In F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault and Reconnaissance), you play the member of an elite military unit tasked with dealing with the supernatural and paranormal. Think of it as a military version of The X-Files, or as the elite commando teams you controlled in X-Com.
When you arrive at the skyscraper youre dropped onto the roof under heavy fire. The Black Hawk quickly takes off and the door gunner opens up with his chaingun, shredding the mysterious, black-clad commandos shooting at you.
Once youre inside, its clear that something is not right. The lights are flickering strangely, and even your helmet-mounted flashlight doesnt seem to work correctly. After battling through rooms full of commandos, you start to come upon some really strange stuff--like the fact that there are torn and shredded bodies everywhere, yet no bullet holes or brass casing to indicate what killed them.
Then while riding in an elevator, the lights start to flicker, and without trying to spoil things, lets just say you start seeing things in the elevator. Weve seen a lot of horror games before, but there are some really creepy moments in this game.
Needless to say, the commandos met a very grisly fate. The closest we can liken it is to imagine the Japanese horror movie The Ring meets Half-Life.
And in perhaps the coolest move, your character can leap into the air and dropkick an opponent, which is the first time weve ever seen that happen in a first-person shooter.
Unfortunately, neither Monolith nor Vivendi were very talkative about details after the demo. F.E.A.R. will ship sometime in 2005, and well definitely keep you up to date about this very promising title.
