I’d call the third entry in the F.E.A.R. series an odd one out if not for the fact that the entire franchise has been quite odd. Nonetheless, F.E.A.R. 3 tends to be the least liked entry, at least discounting expansions and DLCs, and there are plenty of mostly good reasons for that. The most minor of which, possibly, is the pretty tasteless stylization of the title as F.3.A.R. When it came out, I was rather cold on it, but did find plenty of things to enjoy. Since then, more history of its development became known and replaying it in 2023 made me appreciate what was attempted here more. Even if the end result is not great.
As is now known, F.E.A.R. 3 begun life as F.E.A.R. 2. Day 1 Studios were contracted by Vivendi Games, who owned part of the rights to F.E.A.R. (including the title itself), to make a sequel to the game, while at the same time other studios were working on the expansions. Monolith Productions, who created the series, began work on the game that community would vote to call “Project Origin”. A couple of years later, Warner, who owned Monolith, bought the rest of the rights to the franchise from Vivendi, who themselves were bought by Activision and dissolved as a brand. As a result of all that, “Project Origin” became F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, while the game Day 1 Studios were working on had to be reconsidered. The original story and characters were revised, coop focus was added and after several more difficult years of development, the game became F.E.A.R. 3.
This kind of difficult development period wasn’t kind to the final result, but there are many genuinely cool ideas here. On a basic level, while F.E.A.R. 3 goes even further into the “typical console FPS of late 00s” territory than the second game (including a rather ill-conceived active cover system), when the action starts, it’s still fun. Your movement feels more restricted than in the first two games, but not by much in comparison with the second one. And lots of guns feel great to use. Helped by the fact that locations in the game are highly varied.
Playing as Paxton Fettel instead of the Pointman is especially fun. Where Pointman gets his slo-mo back, but otherwise plays like a typical FPS protagonist, Fettel works very differently. On his own, he can only use telepathic blasts, throw some items around and kill with close range telepathy (instead of melee). But when telepathically holding an enemy with at least one bar of slo-mo meter full, you can possess them. The possession ends when the meter runs out, but killing enemies and picking up energy that drops refills the meter. As a result, playing as Fettel is a constant rush forward, as dying inside someone’s body doesn’t kill you, so you try to find ways to switch bodies at a good time and create chaos in the midst of the enemies.
When this is experienced in coop, it can be extra cool, as two playstyles can complement each other, and if playing with friends, the pair can work extremely efficiently without hogging all the fun stuff to one or the other side. Fettel is still more powerful and more fun, to be completely fair, so playing as him you must restraint yourself a bit. But it still can be a great experience and the game is built around motivating you to play together, but also compete as the person who has more cool points at the end of the game gets the ending tied to their character. It’s also cute that some elements of the game are not exact every playthrough or even for every player.
Unfortunately, if you cannot experience the coop, more problems become noticeable. For example, while playing as Fettel is more fun it is impossible in singleplayer, until you complete the game as Pointman first. It makes some sense, since on level one Fettel is a bit too weak and… yep, I said “level”. Another thing is that the game has a progression system tied to your profile that makes you more powerful as you level up, which you do by just doing challenges and finding collectibles. And this system drastically changes the experience of the game, as you get more health, faster regeneration (F.E.A.R. 3 went full on regenerating health), more ammo, more power… And if that’s not frustrating enough, while the game has cloud save support on Steam, your campaign progress and player level don’t get saved, so if you decide to revisit the game a few years later, your progress is gone and you have to unlock playing as Fettel again.
The story in the franchise was never the strongest point, but in the Monolith Productions titles the storytelling was consistently solid and you could expect plenty of surprises. Sadly, F.E.A.R. 3 is incredibly generic and, at times, plain silly. The style is still there and Day 1 Studios managed to recreate a lot of the visual flair of the previous games on their own engine and then add some new cool touches. The music is occasionally very good too. But transitions between levels or parts of levels are often awkward and overall the game feels like it was done on a considerably lower budget.
In another world, the project that became F.E.A.R. 3 could’ve been quite interesting to see. And even as the game it ended up being, it isn’t as bad as many people say. Well, as long as you tweak the FOV to not be extremely nauseatingly narrow, which cannot be done via settings… So, if you can play it with a friend and on a discount, it’s a fun game that has some weaker moments and some stronger moments, but is overall entertaining. As long as you don’t expect it to be on the same level as the first or even second game. Even playing solo can be not terrible, but it is a far less enjoyable experience that way. Would be nice to see the franchise return some day, but hopefully with better results than what we got in this game.