Quake 4 and FEAR first impressions (spoilers)

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Yeah, what's with the difficulty? I'm on 'hard' also, and I only dropped below 10 medkits because I missed a nade throw and blew myself up a bit.

Dang, I must suck, since I dropped to zero medkits at one point on normal difficulty.

Learn to strafe, always reload after a fight, and use cover.

And watch where you throw those damn pineapples!



EDIT: Short bursts to the head usually drop 'em quick, too.

[Stark]

Yeah, thats the problem. Not only are the fucking soldiers IRRELEVANT and only placed to give you something to shoot (randomly, three guys here, a guy here, etc) between 'scary' bits, but the slow means it's trivial to headshot the bad guys, and their 'tactics' just expose them to this even more. On hard I rate the game 'easy'.

Shinova, have you finished it? I'm only in the silly office building (post falling down into FUCKING FILLER WORLD, but neh). I don't just use medkits when I find one: I've technically been down to seven on the roof vs the ATC guys, but there was two medpacks before and five after that scene, so it's easy to stay topped up.

I miss my pistols...

[Julhelm]

It'd have been better if you didn't have the slo-mo ability, and if they reduced health and ammo pickups to 1/3rd of what it is now.

[Stark]

Someone must have thought limiting you to three guns with very high ammo limits - but filling the levels with piles and piles of guns - made sense in a game where you can slow down time and headshot EVERYONE. The battles are actually extremely hard without slow motion - I think I've killed maybe eight guys without slowmo. I would have liked the higher difficulties to have less ammo/slow motion time.

But hey, someone thought comic-relief the fatman was a good idea. In a game called FEAR about scary shit.

I'm not actually very impressed with the design for this game: the engine is nice, but the 'horror', the poor level design, the terrible difficulty settings, and the non-existent ability to develop the plot all detract a great deal. I tried to amuse myself by crying 'settle, Fettel' every time he tried to 'scare' me, but now it's just lame. The solid demarcation between 'action' bits and 'scary' bits are far too obvious: nothing 'scary' EVER happens when there's a bad guy around. I'm not in the Perseus compound yet, but I've resigned myself to the fact that my objective is going to be 'find Fettel' or 'kill Fettel' or 'intercept Fettel' or 'arrest Fettel' all the way through the game. Alienware product placement does not make a good game.

[Arrow]

Someone must have thought limiting you to three guns with very high ammo limits - but filling the levels with piles and piles of guns - made sense in a game where you can slow down time and headshot EVERYONE. The battles are actually extremely hard without slow motion - I think I've killed maybe eight guys without slowmo. I would have liked the higher difficulties to have less ammo/slow motion time.

But hey, someone thought comic-relief the fatman was a good idea. In a game called FEAR about scary shit.

I'm not actually very impressed with the design for this game: the engine is nice, but the 'horror', the poor level design, the terrible difficulty settings, and the non-existent ability to develop the plot all detract a great deal. I tried to amuse myself by crying 'settle, Fettel' every time he tried to 'scare' me, but now it's just lame. The solid demarcation between 'action' bits and 'scary' bits are far too obvious: nothing 'scary' EVER happens when there's a bad guy around. I'm not in the Perseus compound yet, but I've resigned myself to the fact that my objective is going to be 'find Fettel' or 'kill Fettel' or 'intercept Fettel' or 'arrest Fettel' all the way through the game. Alienware product placement does not make a good game.

I addition to those complaints, all of which I agree with, I'm not even that impressed with the engine. The Doom 3 and Source engines give same effects with better graphics quality, and with better audio to match. And for looking like its a last gen title, it runs like absolute shit (I love how crappy the outdoor scenery is - HL2 does it much better). Behavior wise, the AI isn't that much better than HL2's or some of the more intellegent enemies in Quake 4.

And back to the game design itself - turning off a light, or having skinny girl in a red dress appear, disappear and randomly blow stuff up is NOT scarey. Quake 4 gives me more scares, especially when I get blind slide by those damn linebacker style Strogg.

Q4 I'll replay at least once. I might never touch FEAR again once I've finished it. I don't get all the wanking that's going over it in the game press.

