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

Monolith develops most mid FPS game of all time, then proceeds to abandon the genre all together, permanently. What a waste.

I remember playing this game back in 2010 and it still holds up. The story is interesting and contains some good jump scares. Think of this as a horror Call of Duty.

The sequel to F.E.A.R in my opinion fixes many of my complaints of the first game and stands out as a great shooter experience even today. Good: * The enemy AI is a little less chatty than the first game, but otherwise feels just as compelling. They are very skilled with grenades especially. * They mostly fixed the 'environment' problem of the first game; all of the places you move through feel reasonably laid out and designed. This falls off a little bit in some parts of the final area of the game, but it's not as egregious as the first game. * Related to above, the devs cooked with the in-game assets; there's some hilarious fake brands and the grade school section stands out for all sorts of realistic objects, signage, artwork, etc. * The game has a much better mixing of the gun fighting and horror sections. It's all scripted, but seeing Alma terrorize enemy soldiers and NPCs makes her seem much more threatening and unpredictable. * The game stepped up the lore and story. You move through facilities directly related to the clone soldier and psychic power programs, and the 'lore collectibles' contain actual relevant details to the world and characters in it. * The graphics are dated, but they are a step up from the last game and still look okay. * The game introduces an awesome mech that lets you become an unstoppable killing machine. The segments aren't super long by they are a great time. * There's music in the game now! It usually plays during gunfights to help amp up the tension. Mid: * The guns are mostly the same as the first game. There's a couple of new big weapons, but I found the rocket launcher continued to be the most reliable and useful. The real tragedy here is that they replaced the last game's shotgun with two variants in this game, and neither felt as powerful or as fun. * The slow motion ability is back, and it's effectively identical to the first game in both making some moments more epic, and having questionable value outside of that use case. I wish there was something more to it like puzzle solving or allowing the setup of some crazy shots. * The first game allowed you to save wherever you wanted, whereas this game has set points where it saves. It is nice not to have to remember to save, but at the same time there was a spot or two where I'd wish I could just replay one section and not go back so far if I decided to reload. That said for the most part the game saved frequently enough that it wasn't really a problem. Bad: * Like the first game, this was released on consoles. And like the first game, the PC version basically does not recognize controller as a viable input option. * Weirdly, the first game recognized an extra mouse button and let me remap it, but this game didn't. Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to have the same flexibility. This is one of those great times where the developers created a good product the first time, and then the second time around improved in just about every way with almost no downsides. There's still a lot of potential that I would love to have seen realized, but for the time this game came out, what F.E.A.R. 2 did puts it above a lot of its contemporaries.

Really nice gameplay and story told in a pretty dark setup. The bullet time and weapons are tons of fun.

honestly not that scary, the gun fights felt sluggish compared to the first game and in general it felt like a more boring copy of the first game. The lighting in the first game was stark and intense EVERYWHERE with long shadows being cast behind a corner. But here? it's just... meh... like they forgot :/ This is also the game where the story genuinely jumps the shark. The amount of infrastructure that Armacham has, rivals that of an entire government. They have schools which mean they control dep of education, entire cities etc. etc. how can there even be unemployment in the USA when Armacham is always hiring. So the art direction, story and gameplay are all worse than the first fear.

This game holds a lot of nostalgic value for me. Despite being an older game, it still boasts high-quality graphics. The destructibility of objects is beautifully done, and one of the game's strengths, in my opinion, is the extensive use of blood in many scenes.

