F.E.A.R. series

If you think fear 2 is "bad" you're bullshitting, not as good as the first but bad? The mech sections alone make the game worth at least 1 playthrough, better than most mech games that come out.

The thing about F.E.A.R 2 is that it was the start of the series dropping the horror pretensions for action. The mech sections kinda prove my point in fact. Entertaining, yes, but the game is so conflicted that it feels more schizophrenic in tone that it surprised me that 3 managed to be even worse in that regard somehow. That said, I wouldn't say its complete shit. But I think the most charitable I can be toward it is saying that its unadventurous and mediocre at best.

I feel the apparition segments are the worst segments in original F.E.A.R., if we are comparing here.

After F.E.A.R 1+expansions, everything went downhill.

Kill yourself.

Level designs are basically one way corridors instead of two way corridors and open ended squares where you always have a direct path to your flank.

For 3 - They wanted the CoD audience. That one's pretty clear cut.

For 2 - It's mostly okay and definitely has some good sequences, but ultimately it felt a bit, I don't know, pointless ? Like an obligatory sequel they didn't fully know what to do with and ran through blindly. There is unnecessary new shit, the story is mostly retreading with a weaker cast, and the title, project origin, showed that at least somebody was phoning it in since there is no fucking project Origin involved. (That was all in 1).

EP ad PM were both good.

Trying to chase the console market.

Thats a good thing because FEAR 1 is a failure as a horror game.
Its has even less tension and scares than the first Dead Space game and that is a game that announces the presence of enemies with musical notes.

Others have touched upon gameplay and level design but I'll add some complaints:

1. Falls into the same trap as many sequels of just producing an inferior rehash of the first game's story, characters etc.
2. Shitty weapon redesigns: block pseduo-SF guns instead of realisticish designs.
3. Nerfed the shotgun.
4. Fucking reflex-sight codshit early weapons with no feeling of weight or power.
5. Consolised Hud, controls, removed lean etc
6. Horror is mostly jump scares instead of atmosphere as per the first game.
7. Shitty level design and the parts of the game in which you fight non-Replicas make the AI shittier despite it being more advanced on paper.
8. Abandoned the idea that all normal weapons should be equally viable in different situations.

What really kills the game in most anons' minds though is the first third. This is spent mostly in an underground hospital against unchallenging enemies and is extremely repetitive. The first game got away with this somewhat by having fun AI, varied level design etc but in 2 it's just the same 1-2 gunfights for fucking hours with the shitty starting guns (the aforementioned reflex-sight smg, for example). This section also just rehashes the horror and exposition from the first game. Hell there's even a superior hospital section in Extraction Point.

Once you get to the School the game improves a fair bit. That's clearly where most of the work went and was also the only part shown during marketing…

F.E.A.R. actually works well as a horror game for most people. If you've played it before or just run through shit it isn't spooky sure but for most people their first playthrough is going to be pretty damn tense. This works well with the gunfights which can be pretty fast/deadly (again this is going to depend on personal skill).

More jump scares =/= better horror. One of the smartest things a horror game can do is to not show you a threat. If you go dig through what FEAR's devs have said about the game they explain that they actively tried to avoid jump scares. They also purposefully used musical cues with no payoff to fuck with the player. All this is missed when you do a sanic-fast playthrough ofc.

And really horror games fucking suck. I'd happily claim Thief 1 is one of the best ever made and it wasn't even trying to be scary.

Though I will say the parts in which you fight the nightmares were fairly bland. Nothing scary about a legless floating nigger that dies to one shot of fucking anything.

...

She just wanted a hug man

I enjoyed FEAR 2, but the lack of lean and peek does hurt it a lot.

Never played FEAR 3 because it looked like shit.

As a FEAR game it's fucking terrible. As an FPS it's bland and a good timesink at best unless you're playing as Fettel. As a coop FPS it's worth getting on sale if you've got a friend to go through it with. They did try to add an element of competitive coop which was fucking retarded but it's still fun. You just need to pretend it's a different series.

the shotgun was already trash

Dunno if it was just me but FEAR just felt like the game is on autopilot or something. I was shitting bricks when that mech thing chased me and smashed through walls in the process in the first games expansion but I hardly remember any fight from the socond game, I just felt weirdly disconnected. I blame the tacky HUD, stupid effects layered on top of one another and shitty guns.