I just got F.E.A.R. from my wife as a Christmas present. I haven't installed it yet. What do you guys think about this game?

It's great as long as you've got a PC powerful enough to play it.

The storyline is quite nice, it's a mixture of Elfen Lied (Anime), The Ring (Movie) and Doom 3 (Game).
The effects are amazing, the monster AI is among the best there is, the music is fitting, and the sound is perfect.
There's a *thing* towards the end of the game, right after you escape *some place*, and it's the best of that *kind of thing* i've ever seen in a game.

So it's a great buy, congrats :).

i played the demo and thought it was awesome even though it look like DOG **** on my pc O YEA and it lagged terribly. it was still fun though. i would love to play it on a great pc. i havent really played it but id think ud like it cause i wanted more. FPS FAN?

its a really nice game.. but the controls are a bit difficult.. its pretty hard to hit those bloody zombieheads even in aiming mode.. havent played alot though. the atmosphere and graphics are really splendid.

The game looked good to me, but my rig can't handle it.
So as stated above, if you've got a powerful enough PC, go for it :)

Whatever happens, you most certainly could've gotten worser gifts!

I was fortunate enough to play through the entire game recently, and it's quite a dousy. I was a huge fan of Doom 3, I like be scared like that. F.E.A.R. is pretty terifying, but on a more psychological level. Effects are amazing, and the storyline is good aswell. They implement fast reflexes similar to Max Payne in a first person setting which yields a lot of exciting battles.

Overall a greta buy, one of the best FPS available at the moment. which is a bit more than I can say for Quake 4... :cool:

I have a slow computer, and can't play it, but I can't wait too. It looks awesome!

I'm on my second go-round in single player (harder mode).
I'm very impressed with the game especially the atmosphere.
I've jumped out of my seat a few times alone at night.
The sound is incredible.
I have also played the multi player and had my *** handed
to me on a platter, I suck BAD!
Over all a bit short, but worth the cash.
I'm running it on maximum settings for the most part.
It's not as top heavy as I thought it would be.
A must with surround on stun. Very creepy...

My machine should be able to handle it, even though I haven't even checked the recommended spec requirement yet (I am at work right now).

Athlon 3200+ XP Barton
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
1 GB dual-channel

This will be weird after all the positive comments, but I honestly did not like it --don't get me wrong, technically it's a superb game, but the artistic content felt unimaginative to me. Overall, the game felt like the recent successful popular culture franchises cobbled together, like 'Hey guys, let's put The Ring, put in cool Half-Life type soldier enemies, then add bullet-time! (With enough hype we're bound to have a bestselling title!)'. As you might guess, I especially did not like the story, and level design was extremely bland, with continually similar environments until the end, both visually and gameplay-wise. What impressed me were (especially) the AI, and the graphics, even at medium settings.

Another problem that F.E.A.R displays, apart from the sub-par storywriting in most video games, is the mechanic of quicksaves disturbing fluid gameplay. Since the AI is so good, one expects the possibility of dying in every fight and is somehow driven to quicksaving in-between every gunfight (which are really intense, i should add) --holding back oneself also didn't work as the game was indeed challenging, at least for me. One last thing I should say is that it failed in being scary, creepy or even mildly disturbing for me, which of course depends on one's mood and environment and could be limited to only me as I could play it mostly during daytime.

All that aside, it's a very-well done game --problem is, for me, it demonstrates exactly what's wrong with PC gaming, and FPS'es currently: close to zero innovation. Of course, it's very likely that it's a personal problem I have with the stagnation of PC gaming (and FPS'es :)) that's talking right now, and it's entirely possible that you'll absolutely love the game, as in the end, it DOES combine some very good franchises (imho blatant rip-offs of them though) and add them on an enjoyable core game.

FEAR is a cool game like everyone said so far.

I know what Federelli is talking about towards the end, O...m...goodness is all I can say when I saw it coming out.

But in response to Chamot, yeah after what you said, I could kind of see all three elements of hl2, bullet time, and the ring. But I thought the storyline was pretty good compared to most games. There are so many movies and so many storylines today, both from novels, games etc. I'm sure there's bound to be some overlapping ideas and themes in any story these days. And I totally agree on the quicksave thingy too it does ruin the atmosphere if your using it so much, but its also good to have it, when your fighting frustratng situations and you just want to past them already and carry on...stupid big soldiers with them big guns, I hate em.

I wish there is a game that manages to combine the AI of FEAR and the level design of Half-Life 2. I loved HL2, but the AI is very weak compared to almost any other FPS game.

ehm why would you consider FEAR as a FPS?

i mean the aiming is really hard and you are actually not always looking from the FPS view.. i cant compare it exactly to other FPS games.. as i said, the aiming is pretty indirect.

I've been listening to the AI jabber after I pick one of em off, It's hilarious!
I really like the expletives they shout at each other, "Check in!" (reply) "Shut your f**king mouth!" Very funny stuff. I also like running up to one and blasting em with the shotgun point blank, the graphics are so realistic like Soldier of Fortune on steroids! I hope this one makes it on your list of 'must haves' Merry Christmas!!! BOOM! hahahah..........

I thought FEAR was very good, a definate must have for shooter fans. It has the best engine out right now, better than Source or Doom3. The particle effects and volumetric lighting is top notch if your PC can handle it. You can tell Monolith spent alot of time on the details. The story was creepy and kept me playing until the end.

The only downsde for me were the endless hallways and the time between firefights. I'm looking forward to FEAR-2.

