- Original Release Date: June 21st, 2011
- Developer: Day 1 Studios
- Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Summary
Do you like guns? Do you like ducking and shooting guns? Do you like running and shooting guns? Did you dislike all those dark and cramped spaces? Did you hate the all the spooky noises and paranormal experiences of the first two games?
If so, then FEAR 3 is the game for you!
Released a little under half a decade after its predecessor, FEAR 3 (‘F3AR’) was made by a new developer (Day 1 Studios) for reasons that I couldn’t quite dig up through a few minutes of attempted internet research. Whether or not this hard a big effect on the game’s philosophy or not, there is a clear departure from the prior mainline entries. FEAR 3 brings back cover mechanics, but it features very little horror elements. Please bear in mind I didn’t think the previous titles were genuinely scary, but they still made efforts to build an atmosphere of unease and dread through environments, sound design, and occasional jump scare-esque bits. None of that is strongly present in FEAR 3 (at least compared to the first two), which forgoes some of the design principles/hallmarks of the previous two entries to focus mostly on gunplay and co-op.
If you’re adept at Call of Duty or any modern shooter that relies on cover to survive, you’ll get the hang of this game quickly. For me, it took about half the game before I found a groove, but even then, the game was more challenging than the second title. It doesn’t help that there were many occasions where I got murdered despite being in cover.
I was unable to play multiplayer or co-op, but everything seems to indicate that they were both reasons for people to play this game on release. Local co-op allowed two people to play as Point Man (your standard commando type with bullet time) and Fettel (a ghost with mind powers who can possess enemies) simultaneously and even compete through challenges (again akin to Call of Duty).
In the end, FEAR 3 appears to be a serviceable co-op FPS, possibly akin to how Resident Evil 5’s multiplayer made the game less awful. I’m unsure how popular multiplayer for it may be, but it was apparently enjoyable in that regard as well. Unfortunately, the game falls short in furthering the ‘legacy’ of its predecessors and seemingly cares little about expanding on the grim, dark world that defined the franchise.
Technical/Presentation (5/10)
Gameplay
Well, it goes without saying that there are some drastic… shifts from the gameplay presented in the second entry in the trilogy. The HUD elements are vanished, along with collecting anything outside of grenades, ammo, and certain items that boost your score. Yes, there’s a score-type system, where the game presents you with various challenges throughout each Interval. Completing challenges boosts a score, and at certain thresholds, you will rank up and unlock new abilities and/or boosts to health or reflexes/psychic power. Cover is a major aspect of this game, with specialized controls for maneuvering around cover, as well as peeking around cover serving as an important function. This, combined with the leveling via mass homicide through ingenious means system makes this game feel very Call of Duty-esque.
The game presents you with two characters—Point Man and Fettel. One is the protagonist from the first game, with his slow-mo powers and access to two (TWO) weapons at a time. Fettel can’t use weapons, but he can possess enemies and use a variety of psychic powers. Fettel is unlocked for a level once your clear it as Point Man. The game boosts a co-op where you and a partner can play as both characters at one time and compete to complete more challenges. I feel like this co-op is at the heart of the game, and in many ways, it might be the best-selling point for what is otherwise a Call of Duty-style arcade shooter.
I can’t stress enough how much of a departure this feels from the original. You can sprint almost endlessly, and that’s coupled with the fact that your score is impacted by your time. Along with that, health regeneration kills a lot of the suspense and dread that usually comes with spooky FPS titles. If I can just wait until my health is full before moving on, I don’t have to worry. On the other hand, I constantly had to worry about cover, because there were so many occasions where I would crouch behind cover and still get shot to (almost) death. While I liked the handful of mech driving moments in FEAR 2, I thought it was a bit overdone here. Again, it might be the fault of regenerating health, but these moments just felt like filler with close to zero stakes (like much of the game).
Again, I unfortunately can’t comment on the co-op or the multiplayer, which I didn’t experience. Some research told me that there’s a lot of variety there and a lot of fun to be had.
Visuals
The environment resembles what you would expect from a title in the early 2010s. In a divergence from the previous titles, I’d wager that the majority of this game takes place in open or semi-open spaces. Even the stages built around navigating inside tend to be large spaces (like the supermarket or the bridge) that stave off any sensation of claustrophobia that you may have felt in the first or second game. The horror is almost entirely absent in this game. Alma still pops up, and there’s another menacing creature that stalks you from time to time, but aside from a few subtle moments and some jump scares, there’s little horror in this title. Occasionally, you might feel a bit of sensory overload but the horror’s gone.
On a side note, it’s worth saying that while the environments aren’t half bad, the characters in this game look terrible (at least to me). Something just seems off about all of them. The proportions just seem weird… as if they were trying to make them look a little cartoony, almost. I prefer the character designs from the first game, even if the graphics engine couldn’t render the same degree of detail.
