OXCGN staff writer Alex Baldwin (no - not THAT Alex Baldwin) investigates the second iteration of the very scary Vivendi game, F.E. A.R.

Well worth the read and there's a huge amount of pics and art available for you to check out as well.

FEAR 2 received a lot of unintentional publicity early in production as developer Monolith split with the publisher of FEAR 1, Vivendi. While this happens frequently as studios switch publishers, in this case Vivendi still maintained ownership rights to the name FEAR despite the work already started by Monolith of a sequel, hastily renamed Project Origin.

While that’s all done and sorted with the FEAR name being returned to Monolith to make FEAR 2: Project Origin, since then there’s been little notice taken of FEAR 2 alongside juggernauts (which incidentally are also sequels) like Gears of War 2, Halo Wars and Killzone 2. Now that’s it’s quietly snuck in before the heavyweights, how does Project Origin stack up?

Before answering that question, a reminder of what made the original so special that the obvious flaws could be overlooked. Fusing western first-person-shooter combat with Japanese-inspired horror scares and ‘visions’ (who doesn’t remember the hallways of blood?). Throughout the convoluted storyline the player was stalked by a ghostly girl later identified as Alma.

Despite the incredibly blocky level design and repetitious environments, the game made a name for itself through the heavy use of slow-motion ‘bullet time’ combined with some of the smartest enemy AI ever. The more psychological horror aspects were also a change from the usual zombies and monsters of western horror.

XboxOZ360 via oxcgn.com »