What exactly is happening to the horror genre? Did making games scary suddenly become illegal when I wasn’t paying attention? Did some overprotective mother’s hyperactive child suddenly die of a stroke while playing “Condemned”, and now making games that are legitimately frightening is like trying to release an M-rated game in Australia?
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Nice video game you've got there...be a shame if someone....
CENSORED IT!
-Michael Atkinson
former Attorney General of South Australia
Australia's Jack Thompson
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It seems like every attempt made by triple-A studios these days to create a good horror game seem to approach the project the same way they approach any other M-rated mainstream shooter: attach a mysterious Sword of Damocles above the player’s head, smear blood on all the walls, make the lights flicker on and off every once in awhile, and just to keep things classic, have a support character betray you at some point. Also create enemies using some rejected “Doom” and “Silent Hill” concept art and throw in some spooky music. Now let’s give it a memorable logo…just fit a number three into the title…and off we go.
What? “F.3.A.R.” isn’t selling well? And it’s getting panned critically? How could that be? We did everything exactly by the book! What could we possibly have gotten wrong?
Well, Day 1 Studios, the thing you did wrong was going by the book in a horror game. Honestly, how do you expect a plot and design structure any gamer with at least a pocket full of nerd cred these days has already seen in any of the dozens of triple-A titles that have come out in the past five years? Horror is supposed to surprise you. It’s supposed to show you things that move you to unease, things that challenge your personal concept of reality. “F.3.A.R.”, or “F.E.A.R. 3”, only reiterates things we’ve seen before: cover-based first-person shooting (which never, EVER works), mini-bosses, alternate endings, and of course, co-op gameplay, a word that I’m starting feel may be the newest alias of Satan himself. Worst of all, it copies the same scares that were old and ineffectual by the time the second game concluded itself.
“F.3.A.R.” starts when Point Man, the mute protagonist from the first game, is broken out of prison by his undead brother, Paxton Fettel, the main antagonist from the first game. From right here, a huge mistake was already made: Point Man is shown in the cutscene, rendering his role as a silent protagonist pointless: a silent protagonist must have no voice or appearance, so the player character can feel like they are the ones in the story, not the protagonist character.
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| Basically, this. |
Anyway, Beardsley and Creeper McMurderkill escape and fight their way across eight levels with difficulty curves like the EKG readings of a cocaine addict after a wild week in Vegas in order to…something something end of the world something something their mother Alma is giving birth to the baby that was conceived at the end of “F.E.A.R. 2” when she got non-consensual all up on the player character. (Shudders)
The whole time it’s unclear whether the two brothers hate each other or have somehow reconciled their differences: Fettel mocks Point Man one minute then compliments him the next. Meanwhile, Point Man seems completely indifferent as to the fact that he’s Fettel’s brother, his childhood friend, his own flesh and blood: he acts as though he’d let Fettel die again if given the chance, even after Fettel saves his life at least thrice before the game’s end.
I could say reducing him to a cold, psychopathic soldier who ignores every factor but the imminent danger presenting itself (Alma) despite his familial ties to her was put in intentionally, making him the perfect example of logos that could contrast Fettel’s emotionally-driven psychotic pathos, the only missing element being Alma’s motherly love, “eros”, thus turning the game into a metaphor for the three Jungian motivational aspects of the psyche and the discord that results from the disruption of one, or perhaps the over-emphasis of one over the others.
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| Psychology! |
That alone could have saved the game a great deal of stick. Unfortunately, even if Day 1 and Monolith did intend to try to get this across, it’s negated by the game’s blatant emphasis that Point Man is supposed to be “the good guy.” Instead of creating an interesting personality contrast between the two sons, Fettel becomes “just another bad guy” and Point Man is left as “just another mute, one-dimensional protagonist.” In other words: poor presentation renders any efforts they may or may not have made pointless.
When the brothers finally get to their mother, they have a disagreement about the process of delivering a baby, Point Man arguing that it involves shooting the helpless pregnant woman with a .45 and Fettel insisting that the procedure requires eating her alive. Depending on which character you played as in the single player, or who scored higher in the co-op campaign, one of them kills the other and takes the child to raise themself.