[Xon]

Yeah, what's with the difficulty? I'm on 'hard' also, and I only dropped below 10 medkits because I missed a nade throw and blew myself up a bit.

Dang, I must suck, since I dropped to zero medkits at one point on normal difficulty.

Slow-mo & headshots. Controlled bursts of slow-mo and full-auto weapons fire into the head does wonders.

The game is rather hard without slow-mo and if you exhaust your slo-mo power in the middle of the firefight, things get rather ugly, fast.

[Julhelm]

Quake 4 beats it pants down, IMO. It also blows HL2 out of the water, especially at the "second" part where it really becomes "Quake II with a vengeance".

[Stark]

I've just got Q4, based solely on it's 'better than FEAR' billing in this thread. It looks better already, and the guys at EB had horror stories about FEAR being a resource hog. According to them, they've all had 'FEAR runs like shit' experiences, but Quake4 (which if it's like D3 will look way better) runs fine on the same systems. That's pretty damning.

Is it just me, or is there very little actual content in FEAR? It's a simple story that could've been told in a twilight zone episode. It's told so poorly that standing in the dark surrounded by blood listening to a voicemail about doom and shit doesn't bother the player. It's full of 'filler' levels, the worst of which is simply a basement you fall into and spend the next half an hour solving stupid puzzles to get out of. I actually kinda enjoyed the very first level, with the spookiness (I shot the Fettel apparition several times in the head, but eh), but they just drag it out with more meaningless meandering corridors, more soldiers guarding nothing for no reason, more 'Fettel is round there. For sure. This time' bullshit.

I mean, it's so bad if they'd said 'ZOMG Fettel is in the room with youzor' and he'd been behind you, that would've been cooler than anything the game currently has. Silent Hill was scarier, and it's on PS1.

SETTLE, FETTEL!
XANATOS

[Julhelm]

FEAR just feels as if they cut 50% of the content out for no reason.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I've just got Q4, based solely on it's 'better than FEAR' billing in this thread. It looks better already, and the guys at EB had horror stories about FEAR being a resource hog. According to them, they've all had 'FEAR runs like shit' experiences, but Quake4 (which if it's like D3 will look way better) runs fine on the same systems. That's pretty damning.

I'm actually a little pissed now that I've beaten FEAR. It must be a damn resource hog, because it runs like shit on my system, which is fairly solid for the midrange:
3.0 GHz processor, 1500 mb RAM, ATI Radeon 9600, etc. On the pure gameplay front, it was too short and pretty repetitious, although it did have some damn fun gunfights.

[Shinova]

Shinova, have you finished it? I'm only in the silly office building (post falling down into FUCKING FILLER WORLD, but neh). I don't just use medkits when I find one: I've technically been down to seven on the roof vs the ATC guys, but there was two medpacks before and five after that scene, so it's easy to stay topped up.

Admittedly my average FPS was 12-20 FPS, but meh.

I finished the game, but the point during the game where I dropped to zero medkits was a bit after where you are I think, where I went up against multiple snipers with particle rifles, and one of those heavy mechs armed with those laser things in tight quarters.

[Shinova]

Q4 was pretty fun in that sort of you're in the middle of a warzone type of fashion, but it was WAY TOO SHORT!!! If it were at least Doom 3 length, it'd be a whole lot better.

[Stark]

Well, I still haven't gotten to the lazers part yet... and with Q4 I'm not sure I will for some time.

Are games generally more disappointing these days? It's been a long time since I've seen a breakthrough-fun FPS.

[Xon]

3.0 GHz processor, 1500 mb RAM, ATI Radeon 9600, etc. On the pure gameplay front, it was too short and pretty repetitious, although it did have some damn fun gunfights.

You are crippled by your graphics card.

r9600 is a lower end gfx card these days, and it's shader preformance sucks and shader preformance makes a hell of a difference on newer games.

Something like a 6600gt is a solid mid-range card which can handle modern games very well.

[Zac Naloen]

considering the fear runs really well on my system now that i've upgraded my graphics card i lack any complaints about the game. i find it challenging, but then im not exactly an fps genius, reasonably scary and engrossing story wise. i mean its a game.. i shoot stuff and it has a reasonably good story.

