"I ain't afraid of no ghost." You know what, I'm not either, but unlike those famous lyrics, while playing FEAR I did find myself being creeped out by a vampire, enemy soldiers who flanked me better than even I know how to, a little girl with long hair who scared the beejeezus out of me, and even my own footstep echoing down a dark corridor terrifies me now.

THE STORY SO FAR
Much like Half-Life 2, instead of the story being presented to you in a way so that you absolutely know what the story is, to understand FEAR and to get the most from the story you actually have to pay attention and scour the levels for both computers and answering machines featuring such things as sound bytes to help flesh out the story.

However, though the story isn't that in your face, there is an interesting one there. You find yourself as a new member of FEAR (First Encounter Assault Recon) with the innate ability to be able to slow down time and move in slow-mo. Why? Well, you'll have to play to find out. Your first task is to bring down this psychic vampire with the ability to mentality control troops. However, a telepathic freak isn't your only concern, as there is a strange little girl named Alma also who constantly runs across your path. How do all of these people tie together?

Though occasionally you'll get an in-game cutscene at the beginning of a level while you're infiltrating, mainly the story is told through actual in-game events, such as experiencing one of your many hallucinations or hearing the chatter of combat in your ear. By presenting the story in this way, it really makes the game more immersive, as you find yourself a character of the actual story rather than jumping into the role during designated points.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
FEAR is all about one thing – combat. When I look back on FEAR and the history of first person shooters, as of this moment FEAR easily has one of the best enemy AI I've ever seen. Though there aren't too many enemy types, there are enough to get the job done. You've got your basic soldiers, who pack a variety of weapons, and know how to throw grenades with the best of them to make you flee your cover. The basic soldiers will not only hide from you and refuse to charge, but they will flank you, work as a hive mind, and the way in which they uniquely perform is also amazing. There were two times in particular where I was amazed by the AI: 1) Within a little office, the soldier actually hurdled over through the office window to get away from my fire, and 2) A soldier actually "made" cover by pushing over an object in his way. You've also got more heavily armed soldiers, giant mechs, and these almost invisible camouflaged ninjas who are great at sneaking up on you and scaring you to death.

But like I mentioned, you aren't necessarily in this alone, as you have the ability to temporarily slow down time for specific amounts of time (though you can increase your ability to stay in slow-mo longer by finding hidden serums). The slow-mo is a must use ability, as it will help you get a jump on your enemies, allowing you to quickly counter their maneuvers and charge their positions. And though you'd think having this ability would make the game easy, it is far from that. FEAR is a challenge, pure and simple, and you will die over and over. As said, the enemies are smart, plus they do a lot of damage.

There are also a nice amount of environmental puzzles within the game to deal with, such as figuring out that the way to move to the next destination is to climb a stack of crates and crawl through the ceiling. However, that is about the only compliment I give the environment, as the whole game is almost centered in nothing but a series of corporate offices, one after the next, and when you look back at things, the game is very linear as there are many doors barricaded, forcing you to head the way the designers want you to head.

Besides the repeating environments, the other ultimate problem involves the enemies. Now don't get me wrong, they are still extremely smart, but in order to inform you that a battle is about to take place, each enemy will chatter loudly over their communication system, thus eliminating the ultimate surprise that would've happened if you had stumbled upon them. Once all these elements come into play and you actually figure out you are doing the same thing over and over, the game becomes more of a virtual shooting gallery than anything else.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
First up, the biggest complaint I have with the multiplayer is that you will die more times than Kenny did in the early seasons of South Park. Sure, it is a good thing that you don't have to worry about unloading a whole clip just to make an enemy go down, but when you run across another player and you die quicker than you can let go two bullets, then you start wishing the damage was toned down a bit.

Besides the high dealt damage, the rest of multiplayer is very solid and fluid, as I rarely experienced any lag while playing. For Live, you've got both Ranked and Unranked matches, plus several different match types such as Death Match, Team Death Match, Capture the Flag, Elimination, and Team Elimination. There aren't as many in some other games, but at least you get the basics and the environments are nicely laid out so there are several different branching pathways, places to hide, snipe, etc. You can also do some of these modes with the slow-mo from the single player incorporated. The slow-mo makes for a nice change of pace, but ultimately I enjoyed the non slow-mo matches more.

Another available option is the Instant Action, which presents you different scenarios against AI from the game, and based on your performance you're given a score that you can then compare to others over Xbox Live.

GRAPHICS
FEAR is a mixed bag when it comes to the graphical department. The slow-mo blur and whizzing bullets is amazing to watch, and it only gets better when you witness the environmental destruction caused by a slow-mo grenade, but while all of that is great, as are the character and enemy models, which are very detailed and animated nicely (especially the death animations), the environments, since they repeat so much, become boring to look at after you see the 100th computer to come across the screen.

The game also has some bad graphical glitches, such as your shadow looking more like a dark piece of paper hanging over you to your field of vision running into and partially through objects; it is a bit hard to explain, but needless to say it happens very frequently and is quite annoying. Another glitch that happened once, involved wielding two guns at once, and after dieing and loading up the checkpoint again, I found that when I switched to those same weapons, the only things I saw were my fists (plus I couldn't switch to any other weapons) and yet the environment reacted like I had weapons, such as computer screens shattering after I shot them (I had some fun and pretended that instead of invisible bullets I was manipulating the environment with my telepathic powers).

SOUND
The voice acting is only alright, but the sound effects are extraordinary, as there are so many sounds of combat, plus creepy immersion sounds meant to instill a level of fear and doubt in the player, that work wonderfully well. The music is also really good, as it ranges from the bombastic of a firefight to the slow dread of a dark corridor.

IN CONCLUSION
After hearing about FEAR for so long on the PC and how great it was, I found myself a little less than impressed with the 360 endeavor. FEAR isn't the revolutionary game it sounded like many people made it out to be, but it is still a solid FPS.

Rating:
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