F.E.A.R.

Some games are just fun to look at, something that could certainly be said of F.E.A.R., the latest first-person shooter in development at Monolith Games. Using a brand-new cutting-edge graphics engine, the game's visuals seamlessly shift from dark, creepy hallways reminiscent of DOOM 3 to modern locations that would feel right at home in Half-Life 2. But as we found out at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco, watching the game and actually playing it are two totally separate experiences -- there's the potential for some really engaging combat lurking under the shiny exterior, or at least that was the conclusion we reached after some playtesting of our own.

Monolith and Vivendi have been pretty tight-lipped about the story behind F.E.A.R., which appears to have a unique blend of sci-fi, action and horror. You play a member of a special military squad specializing in the paranormal (as we've said a few times, think SWAT meets The X-Files), which explains why the gameplay we've seen so far often shifts from straight-on combat to the downright spooky.

The first part of our demo was from the game's opening scenes, and didn't really do much to clear things up: alternating between the title credits, there were shots of a man alone in a cell, soldiers moving through a facility and the silhouette of a little girl lurking outside a room. Eventually, this devolved into gory scenes of a character chowing down on a dead body while other soldiers stand watch. (Yowch.) As we quickly found out, it seems there's little chance of F.E.A.R. getting anything below a "Mature" rating -- there was more blood splattered across any five minutes of our demo than you'll see in most entire games (include some M-rated shooters).


With the intro out of the way, we moved on to another level early on in the game, where your character has been sent in with a few nameless teammates to neutralize a takeover situation at an aerospace facility. The level starts out with an extremely slick cinematic of two assault helicopters flying over the water, rappelling in, and then seamlessly handing control over to the player as he approaches a courtyard with his squad. Unfortunately, when you separate from your team to open a gate, you come back just in time to watch the rest of the team vaporized in front of your eyes, and you're on your own for the time being.