F.E.A.R Extraction Point...what a disappointment

[BlackDragon]

Probably been mentioned here before but i gotta do a rant

What a dogs dinner timegate studios has made of this expansion! No idea how these guys got involved to make it instead of Monolith. They've done something to the game that makes it require more of your hardware, even though everything looks exactly the same. My machine ain't great, nor is it terrible, but still making my machine chug at around 20-30 FPS. All they had to do was create more levels and script them!

Even then they made a dogs dinner of the fear factor. The original game had me pretty spooked at times, but this game just failed miserably. Its as if they tried too hard. After playing for about 15mins i noticed the following:

-I met the two surviving members from the chopper crash, on the other side of a fence. Yet i had to go through a church to find them. Now im no FEAR point man but im pretty sure these battle hardened soldiers could've climbed the fence to meet each other!
- Spooked me to see fettle at the window (first time you see him after the encounter with the replicas i think). But then he stayed there for a good few seconds, unlike in the original where he almost instantly disappeared
-Those weird shadow things in the crypt of the church...First time i saw them run past the doorway had me spooked as i couldn't quite see what it was. Later on i just kept seeing them, and for a good few seconds so i could clearly see what they were which completely lost its 'WTF IS THAT!?!?!' factor.
-In the original the makers were careful with how much music they used. Only really needing it during fight scenes. In this one for the whole duration i was in the church was this horribly loud music, even when i wasn't fighting. Really no need.
-Too many replica soldiers. In the original squads of replicas were dotted around the level. In the expansion as soon as i killed one squad, another squad rushes round the corner after me!

Well thats my rant over, hopefully FEAR 2 is made by Monolith rather than timegate studios, and that it will be as good as the original if not better!

Post here of any other thoughts about the expansion pack

 

[ins0mn1ac]

I liked FEAR:EP, guess I'm useless here then

 

[GreenThu)v(b]

ep was a gg

their were some scary times in ep, like the ladder, the telephone and a thew others

as for the soldiers not climbing over the fence..? what u on about you pillock its a game,

but it was a little harder on the graphics card, not by much tho.



i think the fear series so far is absolute brill.

 

[Kipper67]

I played through the original for the first time about a month ago and have to say i was quite disappointed considering the praise that the game gets given around here.

For a start i found the levels very boring bland and repetitive - there's only so many grey/brown coloured corridors i can take running down in a game and it seemed to me that every level was a wharehouse or burnt out house of some kind ............. oh no wait there was a garage bit in one with guess what grey /brown coloured walls .

The levels were also very straight forward and linear and no i don't class giving me a choice of left/middle/right grey/brown corridor to go down to reach the same point as non-linear - how about a few air-ducts and sewers to creep through .

Also in this day and age whats up with not being able to shoot out the lights to give more areas of darkness and cover. Also the enemies lacked any variety - theres like 5 or 6 different types of enemy throughout the whole game. ( and one of them - the invisible ninja guys were lifted straight out of HL1 or its expansions )

And you are meant to be some sort of special psychic soldier with special abilities - well where were they apart from bullet time ? If they had implemented some sort ability upgrade system like deus ex or the stuff we've seen in previews of bioshock well now you are talking .

As for special effects well bullet time has been done before so that wasn't unique and random scary flashes or things to make you jump have been in resident evil/silent hill/the suffering as well so nothing original there. And if borrowing plot devices from other games wasn't enough whats with your team member "Leo Jankowski" did he get the sack from the Omar or something (go look up a deus ex 2 FAQ if you want to know what i'm on about)

Having mentioned Deus Ex, thats the sort of feeling I got the game could have been with a little bit more depth - if the levels had been a bit better thought out with more routes through them which didn't involve straight running and gunning, an ability upgrade path , ability to use light/dark for cover a la spinter cell and its sequels and a bit more variety in foes - then and only then would i have felt the game deserved some of the review scores it got .

 

[Jono8]

Whilst i agree it didnt have the 'wow' effect that the original game had and wasnt quite as scary im still finding it (havent completed it yet) a good romp through familiar territory. In my opinion Fear has the best gunplay in any fps.

 

[eyetrip]

I enjoyed EP... there is something about the movement and gunplay of f.e.a.r that just works for me. I love the multiplayer for this, over the frantic mp of game such as HL2 or Quake4.

I do however wonder what the hell they did to mess up the performance though. I did get some lag on a parts - mostly that blood room. And they never relaeased a patch to fix it either.

I have to say though, I was saddened when the other 2 friendly characters died. And when the black guy got it (can't remember his name) I found that whole scene quite creepy.

All in all, for the low price I paid for it when I got it not long ago, I would have to say it was worth the money spent.

 

[PinkFloyd]

I thought the addon was as good as the original if not better.
More gunfighting, bigger guns, as a game to just play and have fun shooting stuff there isn't any better.