F.E.A.R.
The basic premise is that an experimental army of clone soldiers under the command of a single psychic has somehow "activated" and gone rogue. They've started attacking the facilities of the defense contractor that developed them and it's your job to go in and stop it. I won't say anything more about the plot at this point, other than it is freakin' awesome. There are tons of bizarre plot twists and revelations that find you mixed deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue general evilness. The plot is advanced by a wide variety of characters that you run into either in person or via various phone messages that you find in people's offices. A lot of the plot is actually explained through these time-delayed conversations that you run across which serves as a very effective means for fleshing out the plot as a whole.
Throughout the game, you experience very, VERY, creepy things. As I said before, the game is billed as horror and frankly, there wasn't a point when I was playing when I didn't have the hairs on the back of my neck raised. It's not like Doom 3 where you're assaulted on all sides by demons and whatnot. Rather, the horror is very subtle whereby you occasionally see blurry visions of a dreamworld that slowly starts to reveal horrible actions of people in the past. You'll typically go through several levels of normal FPS play where you're working to suppress these clone soldiers and not see anything spooky. You just start to relax and get into the flow of things when WHAMO you get a vision of something that nearly causes you to jump out of your seat. Thus, the supernatural aspects are always in the back of your mind and you start to anticipate them as you explore the environment. The fact that they're so far apart in the early part of the game just heightens the suspense.
The supernatural parts of the story come more frequently as the game progresses and then the boundaries between the supernatural and the natural work start to collapse and it's your job to figure out how to stop it or just how to stay alive and escape... The ending nearly made me fall out of my seat, btw. It really leaves you wanting to continue the story as it's a cliffhanger. The game mechanics are quite good. The AI of the bots is quite well done and you'll often find yourself having to watch your back because the guys will try to go around a side passage and sneak up behind you. You get 3 weapon slots to fill with weapons that you start out with as well as with weapons that you take from your fallen enemies. The selection is often tough but it's a little predictable given the opponents that you're facing. That is, you'll have a wave of opponents carrying gun X and then later on you'll have a wave of opponents mostly carrying gun Y. There's a very good balance of short, medium, and long range weaponry including some sniper goodies and some heavy hitting stuff for some very strong opponents later on. You also get a variety of grenades ranging from the standard dumb toss-and-boom variety to proxy and even remote detonated stuff. The additional explosives give you the ability to protect your backside as well as to set remote traps. You also get the chance to teleoperate a couple of remote gun turrets which is LOTs of fun to say the least.
One other advantage that you have, which really makes the combat awesome, is the ability to speed up your perception to 5x that of your opponents. While in this so-called "SloMo" mode, which only lasts for a few seconds at a time, you can move and shoot at 2x regular speed. Basically, the F.E.A.R developers wanted their combat to be just like the lobby scene from The Matrix where Neo and Trinity take out waves of security guards and soldiers by using their heightened perception and speed to overwhelm their opponents. Similarly, you have various melee attacks (rifle butt, flying jump kick, and low side-kick) which allow you to pretty much decimate a regular soldier in one shot. There's nothing quite like rushing a guy in SloMo and realizing that your weapon is empty and so you perform a flying jump kick at him which pretty much blasts him across the room. Good stuff.
The graphics, lighting, and visual effects are really good in this game and they really make my dual 8800 GTX SLI system work hard when I crank them up at 1600x1200 resolution. What really makes this game though is the choice of _music_. The guys who did the soundtrack for this game REALLY knew their stuff. There's a number of extremely cool-yet-creepy songs that appear only when facing a large group of enemies. I found that the music really drew me in and made the game play that much more enticing.
The game itself is fairly long. There is a bit of repetition in the levels but the atmosphere, supernatural stuff, and music solves that problem by making it NOT boring in the least. Without the atmosphere, I think this game would really drag at points in the middle.
Extraction Point
This expansion take up where you left off in the original F.E.A.R. Everything has gone to hell (almost literally) and you need to try to escape from a city that is rapidly turning into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Other than more or less providing a continuation of the previous game, this expansion pack really doesn't offer that much new variety in encounters or level design. It also, infuriatingly, doesn't really resolve any of the storyline but instead gives you a steady-state level of spooky encounters in addition to the primary ones. It's worth playing through though since the setting is still engaging and the atmosphere cannot be beat. It's as if this expansion pack was meant to be the final chapter of the first game but they didn't finish it in time for the release.
Perseus Mandate
This expansion pack kind of threw me for a loop. I was expecting that I would once again pick up the mantle of the protagonist from the previous two games but unfortunately not. Instead, I'm part of a second F.E.A.R. team who has been sent in to a secondary location to investigate additional weirdness going on with the company that created the clone army. To add to the oddity, this second character is ALSO gifted with the ability to do SloMo when in combat. WTF? It actually took me until the end of the game to realize that I wasn't even the same player as in the first game!!! Confusing. The original game's plot made it clear that you were pretty "special" by the end of the game which explained (sort of) why you had these abilities. I guess that according to this game, you're not that hot. In addition, some of the baddies start exhibiting this sort of ability as well. I guess that's what you get when you combine bioengineering with mass production, huh?
Anyway, this game does a bit better at offering some new kinds of scenarios and environments. It also adds a number of new weapons which are pretty cool. Once you finish the game it unlocks a few "bonus" rounds which are speed trials based on scenarios that you play in the game. These are fun and give you a chance to hone your combat skills on an increasingly more difficult set of opponents.
The mildly irritating thing is that the upcoming sequel to F.E.A.R., called "Project Origin", I think, will disregard the events that happened in the two expansion packs. Bleagh.
Anyway, the gold edition of this game comes with some neat bonus features like a prequel live-action movie and a VERY long developer commentary which seems like the developers talk over the running of the game through at least the first few chapters. I couldn't imagine that they would comment on the ENTIRE game (it's like 5-6 hours minimum to beat according to some review sites... it took me a lot longer because I was taking my time and exploring) but I haven't watched the entire thing yet to find out. Even with the less-than-perfect (but still good) expansions, I think that the entire pack is worth the expense and the investment.
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