Gameplay-wise, there’s not much to say. As Point Man you point a gun at an enemy, then shoot until they die while they stick behind cover and try not to get shot. As Fettel, you can lob fireballs at enemies, hold them in mid-air for Point Man to shoot them as they dangle like a fleshy marionette covered in Kevlar, or possess them so you can shoot their allies and then destroy the body when you’re done. Actually, that can get quite fun once you master it, but only certain enemies can be possessed, and because doing so increases your defensibility by ostensibly creating a meat shield that can also fire back, it’s difficult not to turn the game’s co-op mode from a tag-team supernatural slaughterfest to “Call of Duty Clone #486.” And while we’re on the subject, why does a ghost need to worry about bullets?
When you look back on the game after beating it, the things that stick out are the little moments. There’s a level where you fight through a Costco-esque bulk retail store that a gang of psychopaths straight out of Neil Marshall’s “Doomsday” have re-appropriated into their own little psychopath clubhouse. At one point you have to go through a maze made of a bunch of lit big-screen TV’s, some of which are hooked up to hidden cameras that display the spindly crazies running just out of sight, creating a really interesting and genuinely suspenseful “house of mirrors” effect. But then they strap primed explosives to their chests and sprint at you, instantly making the level not fun again.
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| "F.3.A.R." also doesn't have a scene where Sol here roasts Sean Pertwee over a bonfire before feeding his charred corpse to a room full of Scottish Cannibal Punks. What a wasted opportunity. |
The “little moments” I’m talking about are what made the first game great: being in a cramped elevator and catching a quick glimpse of Alma standing three feet from you just as the lights flicker on and off, turning your back for a split-second to go down a ladder, only to be at eye-level with the little ghoul when you turn around again, and of course, finding out after all that that she’s actually your mother. That, and that the little girl version hasn't been following you to vaporize you with psychic ghost malice. She's been trying to let you in on why she’s trying to take down Armacham, to ask you for help, while the adult version is more like an unchained psychic incarnation of the Id, the aggression and sexuality center of the mind, though more on the side of aggression than sexuality in her case. Until “F.E.A.R 2” that is.
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| Yikes. |
Even the design of Alma got worse after “F.E.A.R. 1”. In “F.E.A.R. 2”, her pasty white skin and the shadows over her eyes that made little girl Alma look like more like a porcelain doll than a human being are replaced with bloodshot, red irises and veiny, pallid skin, sabotaging all the subtlety in her design that made her so creepy.
“F.3.A.R.” has none of the little moments. Every once in awhile you’ll see her looking at you from around a corner, but there’s just no technique involved in the scares, and they’re sparse enough that it doesn’t have much of an effect anyway.
However, I will say that when you finally reach Alma, there’s an interesting moment when you see your mother’s face in-person for the first time: going into labor, Alma is immobile, panting, staring up at her sons with a face full of complete terror. Ultimately, the reason she wanted you to go to her was because she wanted your help…because she was scared. For the first time ever, you see Alma in a situation of absolute vulnerability. Playing a macabre psychic game of “Peek-a-boo” with her mentally fragile sons is one thing, but child birth scares the absolute crap out of even her. This moment harbors the most depth out of any in all three games.
I’ll be honest, when I played “F.E.A.R.” through for the first time, the highlight of the game for me was finding out that Alma is your mother, which made Fettel your brother. I actually didn’t want to kill him after that, even though he had brutally murdered dozens of people, including his aunt. Also the game doesn’t let you progress until you shoot him in the face.
When I found out all of the horrible things Armacham had done to Alma, I wanted to join her. Yeah, I said it- I wanted to help Alma murder the sons of bitches responsible for her rape, torture, and death, all until her early twenties, when her life support was cut off, leaving her to die slowly and painfully in a sensory deprivation tank. I wanted to bring the company down, man. That’s why I was so excited for “F.3.A.R.”- I thought that’s what it would be like. I expected it to be a choice. While I don’t want to spoil too much of the ending, I will say that neither ending is all that satisfying, especially Fettel’s ending.
Oh yeah: and they play Danzig's "Mother" over the end credits.
Originally posted to GameGuiders.com
07/29/2011
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