When F.E.A.R. 2 was originally released 11 years ago, I enjoyed playing through it, but the overall impressions of the game were mixed. I still remember being disappointed with some clear downgrades or weird changes in comparison with the original title so I was curious how different the perception of the game will be today. Years since we’ve seen the franchise effectively die, years since Monolith Productions were known and loved for making great FPS titles. I suppose, time mends the disappointments as replaying F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin was actually very enjoyable.
The original F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) wasn’t exactly the first horror themed FPS, nor even a horror themed FPS with as much emphasis on the horror aspect, but in many ways it was the first nonetheless. It tried to combine concepts from Akira, The Ring, John Woo movies and your typical military shooter (an FPS theme that was only yet to explode with popularity) into one and the results were amazing. Sure, the levels were quite samey, the enemy variety limited and not everyone appreciated its incredibly minimal haunting industrial ambience. And sure, Alma, the main (tragic) villain of the series, was blatantly Sadako/Samara from The Ring. But it was an amazing FPS with impressive AI (or at least one that still feels incredibly smart) and some of the firsts to be done with games. That whole trick with seeing one thing, turning around and having entire level change – that’s not something that you could find before F.E.A.R. and its (rather poor) expansions, yet now every first person horror themed game has that. Oh and yes, it was also a technical marvel and the most demanding PC title of its year, in many ways surpassing the previous year’s Doom 3 and Half-Life 2.
It isn’t surprising then, that there were lots of expectations for Project Origin. And yeah, the game was originally just meant to be called that with as little mentions of the first game as possible since the developers were in conflict with the publishers of the first game and couldn’t use the same title.Which influenced what game this turned out to be. You see, you pretty much don’t need to play F.E.A.R. to understand anything in the sequel. It helps, but almost none of the characters from the original are directly referenced and everything you need to know is told in this game. Which isn’t a bad thing on its own, of course, however it leads to a bit of a problem.
The original had a truly memorable villain in Paxton Fettel and several characters you grew to care about. And the game was built on these characters start to finish. Project Origin has its own cast and none of them, including Alma herself, are interesting to follow in any way. They’re as generic as they go and due to that, the story of Project Origin just kinda happens. Until you get the rather controversial ending which was… well, novel, I suppose, but not entirely deserved, I would say. Oh, there was also Reborn DLC where the story can be explained in 3 words and it is a preferable experience to playing said DLC, so you can just ignore that altogether.
Where the sequel lost in story and actually mood as well – it’s a surprisingly colourful game for how disturbing and dark it is supposed to be, – the game is in many ways more fun to play than the original. The flow is better, the variety of enemies and weapons is good enough, using slo-mo is fun, things still explode in lots of cool looking debris. And horror-themed and “just military” segments are now mixed far better, the visual storytelling and transitions between the hallucinations are top notch, actually still impressive and stylish today.
Now, it is a distinctly “consoles-first” game, unlike the original. It has a lot of trappings similar to what was expected of console FPS titles in 2009, lots of tutorial popups, huge button prompts, even some QTE sections. And, what’s more disappointing, less fine tuning in controls with, for example, no support for mouse thumb buttons whereas the original supported that. It’s not terrible, but it adds a bizarre “00s console game” feel to it when the original title didn’t have that. Also, while the music is good when it continues being creepy ambient, it sometimes tries to sound epic and fails.
If you’ve somehow missed the F.E.A.R. series, definitely give the original a go (you can safely ignore the expansions) and Project Origin is a good FPS to check out as well. It aged surprisingly well, despite those outdated console-friendly elements, and is very fun to play. Most people, actually, will probably enjoy this one over the original.