I recently finished F.E.A.R Extraction Point - the first expansion to F.E.A.R. For those who don't know, F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon) is a first person shooter crossed with a horror game. Except that it didn't quite work.
Note that huge spoilers will follow. But really, the plot, while it has its moments, seems fairly disposable.
The original game begins with you being the new recruit / pointman of F.E.A.R, which is never really explained well to the player through the game, but is essentially S.W.A.T for paranormal/supernatural things. Which is a horrendous idea in the first place. Since when have ghosts and other paranormal activities been susceptible to assault rifles? Oh right, they aren't. Even in this game, they're not.
No, the main bad guy, Paxton Fettel if my memory serves me correctly (and if not, I'll call him that anyway because his actual name was at least as ridiculous as that) is some... random guy. You get to watch him eat people at the start. Kinda creepy.
Somehow, he has some kind of clone army, which he directs to kill people. Your squad shows up to figure out what's going on, and to "eliminate" him. There is also the small matter of some insane little girl (as it always is in horror) with supernatural powers making weird shit happen occasionally.
You will literally receive visions occasionally - usually completely harmless, but sometimes less so - of weird stuff. A hallway with blood down the walls, the hallway itself stretching as you attempt to walk down it. Or maybe the entire world around you becoming black except for a circle of flame, with ghouls flying at you in an attempt to eat your soul, and drag you to the hellspawn pit from whence they came.
This sounds cool doesn't it? Well, this is all that about the game that is different - or even mildly interesting. And its not even scary.
Well, its creepy the first few times, but it happens quite a lot, so you kinda get used to the idea that your character is possibly losing his mind for brief periods, before being returned to whatever warehouse he was in, to continue on his merry way killing generic soldiers.
And that's exactly the problem. In the original game, I seem to recall a grand total of two types of enemies. Generic armed forces (because guns don't hurt ghosts, they had to give you something you could fight), and ninjas. I shit you not.
There are random ninjas which appear, and attack. Usually from behind. A shotgun blast usually deals with them well enough, until the next 3 attack simultaneously...
The major problem with this game is that EVERY LOCATION IS THE SAME. SERIOUSLY. It leads you through abandoned warehouse after abandoned office to abandoned parking lot to abandoned lab to abandoned office... every building looks the same!
F.E.A.R itself, wasn't so bad. It retained some form of interest, particularly with the giant explosion near the end, and the ending itself, where your helicopter is dragged down by the creepy little girl.
The expansion, however, was much, much worse. The reason being that it is THE EXACT SAME GAME. For some reason, the telepathically controlled clone soldiers reactivate themselves (even though their creator / controller is dead - and the reason he can still control them is never explained. The character himself even tells you in a vision that this makes no sense), and you are forced to try and regroup with the surviving member of your squad, after the helicopter crash.
Never mind the identical plot (you spend a large portion of the original trying to regroup with your squad, as well as chasing Dudeface McGee in between being driven mad by visions), this one's completely different.
How, you ask? BY KILLING OFF EVERY REASON YOU HAVE TO CONTINUE PLAYING. You early on link up with one of the survivors, who proceeds to fight with you for a couple of levels, and then gets himself killed in an admittedly creepy possession-type scene. His last words are to find Jin - the only other survivor.
You spend the entire game trying to get to the hospital where she is, traipsing through (stop me if you've heard this before) abandoned office buildings, an abandoned subway, an abandoned parking lot, and then, eventually, said hospital. Except that when you find her, she's dead (as expected).
Your mission then becomes "get to the extraction point on the roof". When you get there, the helicopter you are about to get in... explodes. Then the credits roll, you see a buring cityscape, and are told to go play the other expansion.
And will it be worth it? No, no it won't. Particularly since Wikipedia clearly states that both expansions are completely disregarded for the sequel F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin.
The moral of this story is that the F.E.A.R games are not scary. Particularly Extraction Point. The visions occur often enough that you begin to expect them every 10 minutes or so, the grisly scenes you come across where soldiers have been decimated become same same, and the only times in the game where I was creeped out involved the ninjas appearing behind me without warning, and a particular vision where the hospital became a completely different locale. And the reason that vision creeped me out was because it proved to me that the game's artist's were capable of texturing walls a colour other than white.
Also, why do you have bullet time? I never really understood that...
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