Since I am literally unable to access F.E.A.R. on the Steam Store because of senseless regulations, I am forced to write my review for the whole genre on this Steam page (more detailed reasoning in the review of the first game). --- F.E.A.R.: Pretty great game even 20 years later. The Story is extremly intriguing but also kinda confusing, I like the concept of combining horror with shooter and I like how the game switches between these two genres - it feels well balanced and neither overstays it's welcome, even though I would have wished for a little more horror elements. The combat feels amazing and superior to a bunch of games nowadays. The enemy AI is extremly smart, trying to flank you at any given moment, recognizing flashlights and listening to sounds - they react to damage, start walking with a limp if their legs get damaged and overall have a bunch of different reactions to taking damage. The enemy AI/KI just feels extremly responsive and I honestly never seen something as detailed. Enviornments are destructable and the physics for the most part are insane for it's time, certainly on the level of half life 2 if not even better. The game is very atmospheric and can get quite scary, sound design is great. The difficulty spikes immensly from moderate to high difficulty. Moderate is too easy in my opinion and high too difficult. I wasn't a fan of the sentries/turrets and bullet sponge enemies in the later stages of the game. The enemy variety in general felt a little dull and shallow. There are humanoids which are basically all the same enemy type throughout the game, just their design varies, their accuracy increases, the amount of bullets they can sponge expands and they'll get stronger weapons. Except one humanoid enemey type, which can go invisible and only attacks from melee range. There are also some rocket shooting mech robots - but except these you ain't got no variety in enemy type - I expected more terrifying ones, these ones that are rarely utilized. It definitely almost managed to overstay it's welcome with the bullet sponge enemy types. Unfortunately I had a bunch of issues even getting to run this game properly. First major problem was buying this game, since Germany has implemented new regulations. Which makes every game, without a registered and valid USK, unavaible for purchase. So any game, especially oldschool games whose development team no longer exists or got bought up, is now lost - atleast for people out of Germany. So I had to order a Steam Key from some thrid party charity site instead. Then I encountered huge issues with the performance of the game, which fortunately were fixed with the download of a DLL fix file. I still had graphic issues, especially when a lot of bullets hit a wall my screen started filling up completly with dust and smoke but it was manageable enough to play through the game. The game also liked to crash whenever you tab out, so quick saving was necessary. Key bindings are weird aswell and I don't like how you aren't able to sprint. If you succeed in getting the game to run properly, it's definitely still a great game. I am kind of bummed out I couldn't experience it back in the days when it came out but 20 years later I still managed to find some fun even though it probably would have been more atmospheric and scary back in the day. Still a solid recommendation. (8/10) --- F.E.A.R. Extraction Point DLC: Still the same great combat and atmosphere, even better visuals and more options to make combat more fun like turrets and weapons, moderate difficulty felt more balanced this time around but I cannot comment on hard difficulty. Unfortunately even more bullet sponges and general issues. Still not able to sprint and key bindings are also still weird. I wasn't able to play on my native screen resolution, which was annoying but no reason to quit. The same DLL fix file worked for the FPS issue in this one aswell but in the later stages of the game it constantly started crashing. I managed to fix one of these crashing instances by going into the graphic settings and checking "Force Restart" but I couldn't get past the second instance of constant crashes, so I had to watch the end of the game on YouTube. Because of these issues I don't want to rate this DLC. I liked Extraction Point more than Perseus Mandate, until it gotten pretty much unplayable for me. --- F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate DLC: Still the same great combat but worse atmosphere, honestly it looks worse and reminds me a lot of Garry's Mod horror maps. Moderate difficulty felt a little more balanced this time around but I cannot comment on hard difficulty and the enemies seemed to be not as smart anymore. The DLL fix file worked perfectly fine this time and I also was able to play on my native resolution. Still graphic glitches but atleast I was able to play through the game, without any major crashes. Still not able to sprint and key bindings are also still weird. They utilized the "scary" enemy type way more but unfortunately also the bullet sponge enemies. Atleast they gave you way more options to deal with them, in the sense of grenades, turrets and strong and whacky weapons - the grenade launcher sucked ass though. Can't comment on the bonus maps. The final "boss fight" was pretty lame, aswell as the general story. This addition to the F.E.A.R. franchise was alright but pretty skippable. (5.8/10) --- F.E.A.R. 2: The game isn't good compared to the first F.E.A.R., especially the german low violence version is utter garbage. I am finally able to sprint but the movement while sprinting is weird and clucky. The key bindings are also still weird. Extra mouse button keys can't be binded, which is odd since it worked in the first game and all of the DLC. No way to auto safe but the savepoints semmed to be fair enough but enemies also seem to despawn sometimes whenever you trigger one of these save states. I encountered some bugs but nothing special or worth mentioning. I liked that they utilized more of the "scary" enemy types. Combat doesn't feel great anymore and is just in general a massive downgrade to the first one. Enemies are easier to kill and also not as smart, they also don't react to damage they way the usually did and sometimes just spawn out of thin air and as a result of the low violence version regularly just disappear into thin air. Unable to peak around corners. Weapons in general didn't feel good or fun to play, except maybe the pulse weapon. Not as atmospheric or creepy anymore, some animations and cutscenes were alright but most of them just looked awful to be honest. A bunch of very odd and unecessary action sections, robot mech action, button mashing quick time events and endboss - the ending was simply weird. This felt like a massive downgrade, some of my issues with this game most likely stem from the censored low violence version but I believe even without it I wouldn't have recommended this one. It felt like the focus was on the action aspect of the game which they didn't improve on in my opinion and the scary aspect of the game came way too short. This game definitely suffers from a bunch of questionable design choices and I can see where and why this game's story set up the next one for failure - the first one was great though. (3.8/10) --- Summary of the franchise: First game was great, first DLC was because of technical issues and bugs unplayble at a certain point but pretty good until then. Second DLC wasn't too great. Second game wasn't good and especially the low violence version was utter garbage. Mixed review of the franchise, started of great but was extremly unenjoyable in the latter stage.

I liked it even though a lot of people hate it--with good reason. Gone is the horror, now its just a shooter. I still like the shooting part, and the graphics are much improved. The ending-- its is disgusting. Thats all I can say. and the last boss fight is like a tutorial fight, you win in 2 minutes

it's alright, i prefer a lot of the mechanics and visuals from the original, although you CAN drive the powered armor, so it lowkey peak and the mini DLC is also pretty fun

Wow this game actually got my attention, the story and the combat mixed with horror made this game an actual masterpiece. I actually prefer FEAR 2 than FEAR 3 ngl. i played this on the hardest diff and without the slow mo, it made me feel like i was just a doll although with armor. The replica soldiers must be my fav bcs of their design compared to the first FEAR. Overall this game is just breathtaking.