F.E.A.R. 3 Production Stuff (Patreon)

Here we are. The end. FEAR 3. This game was released in 2011, developed by day 1 studios, not monolith and published by Warner Brothers Interactive. Day 1 is now a subsidiary of wargaming. And FEAR is dead, with practically no hope of return. FEAR was a horror - action FPS blend, it was unique that way. Your player character was either the Pointman, Sergeant Persinator or Micheal Becket. Both of whom can slow down time with reflex mode, and have access to a variety of cool melee attacks. But FEAR was known for it’s AI above all. Enemies would challenge the player with what seemed like fully coordinated maneuvers, making the combat experience something unmatched 13 years later. FEAR 2 decided that it didn’t like it’s USP, and decided not to have one anymore. Instead, it tried to “fix” aspects of the game lacking in 2005, the story. And it did that fairly well. FEAR 2 left off with Micheal Beckett having been brutally raped. Alma is pregnant, and that’s probably not a good thing. This is the premise for FEAR 3. Alma’s giving birth. You should probably have a say in that. This game follows the Pointman and Paxton, working as brothers for the first time in their quest to find Alma. That’s it. That’s your premise. It’s simple, and it sure as hell doesn’t honour that with an interesting, well thought out story. 

Let’s just get this out the way. FEAR 3’s combat is good. But it’s story and horror are not. They’re barely even there. So depending on what it is you value about the franchise, FEAR 3 could feel anywhere from a return to form to a kick in the nuts. This complete lack of a significant narrative element is disguised by the game’s no fucking around attitude. Interval 1 doesn’t spend long before you’re playing FEAR again. And this confused me. Because FEAR 3 has one of the worst reputations I’ve ever seen from an otherwise adored franchise. I expected it to be utter bollocks. And it is if you don’t turn down the mouse sensitivity massively. Coming off FEAR 2, I thought I might’ve developed a brain tumour or something, but no, this game starts you on max sensitivity and has mouse acceleration. With that fixed, FEAR 3’s combat is a surprise. It’s immediately superior to FEAR 2’s monotonous slog and it doesn’t take much effort to figure out why. FEAR 3’s gameplay feels much closer to FEAR 1’s. Appropriate given the the player character. Guns feel much weightier, and connections feel impactful. Reflex mode looks absolutely amazing this time round. The slide kick returns. The jump kick actually knocks enemies back instead of just phasing though them and giving them a cardiac arrest. Melee feels strong once more, you don’t have to wait long between blows and each blow in the combo has a different animation making the simple melees even superior to fear 1. You can actually bind controls to the mouse keys, meaning you don’t have to play keyboard twister any time you want to pull off something complex. Dual wielding is back. Blood splatter looks better than FEAR 2 at least, shotguns blow enemies away appropriately. Grenades detonate on impact. All of these changes combine to create gameplay closer to FEAR 1, more aggressive, more action focused. It’s odd then that that with the game’s more aggressive gameplay, it would do everything in it’s fucking power to stop you from acting that way. It might be better than FEAR 2, but it sure as hell isn’t perfect. The guns might feel good to use, but they’re all amazingly boring. The SMG is the best at everything all the time. The shotgun is hilariously less powerful than the SMG at close range, despite it being far more fun. The pistol is better than ever, but you can’t dual wield it, only the Uzis. The assault rifle is a burst rifle with this horrible sight, and it’s also not much better than the SMG anyway. The laser carbine returns but it’s not really a power weapon any more because it takes so long to kill anyone. It chains and sets people on fire, sure, so that’s cool, but given it shows up about twice and it’s not that good anyway, it’s a lackluster portrayal. The sniper rifle is still cool but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as FEAR 2’s version, which baffles me. The rocket launcher is boring because again, it only fires one rocket where 2005’s FEAR 1 fired four, the napalm is gone, the nailgun is actually alright and that is that. Those are your weapons for the entire game. There’s 1 power weapon and it’s boring. What the fuck. The only worthwhile addition was the riot shield which creates a very different attitude to combat when using it. It allows you to completely turn the tides on a battle, but it’s not completely foolproof because you have to expose yourself to reload which can be a death on Fearless. So guns are bad, but we’ve yet to address the elephant in the room. In my FEAR 1 video, I stated that a way to improve on the combat would be a way to reliably avoid damage, complimented with regenerating health, as this removes the reflex over reliance problem. This was an issue where the player would be wasting their limited medkit supply if they attempted anything aggressive, which essentially forced the player into using reflex mode all the time If they wanted to play efficiently. The best way to play was not always the most fun way to play, and I felt that was an issue. FEAR 2 used shields to solve this problem. Now, you can play aggressively without having to worry about your 3 medkits being wasted, only problem was… it was FEAR 2. FEAR 3 has regenerating health. No medkits. It’s got part 1. To compliment that you’re supposed to have a way of reliably avoiding damage. I suggested an improved movement system, something like Max Payne. There’s tons of options, but Day 1 thought a cover system would be most appropriate, which on my list of things FEAR needs, is just under quick time events and a soundtrack by Taylor Swift. Please keep in mind, FEAR is an action FPS. Keeping the player stuck in a single spot is not exactly on your list of priorities. I doubt I need to explain how a cover system works, but I will say it works very well. Snapping is flawless, aiming to the sides and over cover is easy. But because this is an extremely linear game with relatively open sightlines, reflex mode can only do so much in the reliably avoiding damage area. If you want to survive, you have to use the cover. There’s no question about it. On your first playthrough, you will be torn to shreds if you try to play aggressive for more than 5 seconds. 5 seconds isn’t an exaggeration, and in a quick FPS like this, it’s longer than I would make it seem. It’s enough to pull off some cool plays, but being punished for going for anything longer or flashier seems about as counter intuitive as you could get. This is a problem hugely exacerbated by level design. Intrinsically, levels in FEAR 1 served as a way of reliably avoiding damage by themselves. Not all of them, but the vast majority, and because you and the AI could use them so well, it was the final piece of the puzzle that made FEAR’s combat legend. This is missing in FEAR 3. In interval 1, you’re in an armacham prison. Jin tells Pointman over the radio that some weird Alma demon witch nonsense is going down, Paxton shows up and the pair of you try to escape. Being a prison, it lends itself to FPS rather well. In fact, most of the spaces in interval 1 adhere to the holy trinity of FPS arena design. Varied, clustered cover. Check. Circular navigability. Mostly check. Observability. That’s all 3. Thing is with prison breaks though, you do end up having to leave the prison, and then play the rest of the game. There’s 8 intervals in FEAR 3, making it fairly short. One of which is purely story, so there’s 6 other real intervals. And every one of them is almost entirely linear in design. Like FEAR 2, except it looks better. ADS is neccesitated by the long and relatively thin linear design, which slows down movement. There’s no circular navigability, the cover isn’t varied, it’s boring, and in a very rare few arenas, they even lack observability. That is the gameplay’s biggest problem. 

