The Original F.E.A.R Trilogy

F.E.AR is a game that's been around for quite a long time now.  It's one of those games that makes me feel old because if you play it now it looks REALLY dated but I remember this shit coming out.  I originally had it on 360 and never played much of it and after my 360 and all its games got stolen I got in on the cheap for PC and have recently been playing them through.

F.E.A.R is an FPS horror (using that term VERY lightly) game where you play as a dude called Point Man in his quest to stop an army of telepathically controlled super soldiers.  This start to go a bit awry though once little cliche horror girl Alma starts showing up and fucking with the very fabric of existence or something, I dunno.  The plot is dumb and I wasn't really paying attention but the game itself played fairly well and I had a good time.

Point Man, being a member of the First Encounter Assault Recon or F.E.A.R (har har) team has the ability to go into bullet time mode and mow people down.  At the time, the AI for this game was fairly impressive and the areas in which you battle dudes in were sort of wide and there were lots of chances to get flanked and whatnot so the bullet time was a welcome addition.  The game is sort of mindless FPS stuff but there's something rather enjoyable about playing it.  Maybe the dated look and non regenerating health and limited health kits are reminding me of simpler days of my youth and that could be why I had such a good time with it.

The big problem with this game, and with the series as a whole I'm discovering is that despite the title there seems to be a lack of fear to be had here.  If the game isn't trying to jump scare you to death then there are often parts where the environment will change and you'll get some SPOOKY dialogue or you'll get shown some kind of horrible murder or something like that.  Those scenes aren't very effective though and all the scary parts of F.E.A.R do is serve to delay the action parts that you just want to get back to.

There were also two stand alone expansion packs called Perseus Mandate and Extraction Point which told the story from the viewpoints of different characters but were essentially the same thing.  However having already started F.E.A.R 2 which plays a bit more like a proper modern FPS, you know the kind designed for brain dead twats, I'm sort of missing the retro feel of the original 3 games.

If you're looking for a fun-ish FPS to spend a cozy afternoon on, the F.E.A.R is a good bet if you haven't played it already.  However if you're the kind of person who only likes modern shooters then you'll probably hate it and not understand why it was so interesting back in 2005.  Either way, fun little game.

Stop Releasing Broken Games!

This is something that has pissed me off to no end and has become more and more apparent with this generation and is probably only going to get worse.  My problem, if you can't tell from the title of this post is that there are too many games released this generation that are just full of fucking technical bugs on launch.

Here, take a look at this video

I'd imagine it's not like this now but this is how the damn thing was shipped, and it's not just Skyrim, you could full a fucking heavy goods vehicle with copies of all the games with big glaring technical bugs.

The thought processes of these companies must be "oh it's OK, we can just patch it out later", well it's NOT fucking OK you gigantic bags of arse, games should NOT ship like this.  What's sad is that years and years ago, this was never a problem.  Hell, even games as recent as the PS2 didn't have problems like this, so why has it suddenly become a thing this generation!?

What's sad is that with a new generation of consoles on its way, I only see the problem getting worse, not better.  Developers will keep shitting out untested, buggy games and we'll have to keep waiting for fucking patches. 

I understand that nobody is perfect, and the guys putting all the code together and testing their software might miss something, but right now it's just stupid how glaringly bad some games are made.  I'm using Skyrim in this case, but the worst offender off the top of my head (not counting Silent Hill collection since it's remake) is The Last Remnant on 360.   Good LORD, that frame rate was so bad in that game is was basically unplayable, I had to buy the PC version, and I'm glad I did because that game is awesome.

So, just because you can patch a game later, doesn't give you an excuse to be lazy and devs need to make sure their shit is tight as possible before they go charging me £40 and up for that crap.