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

Fear, according to John Cale, is a man's best friend. And he's the guy who sang (in the Shrek movie, but not on the soundtrack album) "Love is not a victory march/It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah" so you know you can trust him. But he didn't write that, so can you be sure? But he did play Viola in the Velvet Underground (as opposed to in Twelfth Night) so, on reflection, you probably can. But does that make F.E.A.R. 2 a man's second best friend? Makes you wonder.

What I do think I know is that F.E.A.R. 2 is the sequel to the popular game F.E.A.R.. It's a first person shooter, but it's a horror first-person shooter. Which means it's frightening. Of course, much of the suspense is spoilt by it saying 'F.E.A.R.' in big letters on the front of the box.

That's not fear, the word meaning according to Mr Webster: "an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger". No, the 'F.E.A.R.' on the front of this box is the adventitious acronym for 'First Encounter Assault Recon', the name of the squad you are part of during the game. Actually, on second consideration that's not adventitious at all, it's a hideously awkward backronym, engineered specifically to enable them to call the game F.E.A.R. But let's not dwell on that for too long.

F.E.A.R. 2 starts where the previous game ended. Your squad is sent in to place Genevieve Aristide under protective custody. You are quickly separated from the rest of the team, and have to battle your way back to them.

As a prequel to the action, your character - Michael Becket - experiences an hallucination of a ruined city with a young girl wandering through it. Following the girl into a hole in the road provokes the action to begin.

As you approach Aristide's penthouse, it becomes clear that the Armacham organisation for which she works has sent a black ops team to intercept her, and these become your first opponents.

The black ops soldiers represent a good learning opportunity for the new player because they are dumb as a bag of hammers. They will crouch behind cover, but then stand up again without moving location. They are also incredibly bad at hitting you if you are crouched behind any sort of cover; and the levels are designed with ample items to cower behind. Often they are not ideally situated to crouch behind, but you can pull or move them into place to use as cover.

So, in order to progress through the first four levels all you really have to do is find cover, crouch behind it and target your opponent. Once they duck, keep your sights aimed at the same place, and when they stand up again, let them dine on fine hot lead.

Clearly, you can mix things up a little by turning off aim assistance and upping the difficulty, but on the default settings the first four levels are a doddle. And this lures you into a false sense of security.

As the game progresses, you get the opportunity to collect more weapons, but you can only carry four, so eventually you have to make decisions about what to hold and what to drop. This will come down to your playing style. If you are a duck-and-cover player, one of the sighted, ranged weapons will be your favourite, and the sniper rifle is particularly impressive, eviscerating opponents with a single shot and taking them out when only a small amount of them is visible from behnd cover. If you are more of a gung-ho player, the shotguns offer a satisfyingly devastating level of damage but only at close range.

There is a range of grenade weapons, and you can carry up to five of each. There are also proximity mines, which you can plant, and they will detonate when an opponent gets within their blast range.

At first the weapons are typical projectile weapons, pistols, automatic weapons and shotguns. Later, you'll have the choice of flame throwers, rocket launchers, and napalm cannons. The latter is surprisingly effective if used correctly. Rather than killing your opponents it causes them to flail around for a period of time, unable to shoot at you or take cover. By switching to another weapon during this period, you can take them out.