That isn’t to say there aren’t a few standout exceptions. The end of interval 2 was a lot of fun, and interval 7 while nowhere near interval 1, at least had varied clustered cover, and a degree of circular navigability. Day 1 also get creative on occasion within interval 3, having a battle with suicide bombers on these thin wooden bridges, and a cool last stand, left for dead type fight in interval 7, against hordes of demons dogs as the door behind you opens and closes at a snail’s pace. It’s a return to FEAR 1’s clever use of it’s environments. FEAR 3 has the widest range of environments seen in the franchise, and I’m happy to say that it uses them the best too. You go from a prison, to a rundown slum, to a shopping warehouse, to a middle class suburb, to a post apocalyptic city centre, to a massive bridge over the sea, to an airport, and finally, to a haunted house. Every one of them looks great, and almost every one of them uses their environment to enhance the experience. Interval 3’s shopping centre is used to amplify the horror experience through the cultists and blinking TVs. Interval 2’s village provides all sorts of nooks and crannies within houses, and without especially in the last few arenas. Interval 5’s collapsing city has the ground giving out beneath you, creating new ways to traverse the level, and often taking out a few enemies for you. But most impressively, Interval 6’s bridge creates a sense of entrapment ans suspension. You’re hung over this extremely tall bridge, and you can only traverse the underside through these stacked up train cars. You don’t want to fall, but you don’t want to be trapped with the demon dogs either. It’s great. These impressive environments all give FEAR 3’s intervals something memorable but with regards to combat, but they can only do so much. And they’re not always perfect. Those sinkholes in Interval 5? Even being remotely near one when they collapse is an instadeath, creating an extremely frustrating sequence. In Interval 7, you’re somehow supposed to know that this black cover on the conveyor belt is the actual way to go. In interval 4 you get in the power armour and the only way to get through these buildings is to shoot specific parts of the walls, but you’re not going to be looking at the environment in combat, so it just slows everything down. Either say you have to do that, or don’t have it there. Then a mech comes in and it’s mech v mech but it just comes down to mindless weapon spam. Then there’s more shitty mech combat, and then you have to get out because your mech can’t smash through a gate for some reason despite the fact we’ve just been waltzing through concrete. Then there’s this electrical grid that has gaps you can step through but you need to guess that right. It’s implied you need to break these boxes, because they have the electrical hazard warning on them, but you don’t, but then later you do to stop electro tapping into the grid which is never explained.