Sound
The soundtrack in the game isn’t terrible, but there’s nothing that stood out to me. For this series, that’s slightly damning, since I enjoyed the soundtrack in the original, and while the sequel wasn’t as good, it still had some nice remixes and original music. Having just finished this game, I can’t say that anything stood out to me, because most of the time is spent running, crouching, and shooting at enemies. I do enjoy that the enemies talk a lot more than they did in the second title. The guns and all the other sound effects felt a bit muted, which made it a little less satisfying to slaughter people. As the focus is more on action and less on horror, the title also doesn’t do quite as much with environmental noises, outside of the supernatural occasionally screaming or throwing stuff around.
Story (4/10)
The plot of this game is awful, both in terms of the pacing and the overall satisfaction of the story. The story of FEAR 3 opens up about eight or nine months after its predecessor with the Point Man (the protagonist from the original game) in a prison. He is rescued by his brother Paxton Fettel, who one of the main antagonists in the first game. The two don’t trust each other but agree that they need to head back to Fairport, the setting for the first two games. Fairport is still the center of a paranormal clusterfuck, and Armacham is still working very hard to cover up their mistakes that led to the whole city being ruined and its populace either dying or degrading into mindless lunatics.
The brothers get in touch with Jin Sun-Kwon, one of the survivors from the first game and a squadmate of the Point Man. In a brief reunion, she points (some humor) Point Man in the direction of Michael Bennet—the second game’s main character—who is being taken away by Armacham security. Bennet apparently had a very unpleasant (for him) run-in with Alma, the series’ iconic scary ghost girl/woman. After losing Bennet, the brothers murder there way to Bennet and then onward to Alma, where they are able to resolve form long-standing issues with their father, the late Harlan Wade.
Spoiler Zone
I’m not sure why they took the Point Man to Brazil, but they did. After being confused why the people were talking in not-English, a Google search told me they had taken him to Brazil rather than just killing him.
As I mentioned above, the plot is just awful, and I believe they exacerbated that by removing lore objects from the game. The closest thing this game has to story building are the occasional comments/witty retorts from Paxton Fettel, who is this game’s version of the Cheshire Cat and evil conscious. He has a Vegeta-tier widow’s peak to complement the perma-scowl and cave man appearance of his brother, the Point Man. Despite having a face, the Point Man uses it to only scowl, as he has no spoken dialogue in the game (I believe that his child version doesn’t speak either). They don’t state if this is something intentional or not, but I can’t believe he’s incapable of speech, since he was apparently in the army before the events of the first game.
Anyway, there’s very little story that unfolds across the game, which is shorter than the original or the sequel. The game does have narration and cut scenes, but these are almost entirely used to showcase the pair of protagonists as children. There’s allusions to other stuff going on, but it’s hard to tell how wide-spread the situation in Fairport is/has become. Is it global? Is it regional? Is it just this city?
As I’ve mentioned in prior reviews for the series, it was hard for me to really villainize Alma (with the exception of the end of the second game). In this game, she’s pregnant, and her contractions are the source of much of the psychic disturbances across the various stages. The two characters are going to find their mother. Along the way, they locate Becket, who doesn’t offer anything new to the player before getting exploded as a by-product of Fettel possessing him. I felt a bit bad for Becket, who earlier in the game was on the edge of lunacy over being raped by a psychic ghost. There’s nothing given to explain how he was rescued/extracted, and you don’t hear about the fate of Aristide. If her plan was to contain Alma, she seems to have failed. Even so, Alma is little in this game beyond Young Alma popping up in mostly non-threatening moments.
There’s a generic faceless monster-looking creature that serves the purpose of jumping the player (like Alma in FEAR 2), and you later discover that this is a psychic manifestation linked to memories of Harlan Wade. It isn’t that he’s still alive, but the memories of him have coalesced into this sinister monster that scares Young Alma and threatens the protagonists until they kill it as the final boss. Then you get an ending based on which brother had a higher score. As I did single player as Point Man, I got the ending where he kills Fettel again, saves the baby, and watches Alma vanish. Fettel’s ending has him possess Point Man, take the baby, and devour Alma for ‘unlimited power’ I imagine.
Reflection
In many ways, this game feels like a major disappointment for this franchise. The story is barebones, with little additional information to uncover and little done to flesh out this collapsed/post-apocalyptic city. This game was 100% not designed to be an engrossing single player experience, and that much is clear from the variety of decisions made in regards to central gameplayer mechanics. There are no new characters in this game, and the characters that are throwbacks to the previous titles feel almost more like fan-service or plot dumps (look, its Jin! Hear her tell you what to do next! Okay, now she’s gone again) than actual people. It doesn’t help that the game stripped out all the horror and foreboding environments from the first two games. The ending itself adds a nonsensical cherry on top.
Bias/Nostalgia Tint – “Zero ghost babies out of five.”
This was my first exposure to this game in any sense of the word.
Overall: C-
Playtime
- 5 Hours (4/11-4/12/2020)
Achievements
- 13/50 (26%) in one playthrough
The Terra Primus Chronicles 