The latest release from Monolith Productions is the sequel to their smash hit F.E.A.R. from 2005, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. The original game was critically acclaimed for bringing a narrative horror First Person Shooter to a new level with its intense story. While it was a influential game on the PC, the Xbox 360 version was lacking with inferior graphics, an overly sensitive auto aim and poorly placed checkpoints that made it a far inferior version to the PC sku. Let’s look into whether the sequel is playing second fiddle to the PC version yet again.

The story within F.E.A.R. 2 takes place an hour before the end of the original game, you’re playing a separate F.E.A.R. team who are going to put into protective custody the president of Armacham, the company responsible for Alma, the powerful girl/woman responsible for rogue squadrons of psychic controlled army soldiers causing havoc. From this point you continue to unravel the history of Alma and what you need to do to try and stop her. Monolith pulled no punches when writing the story letting get as weird and freaky as you could imagine. While some might find the story abit convulted, I personally enjoy the no holds barred approach that was taken. While there is voice acting and cutscenes, a lot of the story is told through finding datapads throughout the game and reading the contents. While it gets the job done, it’d be nice if the creators had less reading and a more visual presentation of the facts.

The single player campaign for F.E.A.R. 2 isn’t very long, and should only take players around six hours to go through it. Most players should breeze through the game fairly quickly however its a fun ride while it lasts. Most of the faults found in the original 360 F.E.A.R. have thankfully been fixed in the sequel. The auto aim doesn’t feel like its forcing you to shoot in any particular direction and there is a bar in options menu for adjusting it to your liking. The checkpoints seem to be better placed with no point did I feel frustrated that I lost any significant amount of progress because the game didn’t save recently. Speaking generally about the gameplay, all the guns feel satisfying to fire and are a joy to use. The only issue with the guns is you’ll find yourself just using what the enemies around you are using in order to maintain your ammo stocks. Unlike the original F.E.A.R. it feels like a better fit for the console with the default scheme like most of the platforms FPSs, with little reason to complain about the controls. Like the original game you have the ability to slow down time, its a nifty feature but it makes the game a bit too easy giving reason to ramp up the difficulty setting you play on. The enemies aren’t very different from each other, with most either being shotgun toting or assault rifle carrying soldiers however it doesn’t detract from the experience that much. The only severe complaint is that sometimes you have to find a path by moving some object out of the way that be less than obvious.

Graphically the game is a great improvement over the original rivaling some of the best looking games found on the 360. The game is a vast improvement over the original which looked more like the original Xbox version than something you’d find on a next generation console Most of the character models are sharp and only a few low quality textures found through the levels really detract from the experience. The sound in the game top notch and the ambiance of the environments succeeds into sucking you into this horror game.

The weakest link the experience is easily the multiplayer with its few options and poorly balanced gameplay. While you start off with a fair assortment of guns, from the start you’re given a slide which will instantly kill a nearby player making kills too easy. You can find unbalanced guns that are severely limited in the single player that in the multiplayer give an nearly unfair advantage to whoever might either stumble upon it or memorize its location. The game has Deathmatch and a few team based multiplayer modes that are better done in Halo or Call of Duty. Suffice to say the multiplayer will not keep you playing F.E.A.R. 2.

Monolith succeeds at the creating a riveting experience that’s memorable while it lasts. However the game is fairly short at six hours and there’s no good reason to play it after you’ve beaten the single player. So be forewarned that the game while definitely tons of fun, will have you moving onto the next one before long.

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