Creativity is one thing, but I’d much rather have high quality direction through the level than a poorly executed cool idea. The environments here have topped FEAR 2, but at the end of the day, the level design is no better, and as such, the same issues arise. Castrated AI, and so a weaker combat experience. The cover system serves as an in game way for you to avoid damage, but make no mistake, FEAR 2 did the same thing. You still had to hide behind walls and objects to avoid large damage, it’s just that you barely ever did because normal difficulty was so easy. In FEAR 3, commando difficulty as it’s called is far more punishing, probably due to the cover system being fully realized so enemy damage and frequency is adjusted accordingly. FEAR 3 is both more aggressive than FEAR 2 due to it’s more FEAR 1 like systems, but also more defensive when you become overwhelmed.

Thankfully, FEAR 3 has an ace in it’s hole. It starts with a P and it rhymes with crackston, it’s Paxton. This is the first game in which you can play as Paxton. And it’s a completely different experience. Paxton can fire energy blasts which don’t have the most impressive dps. They’re low RPM, and pretty hard to aim with no sights. However, Paxton can also suspend enemies, giving a much easier shot on their heads, and allowing him to instantaneously blow them up. But it really comes into it’s own when you press control to possess whoever you have suspended. You essentially snap into the body, no matter how far or what obstacles are between you and it. If you possess a soldier, you have Pointman’s abilities but without reflex. Cultists give you access to their knives. Because this body is just a rental, you can afford to go as reckless as you like. Go rambo, no matter how much damage you take. As soon as you’re near death, you just press the possess button again to burst free, and then you can move on to the next target. You’re not very fast, and fairly squishy as Paxton, so this hyper aggressive style of possession completely negates the need to ever use the cover. That not the only thing Paxton negates. FEAR 3’s enemy design is pretty standard. You’ve got snipers, shotgunners, basic shooty men, but also some big guys with riot shields who you take out with a shot to the hand, much like halo. Cultists worship Alma wade, and they show up in interval 3. One type runs at you with a knife, the other type runs at you with a bomb vest. And then you’ve got the boss type enemy. The phase commanders. Big guys walk, little guys run about the place, but both spawn enemies in from these weird arc bolts. You’ve got to kill the commanders to stop the spawning. That’s easier said than done. They’ve not got much health, but their shields are extremely hard. It takes about 7 sniper shots to the head to down the shield. In some arenas, they regularly teleport by walking through these wall portals. They could come out at any wall which creates an enjoyable cat and mouse game, especially when you’re up against two of them. With Paxton though, much of this experience Is lessened. The grunts are easily dispatched with possession, and all you need to do to the commander is take down the shields, at which point it becomes helpless to possession, then you can turn that body on the other phase commander, even using the self destruct to deal more damage. Paxton can’t use any of the phase abilities, but it’s still a massive buff. And that’s the thing. Paxton is unbelievably unbalanced. The game wasn’t designed for him, it was designed for Pointman. He’s a hell of a lot of fun, but there’s no challenge at all to playing him. Paxton’s fearless feels like Pointman’s commando, and the problem is worsened by this game’s idea of a progression system. Essentially you do challenges which you complete just by playing. You can also get points by pressing F on certain dead people which is for some reason, a psychic link. I don’t understand how this works but whatever. The points you get from this stuff raises your rank, and you get permanent in game buffs for doing so. More reflex capacity, more speed, more health, more ammo. These are significant boosts, and you’re vastly more powerful as a rank 21 Fearless than a rank 1 pleb. It’s a glorified version of the boosters from the first game, but unlike there, you carry over the boosts from one playthrough to another. It’s account bound. And Paxton isn’t playable until you’ve completed the levels on Pointman, for whatever reason. So, most players will use Paxton on the second run, at which point not only are you stronger as Paxton, but you’re also stronger because you have a significantly higher rank. And you can never actually return to the same difficulty level as you could on your first playthrough, because you’ll always be stronger. First playthrough fearless is the hardest the game can get. Why they thought this progression system was a good idea is beyond me. It maxes out at 21, which is about 3 playthroughs. That’s not an huge task, because with 8 intervals, FEAR 3 is only 4-6 hours long. And with 3 playthroughs, each one with a slightly different combat system, it attempts to keep itself fresh. You might be wondering what the third playthrough would be. There’s only two characters. But this game has two player co op. 

