FEAR Perseus Mandate (PC)

Where the streets and warehouses and train yards have no name.
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2

There isn't any effort to construct a believable world, just inanely labyrinthine corridors with dribbles of uninteresting exposition along the way. This isn't a place; it's a bunch of halls stuck onto each other, end to end, like hamster tubes leading to an obligatory "get to the chopper!" ending. Get to the chopper, huh? As if there was any way to get any other place. There are a couple of borderline interesting sequences, including a bot that chases you around, busting through office doorways too small for its frame. At one point, you have to chase a bad guy back through the level you just played, padding the expansion's total playing time by about a half-hour.

Even the gameplay feels dated. The artificial intelligence is serviceable, and most of the gunfights involve ducking around corners, crouching behind cover, and timing your "slow-motion juice." The real challenge comes from managing ammo and medkits. You'll spend plenty of time rooting around for healing and dropped weapons. You can also find a few power-ups to permanently increase your health and slow-motion juice.

The expansion's three new weapons aren't new so much as they are refined versions of weapons already in the game. The VES rifle is simply an assault rifle with no recoil and a red-tinted scope view. The K3-BT grenade launcher is just a way to bounce grenades out there without having to throw them. The Lightning Arc gun is a blue-tinted variation on the laser carbine, firing homing beams that can jump between a couple of enemies. You get all these guns pretty early, but the game is stingy with ammo for the lightning gun and grenade launcher. Don't expect to get much use out of them. Also new is the ability to punch open doors with your rifle butt, which probably isn't safe. Plus, that can't be very good for the gun. Don't try this at home.

The only change to multiplayer is that it adds all the guns from the expansion packs. This is actually a welcome fix after the last expansion pack, Extraction Point, gave you new guns and no way to play with them online. So even without any new maps or modes, Perseus Mandate is the expansion pack of choice for multiplayer F.E.A.R. When you finish the campaign, you unlock some silly bonus missions, which are like B-side levels stocked with enemies. Your time remaining until the end is listed when you finish a bonus level, but it isn't recorded anywhere. So much for trying to beat your own best time.

F.E.A.R. is a game whose time has come and gone. Tossing this expansion pack into the current market for shooters is like waving around a store-bought cookie in a gourmet bakery. Yeah, sure, it's a cookie, but check out what else we've had lately.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.