Im happy, Quake 4 is being bought next up though.

btw i run an athlon xp 3200, amd x700 with 1.5gigs of ram.

[Arrow]

I'm running an x2 4800+, 7800 GTX SLI'ed and 2 GB of RAM. And even though FRAPs reports frame rates of 40 FPS per second, it feels like 20! I'm running FEAR at 1600x1200, 2AA and 8AF, with everything but softshadows turned on (which look craptastic, btw). Meanwhile, I'm running Quake 4 at 1920x1200, 2AA and 8AF, with everything but the ultra-size textures, and the game usually stays up at the 60 FPS engine frame rate cap, and it feels like its running 60 FPS. And it looks better!

As for FEAR's plot, I fully expected to have capped Fettle by mission three, and by now be knee deep in untangling some large government/corporate conspirecy. Instead, I'm still hunting Fettle through floor after floor of office building, with on vague hints of something larger. Urgh!

[Shinova]

FEAR's story doesn't roam all over the whole paranormal angle, I find. I sticks to its original plot like and runs with it to its extent, it seems.

[Captain tycho]

Yes, F.E.A.R isn't what the hype nor the media says it is. But I didn't mind the repetitiveness of the maps so much (mostly because I used the maphole cheat to skip the endless Armacham levels ) as much as some people, and the MP is nice to hop into for 20 minutes and get your blood pumping.
In all, I had lots of fun with with it, despite all of its flaws, and thats what really matters in the end.

[Stark]

FEAR just proves that the gaming journalism is essentially dead. I've read reviews of FEAR (after I played it myself), and it's clear they were well paid for their opinions. I wonder if the sales they got recompensed the amount they paid for the good reviews? The game does nothing new and nothing well - apart from the massive media blitz, it is hardly noteworthy at all.

Quake 4 is a bit of fun - I haven't been stuck on the same objective or building for hours and hours, so it beats FEAR. The vehicle stuff is a bit too easy, but everything looks very nice. And I actually die - something that never happened in FEAR.

Tycho, saying you 'don't mind the repetitiveness of the maps' when you fucking skipped the boring bits is pretty stupid.

[Captain tycho]

Hence the smiley after that statement, Stark.....

[Stark]

PWN3D by sarcasm! Sorry, but you see I'm currently stuck in the super boring neverending Armacham levels.

[Arrow]

I just got past the Armacham levels - Max Payne's levels are next.

[Stark]

I'm at the bit with all the sentryguns - I'm at the... fifth one, I think. If I'm not right near the end of Armacham, I'm never playing that damn game again.

Or I could think laterally and skip the damn thing. But then, where would it end? The WHOLE GAME has been boring!

[Hotfoot]

Wait, you found Armacham repetative and boring?

I mean, yes, okay, the parts with offices look similar (gee, they're offices), but I have yet to find repeated arcitecture even once so far. Certainly nothing like the horrendous repetition found in Halo.

The only time I've ever been "stuck" the whole game was because I overlooked a couple of "button" bluescreen terminals. Other than that, I've been flying by.

Also, I don't know why their are so many complaints about the AI, especially with grenades. As I've been playing, they've been launching them pretty dead-on to my location, using them as area denial tools, and so forth.

My only complaint so far is that the game only runs smoothly on 640x480. Despite this rather serious limitation, however, the game still manages to look damn good.

By the way, sentryguns fall quite easily to the assault rifle and the penetrator, if you know what you're doing, you won't even take any damage.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Just finished FEAR, here's my review. There are some (very minor) spoilers below - don't read it if you don’t want to see them:

I found FEAR to be an enjoyable game for most of the way through, it was challenging (I played on Hard) but I never got stuck on any particular section - that’s pretty much the definition of the perfect difficulty for a game for me. I'm not playing a single player game to bang my head against the AI (which it would be stupidly easy to make uber difficult); I'm playing it for the emotional experience and to follow the plot. I would agree that med kits were too abundant. I would have preferred a system where you have a max of maybe 3-5 and to use one you actually have to stop moving/shooting and you watch you character do a short animation of him applying it - the way it is if things go pear-shaped in a gunfight you can too easily just hammer the med kit button to bring yourself out of certain death. The melee attacks were fun too, but felt a little awkward control wise sometimes. The bullet time was very well done - the way everything sharpens visually when you activated it was a nice touch too, they went a bit over the top with the squiggly bullet trails though I thought.