Dicking around with friends is a naturally more enjoyable experience. In most games. In FEAR 3, my co op playthrough was significantly worse than the solo playthrough. The person with the highest rank will always be the favourite son, because they’re naturally more powerful. And Paxton is going to be more powerful at a base anyway. The revive mechanic looks ridiculous, but worse, whoever you’re reviving will not get up if you complete the green bar, you need to wait an extra second, which leads to perceived inconsistency and mistakes at no fault of the player. Some encounters are harder because there seems to be more enemies, but some encounters are easier because you can can gang up on a single target, so there’s no consistency. If one player dies to a sinkhole, everyone dies and you have to restart at a checkpoint, and because there’s two players who will routinely make mistakes, you actually have a harder time getting through interval 5 in co op than you do in solo. Level design is completely bollocksed by co op, because for doors that lead you down the correct path to become unlocked, both players need to be close. So you pretty much can’t split up, if you do, you’re significantly less likely to find the correct path. If one player strays too far from another, one player has their screen turned to black and white so they can’t see and are then teleported to the other player. I only saw this happening to Paxton, but I can’t be sure if it’s exclusive. The problem with is, it’s completely inconsistent. You can be 50 meters apart one arena, but if you put only 10 meters between you on either side of some random door, you’re teleported. The peer to peer networking sucks unbelievably hard, even when both internet connections were top notch. Sometimes you can die so hard that you’re disconnected, and it’s definitely tied to death, because 9/10 times it happened, one or both of us had died. This can also result in rare crashes. The horror aspect of the game doesn’t work because the horror’s not very good to begin with, and 2 players almost always diminishes the experience if the game was designed from the ground up to handle it. Every cutscene is from the Pointman’s perspective even if you play Paxton, breaking the immersion of one of the players every time. Pointman’s reflex mode slows down time for Paxton too, which is performance enhancing, but obnoxious nonetheless. But you’re castrating Pointman if you ask his player to not use it, because he has no other powers. And finally, there’s no way to switch characters, the host is always Pointman, the joiner is always Paxton. All of this combined creates an experience that was significantly worse than when I did it alone. In fact the only interesting mechanic is choosing whether to share or steal psychic links, because it is a factor is whose ending gets picked. Dicking around with friends is one thing, but this game has so many problems that doing so was just extending the amount of time we would play the game, a fate considerably worse than death.

