F.E.A.R Is The Mindkiller

Posted by Stropp on February 23, 2009

Not MMORPG related, but anyhoo…

I tried out the F.E.A.R 2 demo this evening on the XBox 360. 

I knew it was out, I’ve read some blog posts about it, and I’d seen some of the reviews. But over the last couple of days I’ve seen a few of the adverts on TV and they looked pretty good so I thought I’d give it a try after I got home from work.

The download was pretty quick. It was only around 750MB over XBox Live. So I kicked it off, made dinner and watched something on TV. When I was finished and switched back, it was ready to go.

My first impression. Yep. It was pretty creepy. So much so that a few of the scripted sequences really made me jump. This game has atmosphere, and could that little girl be any more freaky evil?

The game was pretty smooth too. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with shooters on the XBox 360. I find the aiming controls always a bit too sensitive, so that I often overshoot when aiming and have to correct and recorrect often. FEAR 2 doesn’t seem to have this problem, I was able to smoothly line up my target in most cases.

The only downside was that there were a few common functions on the D-Pad that seemed to intefere with each other. At one point I couldn’t work out why my weapons were switching, only to figure out later I was trying to click down for health, and was inadvertently pressing a little to the right and switching weapons. That could also be why I often didn’t have health when I thought I should have.

I quite enjoyed the bit at the end of the demo when I got to use the power armor. It’s nice having a big mech suit available to allow one to take a lot of hits while mowing down enemies with auto-cannons and rockets. If only it was available for the morning commute.

Overall the whole demo lasted me about two hours. I’m not the fastest FPS player in the world, I tend to slowly make my way through the levels and try and minimise the damage I take. This made it a pretty quick experience, but hey, that’s what a demo is, right?

I’m not sure if I’ll go out and buy this one, but only because my time is much more limited these days and I’ve got other things to play. If I were on holidays, I reckon I’d head out and buy it tomorrow.

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