What went so horribly fucking wrong with this franchise?

Lad, you know it's better than the sequel plus who can forget that crazy threeway battle between the delta force, replicas, and the ATC and i like it more than EP since it has an ending that's not really worthh it

That second game will never ever come into fruitition by the way, since FEAR 2 diverge from the expansion pack's endings
and knowing where the rights belong to, it's safe to say that there will be no new FEAR games

consoles

That doesn't make any sense. The first one was on consoles and was great.

People played Fear for the storyline?

Warner bros killed the series.

don't buy the old games from steam, the money goes straight to warner bros. instead of monolith. Get a box copy or a free download.

It was great because it was made originally for PC. It didn't come out on consoles until it was already a hit.

FEAR was made for PCs and was a PC exclusive for over a year. Then Monolith smelled money (or likely were pressed into porting by Sierra).

some people are dumb like that

Actually I remember FEAR was one of the first games to get a day 1 patch for having a really buggy release. And perhaps something about DRM too.

I remember seeing a Youtube video from somebody who tried to play the retail disc version on their PC back in the day, and it wouldn't read because they had two optical drives in their computer.

this.
its the same thing that ruins a lot of good series.

Consolisation.

It was ported after the fact. That's not the same as aiming at consoles as a primary platform. C&C 1 was ported to PS1 but is was hardly consolised.

Wait, what is wrong with the plot? aside from being werid as fuck

I like this story too, it's honestly more interesting than the dogshit that is half-life and it's retarded lore.

there's nothing wrong with it, just does the job

u be sayin dis game developed sentience to be better at killin da playa and some mofo ruined it?

like your picture says
It's a dud

...

Well, not too much.
F.E.A.R. 2 was a step down, but it was still better than most counterparts. I thought it was okay, but not as fun as 1.
I revisited F.E.A.R.3 recently and to be honest I remembered it being much worse. Playing as Fettel is fun as shit, posessing people left and right, shooting through walls and not giving a fuck. The game is not cod-tier at all, the gameplay is far better and there aren't any fucking objective markers for retards who can't find their way in a corridor. The setup of a competitive co-op is great. The problem is that the game is criminally short, you can beat it in four hours easily.
TL;DR first game was incredible, and the later games were just okay. The franchise didn't die in a fiery crash, and every game in it deserves a playthrough.

F.E.A.R. was never intended to be a franchise. F.E.A.R. 2 was meant to be a standalone game with a F.E.A.R.-esque vibe, thus billed as a spiritual successor. Due to marketing reasons they made it a sequel.

…then they made another sequel designed strictly for consoles with a different developer, and forgot to add meaningful horror.

It still bugs me how I will never know what happens after that

Why did they make Penetrator so shit?

Co-Op, like the death of many other franchises.

This is why I pretty much exclusively use the rifle in my playthroughs now. Shotgun doesn't kill in one hit beyond ten meters and weapon switching is slow as sin so you can only use shotgun in those couple really nicely designed areas where you jump out in the middle of a bunch of replica and slaughter them all, laser rifle has fuck all ammo, and the aug feels like shit. If everything else takes multiple shots to kill why not just use the rifle?

FEAR would still be alive if it was coop. I'd fucking kill to be able to play through it with friends. Tfw FEAR Combat crashes whenever I try to join servers.

I loved in FEAR, how fettel eludes to the fact that you don't even know who you are, your name, anything like that. The player takes it for granted as just backstory that's never exposed. I thought it was very cheeky for the game to use it in exposition.

the penetrator is alright in multiplayer but only really as a fun handicap. the rifle is still the best gun in the game though, its stupidly easy.

...

IIRC, they made Fear 3 be created under a different studio. That mean't invalidating the expansions, keeping Fettel as being more of someone in your head than being a ghost who now possessed a clone soldier, and putting in a cover system and button prompts to go over cover.