FEAR 3’s combat makes a successful return to form mechanically, but it’s betrayed by a awful cover system, bad co op, and linear level design that once again completely misses what made the AI successful. Never the less, it’s better than FEAR 2’s meager offering. But that’s where it’s advantages end. FEAR 3 also attempts a story, and I really, really wish it didn’t. The direct story is delivered through cutscenes. They end the previous mission, and transition into the next one, almost always focusing on the brothers, Paxton and Pointman. Paxton does pretty much all of the speaking for obvious reasons. But Pointman’s voice wasn’t the only thing missing in previous games, his face was too. But here he is, looking like Keanu Reeves. This makes sense given his heritage, and it’s pretty important to the game’s story, because you regularly see the brothers as children. A face could give Pointman some character at a sacrifice, but Day 1 does nothing with it. In fact, everything that made him special to begin with is gone. Silent protagonists work because you can easily identify with the story, using them as the vessel. It doesn’t work here, because the player isn’t necessarily Pointman, and the Pointman can’t represent the player. This a game about both Paxton and Pointman, and their relationship, yet he’s still a blank slate. The player’s perspective isn’t always Pointman, but most importantly, his place and possible motivations are now completely unrelatable. Until the ending, the player never knows if he’s doing everything to stop Alma, or because he’s her son and it’s important to him. Either way, no one can put themselves in his shoes anymore. Alcatraz and Master Chief are simply heroes who want to save the day at their own sacrifice, no questions asked, they embody the player. But Pointman is ambiguous, and with no quality as the player vessel, he becomes a boring, flat character. He’s got no agency of his own, he’s completely incapable of making his own decisions, in fact, Jin is the only one who decides what the brothers do or where they go apart from one decision in one ending. He’s a mindless brute archetype which makes his character completely uncompelling. This leaves only Paxton to prop up the main characters. Paxton is Baxton for FEAR 3, but not in the way you’d expect. In FEAR 2 Reborn, Paxton used a specific special replica to psychically imprint himself onto. He was just Paxton again, no questions asked. In FEAR 3, he’s a ghost. Uhhh. Paxton always had the ability to come out of nowhere, but there it was portrayed as a kind of spooky psychic magic. Here, can walk through walls, float about the place, and he’s covered in this weird red aura like a monster out of a childrens’ book. He’s got the same powers, it’s just portrayed in a different way through this red stuff, which removes pretty much a lot of the mystery from his character. Paxton’s appearance also raises major questions. In reborn he came back as a 45 year old geography teacher. I’d be fine if they retconned that and made him look like he did in the first game again, because that’s still clearly the superior design. Here, Paxton looks like a decade younger which is fair enough, but with a slender frame and no bulk in his jacket. He also has a bullet hole in his forehead despite not having one in FEAR 2. So, I have to wonder what’s going on. You’ve gone from a great design, to an awful design, to a completely illogical awful design. The only thing, and I mean the only redeeming quality of these two plums is the direction of the cutscenes themselves. John Carpenter, the American filmmaker helped out on these, and I think it really pays off. The directing is flawless. Smooth transitions, great character placement and camera work. The action is also pretty gripping. Paxton calmly throwing Pointman out harm’s way in interval 5, and saving him from falling down a sewer are two particularly impressive moments. They’re always a pleasure to watch, not so much to listen to, but we’ll get onto that shortly. For now, we’ve got a plot to talk about. Well, sort of. Alma is giving birth, and both brothers want to be there to see it. Paxton wants to do it for family and power, Pointman, through Jin wants to do it to stop Alma, but again, that’s ambiguous. Pretty much the entire game is about getting to Alma, geographically. Fairport is a bit fucked, but thankfully FEAR 3 is an extremely visually varied game, so you’ve you a wide colour palette and some very good looking backdrops for the narrative to play in. Each mission is pretty much chasing after something you need to get to Alma, with very little to no story development whatsoever. In interval 1, it’s escape, in interval 2’s it’s get a helicopter. There’s nothing in interval 3 or 4 , except simply progressing through the city but Jin shows up soon after. Jin is… back in FEAR! This game is in the monolith timeline, so it of course disregards Jin being torn to shreds by shades in extraction point, and instead assumes that she got out of this demon infested, nuclear wasteland just fine. She gives you a much more interesting motivation. Micheal Becket. He’s still alive and he’s being held by armacham at Fairport Airport, which is the greatest name ever. You’ve got to get to him, because errr. I don’t know. It’s literally never explained why you need to speak to Becket to find or stop Alma. Not even the wiki knows. Paxton is fine with meeting him, but only to find out if he is the real father. When Becket starts getting on Alma’s case, Paxton paints the walls with him and that’s the end of that. I know this is FEAR and everything but what a shit ending for a protagonist. It’s nice that they tied the game so closely to FEAR 2, but Becket’s portrayal here is just pathetic and a massive waste of time. For the final interval, 8, your motivation is slightly more personal. You’ve been hunted by this scary looking stranger things demon called a creep. Apparently, this is embodiment of your bad memories of Harlan wade. You’re regularly shown cutscenes, narrated by Paxton of the pair of you as children. You both seem happy, but Harlan was always there to pit you against one another. He watched you play and unbalanced it to create conflict. He beat you, and upon realising Paxton was stronger than Pointman, he was ready to completely reject him. These are pretty heartbreaking stories of sibling innocence being twisted and childhood innocence being taken away, poisoned by the evils of someone inspired only by power and money. They were to be gods among men, and Paxton directly blames Harlan for making him a killer. You frequently get transported to this wood where you walk a bit and Harlan says stuff. The creep shows up regularly throughout the game, but it’s only any good early on. Interval 4 has some pretty special stuff in a house where the game is reluctant to show you the creep, and sells most of the horror through the cultists, so you’re never quite sure which is going to pop out. For the rest of the game, it just randomly pops up a couple of times and you shoot it to make it go away. That or it grabs you and looks at you funny. In Interval 8, you head to the house at which you were raised as brothers, to destroy memories of Harlan. You’re hunted by the creep in the house, but it’s incredibly formulaic. Watching the memories is a lot more interesting. Paxton being forced to kill, Pointman being forced to become a fighter. Once you destroyed all three memories, you take on the creep once and for all. This is also the final boss of FEAR 3, and therefore, the most recent FEAR combat arena to date if we discount online, which we are very much going to. This makes it the last… ever. It’s a shame then that this is one of the worst boss fights I’ve ever played in my life. Here’s the mechanics. Shoot the creep. When it telegraphs a move, run to the other end of the arena. Rince repeat. It has three moves. Smash the ground with one hand. Smash the ground with two hands. And breath fire, which just requires moving out the way, like the other two attacks. Each time you do sufficient damage, he goes away and some guys spawn who you shoot. Next time he pops up, he’s got a bit of his face missing. This lasts for about 10 minutes. He’s got a glowing red spot which acts as a weak point but you can kill it by shooting anywhere on his head, only the final blow needs to be to the weak point. It’s quite possibly be least spectacular and most boring finale to a franchise I’ve ever seen. Crysis 3’s was at least presented well. This fight is a fucking tragedy. And with Harlan dead, the brothers find Alma at last. 

