About this time last year, the likes of “Doom 3” and “Half-
Life 2″ raised the bar for first- person shooters (FPS) so high as to seem unsurpassable. Guess what? It’s indisputably surpassed with Monolith’s “F.E.A.R.,” simply the best FPS game to date – and easily the game of the year.
Boasting the eye-poppingly gorgeous graphics you would expect in such a competitive genre, “F.E.A.R.” also features the finest artificial-intelligence system yet seen in a computer game. Enemies not only dynamically participate in their surroundings and the situational appearance of you, the lone super soldier, they actually react like it matters, taking cover behind boxes, shrewdly tossing grenades or smoke, covering each other, repositioning themselves, flanking you or running away in hysterics, dead scared of dying when wounded.
You, meanwhile, are given an arsenal of smartly balanced weapons, each with a strength and a shortcoming and precious little ammunition, which makes you think before you shoot (or not shoot at all but use martial arts or go stealth). Plus, you can lean around corners, keeping your body behind cover while poking your head and shoulders out for a view or a shot, which is only remarkable because so few games include the plainly useful attribute of full-body articulation. Add to that the occasional act of slow-motion berserking and you’ve got the whole ball of wax.
More than surreptitious running and judicious gunning, “F.E.A.R.” plays out an “X-Files”-
like plot of paranormal activities and clandestine science gone awry, in which you often creep down corridors – teeth firmly clenched – as you suspect a ghostly apparition or clone-soldier ambush lying in wait. “F.E.A.R.” is as good as it gets.
VU Games; PC; $49.99; Mature (17+)
Shaun Conlin is a freelance games reviewer for Cox News Service. E-mail him at shaunconlin@evergeek.com.
