 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Agreed. It was the definition of workmanlike. by Dream Cast 02/26/2017, 8:34pm PST | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| The cover system was a bad idea. The scoring system was a REALLY bad idea. Forced co-op destroyed any chance it had at atmosphere. I remember one point the horror almost worked for me, pacing through a maze of flatscreen television sets in this endless dreamlike home electronics department, illuminated only by flickering static as unseen beings skitter through the darkness... only for all that tension to evaporate the moment your ghostly ridealong starts prattling about nothing in his incredibly annoying Mark Hamill Joker imitation. It's almost like they did focus testing, found out people were getting uncomfortable feelings at that part, and stuck in some pointless cartoon dialogue to remind players it's just a game, it's not real you guys relax.
FEAR 3 is the rare game that was actually ruined by its story; the gameplay was almost passable. I don't know about the PC version, but the console port was solid as fuck. Analogue controls were smooth and responsive, with an intuitive button layout. Performance was unwavering - better than the first two FEARs, albeit at the cost of replacing the beautifully stark shadows of Lithtech Jupiter with Day 1 Studios' own hazey pastel boredom renderer. The full complement of multiplayer modes could be played offline, split-screen or solo, against decent AI bots (a rarity in this age of selling Xbox Live subscriptions). But that story! Oh man, that depressing nonsense story. I suppose we can't really blame the developers for it, since the writing was farmed out to Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) and given the thumbs up by John Carpenter (Ghosts of Mars, The Ward). We can maybe blame them for making the background to every menu screen a tableau of young boys being physically and mentally abused, although even then I'm not sure if that technically falls under cinematic design (apparently Carpenter's purview?). The whole product gave the impression of a developer doing the bare minimum necessary to satisfy a feature list provided by the publisher, with their sole contribution being technical competence. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Day 1 Studios felt super passionate about their nauseatingly ugly stock-asset favela level, or their "get 10 kills with the assault rifle" points system, or the ending where whichever co-op brother has the most points gets to mercy kill their mother before she can give birth to another evil ghost baby. But if I had to guess, I'd say they were vaguely ashamed of all those things? I dunno just a hunch. PROTIP: If you can only afford two zombie models, don't give one of them a hat, it makes it too obvious they're all identical. :( |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
Mediocre at best. NEGATIVE by 02/26/2017, 10:57am PST  Agreed. It was the definition of workmanlike. by 02/26/2017, 8:34pm PST I forgot the dumbest thing about FEAR 3. by 03/01/2017, 2:43am PST Re: I forgot the dumbest thing about FEAR 3. by 03/03/2017, 4:14am PST |