There are two endings to FEAR 3, and what happens depends on who did the best during the game. The ratings make no sense, and they’re also pointless if you didn’t play co op, which is most people, because you’ll only have accumulated points for one character. If you played Pointman, he wins, and everyone plays Pointman the first time through. Essentially, Paxton says to gain unlimited power, they need to consume the body. Pointman just wants to shoot it which sparks a fight. If Pointman wins, he shoots Paxton, Alma doesn’t feel so good, but then for some reason, he takes the baby with him. If Paxton wins, he possesses Pointman, takes the baby and then eats Alma. So the only thing that actually changes is who raises the kid. Let’s just get this straight. Paxton states in his ending that the Pointman was shaped to serve his needs. This means convincing him that Alma is alright, and she was on their side all along. But then at the end, Paxton means to father the child and he kills Alma anyway. So why exactly didn’t he just say that. Instead of fighting Pointman because he wanted to kill the baby and Alma, why didn’t he simply suggest that they raise the baby. That’s what Pointman does as well. At no point does Paxton imply he doesn’t want Pointman around. At no point do Paxton and Pointman’s motivations or lack thereof ever actually conflict, in fact the only time they might have disagreed is what to do with Alma. Paxton wants to eat her, but in Pointman’s ending she just dies for no reason. Paxton’s master plan is a complete waste of time, and had he actually come clean, none of them would have to die. Did anyone actually… read the script? And I’ve yet to talk about Alma’s portrayal. So she’s the big bad of FEAR right, she’s the one on all the posters. Yet, In this ending, Alma is completely defenseless. Despite having the psychic power to turn the city into hell, she’s completely numb against one tough guy and one ghost . Yes, they’re her sons, so maybe she doesn’t want to fight. But when Paxton decides to eat her and she doesn’t defend herself, I have to wonder. Pointman didn’t even try to kill her, she just turned to dust. Why? Maybe because they needed to wrap up her character for impact or for a planned 4th installment Or maybe it’s just bad writing, we’ll never no. Alma has always been a character of her own will, and having a baby is no exception. The entire 2nd game was setting this up. Alma being hugely weakened by giving birth makes sense, and her motivations for having a baby are also perfectly solid. So maybe she just didn’t realise what would happen to her, since she’s never given birth at her current power level before. It’s a tragic ending, because I do believe she wanted another child as the one member of her family that hasn’t betrayed her, that hasn’t tried to kill her multiple times. You have to remember that is more than likely the alternate timeline, where Paxton in the first game was initially plotting to eat Alma, so that’s him included. She’s lived a completely loveless life, and that doesn’t justify her raping Becket, or murdering countless innocents, or just being a demon witch in general, but there is a level of real tragedy to the ending, that the game doesn’t actually seem to realise or sell at all. Perhaps her turning to dust in Pointman’s ending was more because she was happy enough to have him raise the child, instead of Paxton. She clearly knows she’s brown bread no matter what. And I do think that Alma needs to die. Maybe this game was the best one to do it, because she’s passing on the mantle to her child. But fans would want to see a hell of a lot more from an Alma death scene, and I doubt that any writer was genuinely happy with this. It’s such a whimper of an ending, for characters, for story, for gameplay. There’s no horror, unless you count Paxton eating Alma which is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen in gaming to date. Every pillar of FEAR is knocked down like dominoes, to their lowest levels we’ve seen so far. It’s depressing. This is where I usually talk about the horror, but we’ve already done that. I’ve gone through every horror element worth nothing, the cultists in interval 4, the environment in interval 3 and the creep. That’s it. And the creep is just a tesco value replica assassin. Perseus fucking mandate had better horror than this. Funnily, the game actually advertised a generative horror system, but in reality this just means slightly altered creep placements, which does absolutely nothing for the game, because the creep is annoying, not scary. I don’t want half assed jumpscares from FEAR, I want lighting, sound design and AI to come together, so the elements of Horror and Action are actually blended, not just glued onto one another. FEAR 2 did this on occasion,, and I still think extraction point has the strongest horror overall to date. The shades weren’t AI, but there was effort put into these scares, using FEAR’s atmosphere to deliver some of the most intense scenes in the series. FEAR 3 doesn’t have a remarkable lighting system and it doesn’t use it for horror once. The sound design is nothing special, and the AI is never used to it’s potential. The cultists and demon dogs just rush you. It’s a pathetic offering. And there’s nothing more to say on it.

