There’s something to be said about a video game that forces you to keep the lights on when playing at night. While F.E.A.R. 2 didn’t necessisarily have me sleeping with a night-light, there’s enough screamer moments embedded in the eight-plus hours of gameplay to satisfy most horror fans.
I’m not going to lie, the story in F.E.A.R. 2 is forgettable. Besides the fact that you’re constantly being telepathically poked by a half-dead she-zombie named Alma, there’s really no background information you need to know in order for things to make sense. For some reason, you’re special and she wants you. That said, there are some really cool creepy moments that make for fantastic displays of technical eye-candy. Some of them feel a bit cheap, but most are welcome moments of legitimate fright. Calling the game “gory” is a bit of an understatement. F.E.A.R. 2 has some scenes of straight-up maniacal carnage. These scenes become truly disturbing as some of them are set against paradoxical backgrounds like an elementary school.
Gameplay here is solid. F.E.A.R. 2 controls just as you’d expect with a few wild cards thrown in meant to separate the game from other generic shooters. Enemy variation is weak, as I can’t recall more than four character models I had the pleasure of shooting. Level design gets a bit redundant–something the original game suffered from–but there’s a good enough change of pace to keep the action moving along smoothly. I personally enjoyed the mech segements of play, where the main character is thrown inside a seemingly indestructible steel robot that fires all kinds of rockets and bullets.
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If you’re at all interested in stuff going on at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I wrote up a few stories about what’s happening out there for CNET.
