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F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

The team behind the excellent game Condemned is now ready with their new FEAR project. Henrik has put on his combat uniform and is ready for action.

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Fear is perhaps the most common feeling among men. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what tomorrow will bring. The fear of hurting the feelings of others. The fear of a car crash. The fear of what the future has in store. Nothing is as uncertain as the future, but one thing is sure - fear rarely makes things better. Still, the modern and civilised human being has an odd tendency to seek out fear - myself included. During the last 10 hours I have fought my way through a dark macabre world, where death is more apparent than life and paranormal incidents or hallucinations provoked by anxiety are never far out of reach.

I am staring into a tumble-drier containing a chopped off head, which now bumps around the metal casing giving away steady measured thumps. The head's previous owner lies in a pool of blood on the floor, and despite the shrill of noise in the distant, the audio field is for once very silent. I reluctantly continue my search and kick over a small table for cover as I see a group of Replica soldiers open fire. The fire is returned, but not by me. Armacham, the company behind the Harbringer project - the development of the perfect soldier - has sent their own troops into the hospital, to erase all traces of a project gone bad. I let them do their thing and then activate the slow motion function to eradicate the left over survivors from both sides. I am squeezed between two sides. A bull in a China shop.

The original FEAR never got to me. Part of that may be because I played the Xbox 360 version and not the PC version. But that is only part of the explanation. Despite an excellent AI, responsible for a lot of intense gun fights, the game slowly but steadily became very monotonous, unless you pressured yourself into undergoing tactical experiments. The fear, horror, and clinging sensation of angst, which the title hinted at, was constantly present somewhere up in the stratosphere. It was, like the game, very subtle and under-played, and the same localities and enemies were generously reused.

In the case of FEAR 2: Project Origin, the apple does not fall far from the tree. The first three to four hours consist of badly lit cellar hallways, hospital beds and equipment of all sorts, human corpses and blood - plenty of blood. There is an immense amount of hostile soldiers, all willing to flank and flush me out of hiding with a few grenades. I of course has an ace up my sleeve - the slow motion function - which, by the flick of a button, transforms even the best Replica soldiers into sitting ducks. You must however use it wisely, as it will run out, and if that happens in the middle of a fight, you quickly become a sitting duck yourself.

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Without the slow motion function and a handful of exciting weapons, Project Origin would look like most other FPS games out there. It is packed with tight corridors, gloomy concrete buildings, and claustrophobic rooms. You feel as if you are walking in circles. Several times this made me inclined to call the good people at Monolith un-imaginary, but after a highly surprising boss fight and having gotten back into the wild, I was again able to see light at the end of the tunnel. The picture flickered and the scenery changed from a town in ruins into a fiery meadow with a small girl sitting on a swing. The tortured Alma, who had to go through so much so that Armacham could create their super soldiers with telekinetic powers. Her story is heart breaking.

It's the atmosphere and story which sets aside Project Origin from the immense amount of FPS games out there today. It is the moments where the lights go out and ghost like figures hunt and scream at you. The moments where you cant tell apart dream from reality. Project Origin truly shines, when it sends you into an abandoned public school with a heap of notes about how the children there have been separated into groups and systematically used as guinea pigs for awareness enhancing medicaments. It shines when it sends you through streets and alleyways in an armoured robot, equipped with machine guns and missiles. It shines when it overpowers you with paranormal activities and makes you think. This is how you know that FEAR 2 is not just another run-of-the-mill FPS game.

Funny enough, the most emphasis in the game has been put on the action, and as hectic and demanding as they are, and even though they demand a certain degree of tactical understanding, more paranormal entries and a greater desire to tell a story would have suited FEAR 2, as would have adding more diversity to enemy design and a more powerful game engine. The game engine in the PS3 version of the game, which is the one I have been playing, has not always had a smooth run, despite the fact that the graphics are not among the most detailed we have seen.

In FEAR 2, as opposed to the original, you can take aim by pressing the left shoulder button and thereby increase your accuracy tremendously. This function pretty much sums up the game. First and foremost it is a first person shooter, and after that, a horror game. It has supplied me with many hours of entertainment, but there are still better FPS- and horror games out there.

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F.E.A.R. 2: Project OriginF.E.A.R. 2: Project OriginF.E.A.R. 2: Project OriginF.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
07 Gamereactor UK
7 / 10
+
The slow motion shooting, the paranormal themes and the weapons arsenal.
-
The story doesn't feel central to the experience, the graphics are nothing special.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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