This game fails miserably at two of the three core aspects of FEAR. At least the combat system was put to good use within the campaign… and without. 

FEAR 3 is the first game in the series that didn’t have deathmatch, but it’s also the first game that did have an excellently fleshed out multiplayer component. 2 modes are co op, 2 are competitive. Contractions is probably the most familiar. 4 players are set into an arena, and have to defend the fort against waves of enemies. You can repair broken barricades like call of duty zombies, but instead of spending points on new weapons, you have to go out into the thick of it and bring back supply crates, which is probably quite fun when your friends are covering you. Alma can also show up, and the first person to piss her off gets bamboozled which is a fun addition. There’s no base expansion, it’s just survival, but it’s a simple and appropriate 4 player co op mode. Soul survivor is wave survival, but in a much more sprawling arena, almost reminiscent of FEAR 1. You have to make it to the exit after 5 minutes of fighting to progress onto the next wave, where the enemies get harder. At the start, one of the 4 players will become the spectre. They have to possess AI soldiers and take down the FEAR team, if the spectre revives the a FEAR member, they become a spectre too. It’s called soul survivor because it’s unlikely there’ll be many of you left by the end. Soul King on the other hand is a competitive mode. All four players are spectres and you possess AI soldiers, trying to kill other AI soldiers to rob their souls. The person with the most souls is soul king. You can also kill other players in their possessed bodies to make them lose half their souls. Alma will occasionally spawn and if you irritate her, she spawns In a powerful demon dog. This is possibly the most creative mode and it could only work a game like this. The final mode is called fucking run. You’re basically being chased by a big wall of death and if you get touched, it’s game over for everyone. You also have to fight through numbers of enemies while doing so. If someone goes down, you’ve gotta pick them up or you’re all screwed so it’s a deeply cooperative gamemode. Some tracks have shortcuts, and others even have power armour so there’s a lot to it. It makes perfect sense for a game called FEAR, and once again is a creative and enjoyable concept. But as good as these amazing multiplayer modes are… you’re not going to be able to enjoy them to their fullest anymore. Not without 3 other friends who are also mental enough to play FEAR 3 with you. As you might expect, matchmaking is barren. You can’t find a game for any mode at any time. But this game did more than I expect to at least keep the experience on life support. It actually has a solo practice mode for all maps and all modes. This is great way of preventing your game from ever truly dying. It even has a mechanic to allow solo players to enjoy themselves in soul survivor. If you go down, a spectre comes in to corrupt you. If you kill it, you get a revive. No mode can be experienced to it’s fullest in FEAR 3 anymore, but I have to congratulate it on creating 4 excellent multiplayer modes, that couldn’t have fit the game any better. 