The levels were nicely designed, aside from there being occasional choke points that forced the AI soldiers into having to come at you from one predictable direction. The vast majority of them though were well laid out and allowed the soldiers to get at you from multiple directions, which kept you on edge. As people have mentioned the levels were all similar, but that’s kind of like saying there was too much of City 17 in Half-Life 2. The whole story of the game revolves around a big office/laboratory building and an old abandoned industrial complex - I don't feel like I lost out because I didn't get to fight soldiers on a spaceship or in a forest. The outdoor areas were rendered in an adequate manner, considering how little time you actually spend outdoors.

The part that I felt was very well executed and that I hadn't seen done quite as effectively in any other FPS before were the scary sections of the game. They resisted the urge to simply make monster closets and they genuinely kept surprising me with what would happen almost all the way through. They started getting repetitive when I got to Auburn industrial area, but then they stopped occurring for a long time and took me by surprise again when they came back much stronger later. I also found it to be fairly predictable when I was in a "scary" area or a "fighting" area, but they did throw in a couple of exceptions to that which took me totally off guard as a result (which I would suspect was actually the idea). Also the semi-interactive visions you receive throughout most of the game are kept short and infrequent, which means they keep there freaky feeling each time you enter them. I should point out that no, it wasn't scary if you played it during the day with other people around. But I made a point to only play it a night, with the house blacked out, alone and wearing my headphones turned up to a good loud volume.

Now, the bad:

More direction would have been nice - going straight to Quake 4 after playing FEAR I can really feel more urgency simply because I've got nice voice actors (which FEAR doesn't lack, it just doesn't use them so much) reminding me of my objectives and piling on the tension almost the whole way through. In FEAR they will usually tell you your objective once and that’s your lot until the next one.

It fell for the FPS staple of "you land in a 10 man strike force, then all 9 other men near instantly die" and it does it a good number of times. It's forgivable because it's necessary for the game to work, you can't have a scary game when you’re surrounded by friendly team mates.

It's a system hog, as mentioned. I find it bemusing that people are saying it looks like a previous generation game though. It probably does when you turn everything down (which unfortunately many people will have to do) but if you can turn everything up high it can do all the tricks Doom 3 can do (normal mapping, pixel shading, multiple light source shadowing etc...), albeit in a less refined manner. Also I liked the fact that I could see my own shadow, it made me jump quite often.

Weapons - I liked most of the early weapons, and throughout the entire game I carried a shotgun and the Replica soldiers’ assault rifle (which I love the visual design of). However the later weapons all became far less interesting - there was the standard zap gun, the standard rocket gun etc... And they didn't seem to serve particularly different purposes from each other.

A couple of the enemy types annoyed me too. Firstly the big stupid guys in an armoured suit, fighting these was simply monotonous and no where near as interesting as fighting the standard guys - in a game like Quake 4 where you are packing ludicrously powerful futuristic weapons of war they are cool, but in a game where most of you weapons are small arms you just end up plinking away at them from round a corner till they drop dead (as there’s no point wasting your bullet time on them). Secondly, the stupid flying machines that show up about half-way through - they seem utterly out of place, with some crazy high-tech flying mechanism and some drab cliché Stars Wars laser weapon.

The final part of the game - I was absolutely shitting myself when I kept catching glimpses of the emaciated Alma just ahead of me, I was convinced she would be just around every corner waiting for me. But then those stupid ghouls just keep coming at you and after the first few attacks it totally breaks the tension.

There you have it, overall I really enjoyed it. For the guys who were complaining about it being too easy with bullet time - have you tried unbinding the bullet time key to stop yourself from using it?

Playing through Quake 4 now, will post my thoughts when I finish it.