Fantastic. IMO, its the best game Monolith has released after NOLF 2. Those particle effects can bring the most powerful of computers to their knees. Fantastic, Hollywood-style firefights. U know, debris flying, grenade blasts warping time and space, gory gibs and other awesome effects. It can scare the **** out of u if ur playing it at night.

I think No One Lives Forever 2 is overall better than F.E.A.R.

Let me just repeat what I said earlier (http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic40473.html):

F.E.A.R., which I've been playing for a couple of days, is a good example of a bad game when it comes to freedom. Objects don't break when shot, not even a notebook on a table can be moved, and you can go only one way. A guy with weapons, grenades and inhuman powers can be stopped by a box on the other side of a closed door? It's also very repetitive, in my opinion.

It's also completely GPU-dependent (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_4.html), which is why I have to play at 800x600 minimal settings with my Athlon 64 2.4 GHz + Radeon 9550.

Nothing more than an average shooter filled with as much graphics effects as possible.

Ur true in saying that the physics system in F.E.A.R. still leaves a lot to be desired. And NOLF 2 was some serious fun!(compared to F.E.A.R. that is) but the firefights in F.E.A.R. are much more action-packed. However, the particle effects unfortunately, do strain even mid-range GPUs. But the story is really good, which makes up for its flaws IMO.

it is a really intensive game too. I can hardly run it at and i have a veray decent rig!

i played the demo and thought it was awesome even though it look like DOG **** on my pc. it was still fun though. i would love to play it on a great pc. i havent really played it but id think ud like it cause i wanted more. FPS FAN?

well over the weekend my dad got a new mobo and processor. im still stuck with a fx 5700 but now my mobo is 8x and i got a 2800+. so i tried the FEAR demo again. and i loved it even more. i dropped all the graphics down to low or off except the CPU based things and the res to the lowest. even thought the graphics were really bad it was great. there was no lag i really loved it. and i did have some particle effects on

ps. he also upgraded to 1gb ram

It's a very very cool game dude.it is 1 of the best game i've ever played.

The graphics are truly breathtaking, and it would be a shame for you not to own a copy of this revolutionary game. This game combines horror, action, and video play like no other. It is second to none.

FEAR is a great game, scares the crap out of me. That girl keeps walking around in the dark and then you hear that screeching sound. The graphics are really good too. Id recommend it to everyone basically.

The rats are totally realistic, I used to have pet rats so I can tell you that the behavior portrayed in the game is right on. I had that part running when my wife walked in, she freaked! I had a good laugh.....

FEAR is awsome but for some reson the following message appears which prvents me from installing the game "not a win32 application".

Does this have anything to do with the graphics card which is a 9550.

I just purchased the game and working through the game now, wow. The graphics are excellant, however, the my video card (ATI 9600) that I have is struggling with an avg. FPS of 30-40.

I think it's one of the best FPS games I've ever played. Great atmosphere and it has also made me duck in my seat a couple times (not to be confused with squishing a duck.) The weapons are lots of fun, but I wish I could hold more than 3 even though that removes from the "realism". I would imagine it's not much fun if you don't have a beefy enough machine to run it - at least that was the case for many people with several other games like Doom 3 and Quake 4.

Love the game, but it's indeed a system killer with details cranked up. Most games can't really beat-up my PC, but this one had NO problems bringing it to it's knees hehe. Aside from some spots with massive slowdown (again, settings intentionally all cranked up), the rest of the game played pretty nice and smooth though.

I was initially a bit confused about the low/laggy performance.. thinking "Hmm.. this doesn't look as good as Halflife2, but yet it's way laggy/slow framerate!"... but by about halfway through, the graphics really started to shine. It's apparent the second half of the game got the most attention to visual detail. The levels, lighting, surface detail and atmosphere are just gorgeous and incredible looking.

My only beef? Too short... or perhaps it's just too good! I played it pretty much non-stop and beat it the same weekend I got it on the default, medium difficulty. I compare this to about 2 weeks with Halflife2... so it was either how compelling it was to keep going.. or just a tad short.

So.. I give it a 9/10 overall. I haven't played the multiplayer yet, but that's next. The single-player firefights are absolutely some of the most intense and enjoyable I've ever played.. and the enemy AI is most definately some of the best I've experienced.

Saw it on a friend's machine and it looked great.

Too bad my graphics cards is not good enough to enjoy it...

Yes indeed, the single player campaign in f.e.a.r. is truly groundbreaking in it's gameplay, atmospere, level design and especially graphics! But was anybody else slightly disappointed at the feeble multiplayer effort?

So, I just want to update you guys on what happened to me.

I finally installed the game, and ran into an installation glitch right from the start. It turned out that Disc 1 is unreadable. It's a defective dsc.

I contacted VU Games, and they admit that it's a defective hardware. So I am returning the game to them for a full refund.

How lame is that?

Not lame at all as they admitted the fault.

My Bro has FEAR and wont play it in the dark he is only 15 ( I know the box says 17+, who listens) but I have played it a few times and I think its great,the graphics are really good.

got to admit FEAR is a great game. Had to reduce the in game graphics settings and make the game run on the direct x 8 setting but can still run the FX5900xt on 1028*768 resolution and are getting some pretty decent frame rates.

The graphics self test is a great way to tweak your setting to get the best performance and eye condy

Vivendi Games refused to refund my money, and they sent the game back to me, completely defective and useless.

Now, that's lame.