It has been argued that the reason FEAR 3 was considered such a let down is because it’s story was garbage and it’s horror was on lunch break. These are two of the three pillars of a FEAR game, but every person is going to value those 3 differently. I personally value combat above all else, which is why FEAR 3 had me relatively impressed on first inspection. I also think that since FEAR 2 had prioritised story and nigh perfected the horror when it felt like using it, the next game in the series was expected to be more like that. So when it released, the shift was jarring. FEAR 3 had one leg to stand on, combat. Gameplay. It’s multiplayer could deliver fresh, and enjoyable experiences. It’s single player was kept just about sufficiently entertaining by combat that went back to it’s roots, and providing two combat experiences for the price of one. The graphics were alright. It’s not all bad. And because it’s at least competent in one respect, I can recommend it to some. People who unquestionably like gameplay above all in FEAR. People who don’t care about FEAR and just want a relatively fun FPS. But this is no FEAR of mine.

FEAR, like Crysis almost appropriately ends on a sour note. I’m already getting tired of having to say that. And with it’s poor sales, the series was damned. There will probably never be another FEAR game. And there will never be another FEAR video from me. 8 months later, the series is now over, and it really does feel special. My channel has grown exponentially since the first FEAR video. It did the same for me that Crysis did, and for that, I couldn’t be more thankful, to both the games and the viewers. And to honour the end of the series, I’m going to do what I did at the end of the first video. Because there’s some other creators in this community that absolutely deserve your time. Core Ideas is a video essayist, focusing on all aspects of media, but mainly games. KOTOR, Halo Reach, Mass Effect, Half Life. His videos are consistently well presented, and insightful. He’s also one of the nicest people I’ve met doing YouTube. TehSnakerer for the vast majority of time my channel has been around was significantly bigger than me, but now I get a good opportunity to shout him out. His critique style playing series is extremely unique, and shocking insightful. How he can make a 2 hour video filled will excellent criticism and no waffle on Watch Dogs 2 is beyond me. LHudson makes video essays similar to mine. He’s kinda like a northern Noah Gervais but without the camper van aesthetic. He’s actually got a 1 hour long call of duty zombies retrospective. Who on earth has time for that? We do. You’re on my channel. And finally, Leondardo Da Sidci. This is a man who has 15,000 more subscribers than me, so probably doesn’t need this. But I believe his videos are deserving all the same. Sid has made a few of the best video essays I’ve ever seen on youtube. His Hellblade and psychosis video is pretty much the best video I’ve ever watched on the site. Videos don’t usually give emotion beyond distaste and satisfaction, but this made me feel something much more than that. His thumbnails alone are borderline apotheotic. Please go subscribe to these guys if any of that interests you. And SquidTheSid, Aporia and Red Value Gaming are still among my reccomendations.

Thank you all for watching, any one of the 6 videos in the series. And if you’re new please do subscribe for more content, because the channel is only just beginning. I have a patreon, a twitter, a discord and a recently opened paypal. All for anyone who anyone who’d like to interact, or donate. Thanks again, now go play some FEAR.

Odd note:

FEAR 3’s collectors edition is certainly worth noting, it came with some tat, but also an 18cm figure of pregnant Alma wade. With… a glow in the dark fetus. Right.