Only saw one FEAR 3 thread from months ago and it didn't seem worth bumping. Game is out today in America... later this week for uncool countries I assume. Or maybe America is the uncool one? I always forget which is which.

Anyway, it's... a game. You shoot stuff. It seems almost entirely built to be played in co-op which is about as far opposite of the slow-paced immersive shooter FEAR was as you can get. Playing solo you still get these score elements on your HUD like you're competing with someone and it still ranks you at the end of a level ("you're her favorite brother!"). The core action is fine though... it has a really good always first-person cover system that reminds me of Medal of Honor Airborne of all games.

Graphics are fine. Pretty standard console port look to it. Kind of blurry but that might just be the FXAA effect. MSAA is available but cut my framerates in half (single GTX 480). Distant objects are big jpegs it looks like, straight out of a CoD game. Performance (with FXAA) is excellent though, 60fps locked. Lighting effects can look really good. Like I said, standard console graphics.

HUD, controls... everything is consoley, even worse than FEAR 2. It does have lots of options and settings though and even defaulted stuff to my mouse buttons 4 and 5, which is a first. It's not bad in the PC port arena, just pretty standard. Still kind of sad to see for a series that defined why PC FPS games are better when the original came out, but whatever.

I have a weird stutter issue when strafing, which seems to be common according to the Steam forums. Beware of that. Otherwise if you don't mind console ports (or play on a console) this seems like a perfectly good time for co-op and probably an average time for solo shooter fans.

I'm not picking this up anyway, only played FEAR 2 (on 360) and didn't like it. The gameplay was decent, but the linear and extremely scripted nature of it really rubbed me the wrong way since I was *really* sick of linear FPS games at the time. Stopped playing in the abandoned primary school where you were literally going down a straight hallway and triggering scripted events, which kinda felt like the devs were just taking the piss. :/

Co-op actually might tempt me though, looking for some good co-op games to play atm. :)

I want this one so bad. I loved all the other ones, and I quite enjoyed the trial on OnLive today. It seems quite different from the other two, but I still enjoyed my 30 minutes with it.

It's nice to have different ways to play a game: single, multi being co-op or deathmatch, or the zombie mods.

Having co-op is today a standard but sometimes its so forced on games that it spoils the singleplayer campaing. No one even tries to balance it out.
Take for example Hunted: Demon's Forge or Red Alert 3.

Yeah. There are games like Borderlands which end up extremely boring for solo play because they were built around co-op. This is not one of those games really, it plays like a singleplayer game when you play solo. Fettel is not there awkwardly turning cranks or dying every 5 minutes, he's only there in cutscenes and in your mind, he's an apparition. So it's not so bad.

The mains stuff that makes it feel co-op centered is the competition aspect. The game scores your performance and compares it to the other player, sort of competitive co-op. When playing solo it still does this, despite there being no competition. Not sure why they didn't just remove that crap entirely when playing solo.

Also a cool thing is that Fettel plays completely differently and you can play as him in levels you have completed. That will add a lot of replay value.

I liked very much fear 1. It was very linear shooter and scripted stuff. But that what it supposed to be I think. Storybased fps horrorgame or something like that. One player game. Haven't played fear 2. Seems a lot like 1.
But when I look fear 3, it doesn't even look like it belongs in the same series. I see laserbeams, monsters in daylight and multiplayerpics. Well, maybe it's good that it's more open and action oriented but maybe not. Now it (for me) looks like a game which lacks personality.
But, when and if I play that, maybe I will be surprised.
And what I have seen.. call of duty games are also very linear and scripted and ever so popular.

Canada seems cool and clean and this Finland isn't so bad.

Sounds good that way and I'll give it a try some day. I got two expansions and the second one to beat first (last weekend Steam sale).

I've bought FEAR 1 and 2 with all the expansion on steam aswell (huge discount). Maybe I'll do the same with FEAR 3... wait until someone offers the game with all the expansion.

The graphics are a bit dated on the first one so that could soften the scaryness. But all in all I wouldn't say its scary.
On the other hand if you would play it late at night in a dark room with your headphones on, you'd get your moneys worth ;-)

I guess that depends on what you find scary. Most of the spooks are jump scares, creepouts, WTFs and mind trips. They put me on edge, and they did scare me a few times, but as far as being persistently frightening, I wouldn't say so.

Are there any particular games you've played that scared you? I might be able to compare them.

Yeah hopefully the dated graphics will at least help a bit if i do play it... i would be to much of a coward to play at night tho >_<.


Well more recent games would be stuff like Dead Space 1, i got very scared playing it. Also Amnesia and Penumbra scared me but i was watching playthroughs for those 2.

Fear is not nearly as in-your-face intense as Dead Space (and honestly, half of that just came from the fact that Isaac was a damned klutz). It's more of a creepshow than an onslaught, but it's also not as psychologically effective as Penumbra. Fear also has no pretensions of being 'survival horror', so ammo and medkits are plentiful.

Hmm doesn't sound too bad then, only thing that creeps me out is the Girl which is probably the reason i avoided it. If it's not as in-your-face as dead space i can probably play it without too much problems then, thanks.

Btw is Fear 2 as 'scary' as one or is it more toned down?

I guess I would say that Fear 2 spiked higher on the spook scale here and there, but taken as a whole, the experience wasn't quite as potent. Alma in particular didn't seem like the deadly and immediate threat she was made out to be.