FEAR bashing has never REALLY made sense to me. It wasn't THAT well-recieved to begin with, was it? Just seems silly to slam a game that was pretty honest from the get-go about what it's ambitions were, and really, FEAR did exactly what it wanted to do extremely well.
The level design has occasionaly brilliant moments, but is often very lackluster.
The graphics are similar- brilliant things mixed with ugly things.
The game itself does rely on the same old tricks all the way through, but the one trick it has down better than any other game I've ever played is the gunplay. Great AI, incredibly satisfying sound and gun effects, the the coolest looking death physics ever.
It's a game that would deserve a 5 or 6 if it didn't have so many 9 and 10 moments in it. As it stands, it's dissapointing but nowhere near the level of shittiness that some nail it for.
And personally, after playing FEAR, the combat in Half-Life 2 isn't nearly as satisfying (when fighting against humanoid gun-toting enemies). Obviously, though, Half-Life 2 is a much better game.
I still play FEAR a little bit everyonce in awhile just to fight those soldiers. I played through the game twice and I still haven't tired of the soldiers that they throw at you over and over and over again (the big robot bad guys, both the nailgun wielding and the rocket launcher wielding, are just horribly designed and not fun to fight).
). I agree with the term gun porn. It gets dirty indeed 
