F.E.A.R - Erm, Just finished it... Riiight!!??

[FatRakoon]

Cany anyone here explain WTF FEAR was all about?

I have been sort of messign about with it on and off for a couple of weeks now, half heartedly playing it ant not really enjoying it other than boredom.

Anyway, I just finished it a few minutes ago, and I cant help but feel, that although the visuals were a little alternative, I simply dont have a bloody clue as to what the whole thing was all about???

I think I have gathered that I am the brother of the bad guy, and that I had to "Kill them all" but thats pretty much it???

I got to hand it to them, but this has to be the most pointless game I have ever played???

Anyone else have the same thoughts?

 

[FatRakoon]

Funnily enough, I thought the story was ok, its just the way it went on for me...

The answerphone messages etc did help it along, and it tried to bring you back into it now and then, but all in all, the game was same-y all the way through.

The visuals I thought were nice, a bit iffy in places but then thats supposed to be like that isnt it? I cant say to be sure cos I have never been drawn into "Other places" to judge it on.

The End sequence with the explosion was absolutely lovely, and right at the end, it left it open to FEAR 2 I suppose.

As for the frame rates etc, I never had any kind of slowdowns at all, it played perfectly all the way through. I run at 1024x768 with all on high, and it was smoother than Doom3. It also played just fine on my slowest system too, but that did have an occasional burp, however, when it was saving the progress, it did pause for a couple of seconds, which was a bugger.

The only other issue I had with it, was that at the start, it always said there was an update... I got the update which is 400MB or so, and it would not work saying it was the wrong region, so HTF I could stop that I dont know myself.

Oh, while I am here, I tried to play DeuxEx2 and there was a lot of bits on this that kept pulling me back to that... That was another game I wasnt to hot on too!

If there is a v2, will I get it? Probably! will I pay top dollar for it? Nope! - I will wait till its out on bargain bucket.

HL2 had a similar feel in that you had no choice but to go through here to get to there... I suppose all of this type of game do that to a point, with maybe the exception of FarCry.

All in all a nice game, destroyed by too many effects for me.

 

[FatRakoon]

Nah, it runs just fine on any half decent setup.

If it runs badly, then thats his PC not being up to it more than the game.

 

[FatRakoon]

I know this doesnt have anything to do with FEAR, but since we're talking abou performance... I know a guy who apparently has the best spec out there, with a 3200+, 512MB ram and an x850xt, and he runs games like FEAR (Oh it does relate ) and Counterstrike Source with 190fps on max settings apparently

Anyone else smell a bit of poo in his statements?

Not really, or at least not much anyway.

The RAM Id say he is wrong on, but the GFX and CPU are perfectly capable of playing all the games he would want to at a not-to-shabby rate.

A while back, I was on a Barton3200, Rad9500np@9700np and 512MB and I had a few jerks now and then on UT2K4... I upped to a 9700Pro and found no real difference in the gameplay, a tad better frame-rate, but the jerks were still present.... I upped to 1MB and found the jerks had gone.

I put this to the test and found that a 1MB Machine with a 9500np was able to play games a lot better than a 9700Pro with only 512MB, and this, to me, prooved that RAM was more important than I thought.

A lot of games dont really need the latest and greatest CPU, so I would say his CPU is fine, and the GFX are more than adequete for playing any game he would want.

But the poo-ey smell does come when he says its the best spec... Thats simply nowhere near right and it does indeed give off a bit of a whiff.

 

[FatRakoon]

2.8ghz opteron and crossfired x1900's not upto it...doubt it.


Ive seen tons of complaints about the games coding in general, the vast majority of sites that use this game in benchmarks for hardware leave soft shadows disabled just because of the over the top performance hit it gives.


hardocp in their x1900 crossfire evaluation concluded that the best playable settings for fear on a setup similar to mine were 2x adaptive fsaa 16xhqaf, at a res of 1600x1200.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=OTUzLDUsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0

Note that soft shadows are disabled because they mess up aa and presumably the performance hit for something you'll barely notice is not worth it.

I didnt say anythign about the specs of his PC not being up to it.

I said his PC was probably not up to it.

Just because a person has all the latest and greatest gubbinbgs in his PC, it does not automatically make it faster than the next persons!

I have seen some really low spec PCs running stuff that they simply should not be able to, and I have also seen some high end systems running badly.

I have been running FEAR on a Newcastle 3000 @ 2.4 and a 9800Pro at 1024x768 and not once did I see any glitch or slowdown in the screen other than when it was saving my progress.

That to me, says that my Newcastle 3000 is quicker than his Opteron!!!

 

[FatRakoon]

Theres a difference between not too shabby and running demanding games like FEAR at 190fps on max settings you know

And....?

Whats your point?

I know there is a difference, you have to look at the context I wrote them in.

I am merely saying that the mentioned hardware is capable of playing them fairly well. I never said anythign to suggest that they can play them as good or as bad as any other hardware? I merely stated that they can play the games at a not-to-shabby-rate, and they can.

So, whats your point?

 

[FatRakoon]

Personally I feel HL2 does far better outdoor/landscape/realistic environments while doom 3 looks better indoors with its amazing shadows and generally heavily polished (although slightly cartoony) look. But then graphics really do come down to personal taste, everybody likes different things.

Agreed on that.

I personally love the UnReal 2 engine perhaps better than most, especially for seriously massive outdoor maps, but then again, while it is starting to look dated, there is also still so much that can be done with it, even today.

Many people say that FarCry is the best visually, but I for one didnt get that... Its good sure enough, but it, like UnReal 2, has a strong cartoonish feel.

Fear, like HL2 and Q4, do look very real indeed...

Oh I long for the days gone by when I had to run doom at 320x200.

For those of us who have been doing PC since day 1 will also remember how much we jumped and generally needed to change our undies far too often, and yet today, we expect so much more.

Back then, and before that, games had gameplay ( Well, mostly ).

I feel that in order to make FEAR so visually impresive, they have lost out on a lot of the gameplay for me... That said, I still finished it, I just expected more and felt too much of it was samey.

Perhaps maybe that some of us were too immesed in the graphics that perhaps we missed some of the vital gameplay I dont know? if thats so, then the coders might have done more for us.

The thing is, that we are never happy are we? These days, we want more all the time.

We really are a bunch of ungrateful sods sometimes and I am just as bad as the next one.