It’s so hard to scare people nowadays. There was a time when heavily implying that someone was being murdered was enough to make an audience hysterical – now, the sight of skinless mutant zombies raping and mutilating cheerleaders will get a chuckle at best.
Japanese horror, however, has always been able to shock and disturb, because its filmmakers recognise the superiority of suggestion and dark imagery. It’s not the masked lunatic with the chainsaw that we’re afraid of – it’s the blank-faced little girl who can tear us apart with a single glance, a dark entity from whom we cannot possibly defend ourselves. This breed of horror whispers in our ear and lingers in our peripheral vision until we are driven mad with anxiety.
Monolith Productions drew inspiration from such insidious scare tactics to create F.E.A.R. in 2005, and they’ve sharpened and improved them to terrifying effectiveness in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin.
The horror is derived from Alma, an eight-year-old girl with immense psychic abilities whose rage against her captors and experimenters at Armacham Technology Corporation formed the plot of the first game. The sequel begins moments before the explosion that ended F.E.A.R. and follows the struggles of Michael Beckett, a Delta Team Sergeant that finds himself relentlessly pursued by Alma.
Gameplay wise, Project Origin is a First-Person Shooter that builds upon many existing features of the original. The AI has been improved to the point where enemy soldiers will, for the most part, react intelligently to your decisions, taking cover and flanking you where possible. Unfortunately, such intelligent behaviour is often negated by Beckett’s lightning reflexes, which allow you to effectively slow time for brief periods. This gives you an enormous advantage over your opponents, who barely have time to lift their weapons before you’ve reduced them to pulp. The ‘hard’ difficulty will still challenge you, however, and Alma’s abominations will more than give you a run for your money.
The game has had a massive graphical overhaul from its predecessor, which suffered from fairly bland environments. Project Origin takes place across an entire city, including luxury apartments, hospitals, schools and ruined streets. The levels are far more colourful and richly detailed, and benefit from improved rendering and lighting. Slow-Mo features slick matrixstyle ripples around bullets and explosions. Fans of gore will fi nd plenty to admire as enemies are blown apart in showers of blood and limbs – Alma has some brutal and creative methods of her own, as you’ll discover.
The game features both LAN and online multiplayer, with several game modes and leaderboard tracking. It’s a fun inclusion that greatly increases replayability, but without the horror elements and Slow-Mo function it’s a slightly generic experience that can’t really compete with games like Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Source.
It is, after all, the horror that elevates Project Origin beyond other FPS titles. Alma is a constant presence as you progress through the game, and far more aggressive than she was in the first F.E.A.R. She will twist and distort your surroundings, drawing you into bizarre hallucinations that meet seamlessly with reality. More directly, she will liquefy and torture her enemies, shift objects with telekinesis and even attack you physically, grappling with you until you are able to throw her off. The graphical improvements are put to good use here – your vision will become blurred, colour will drain from your surroundings or the screen will “throb” as Beckett experiences intense headaches associated with her proximity.
Such moments are paced fantastically – empty rooms and moments of silence will unnerve rather than comfort you. You’ll find yourself jumping at shadows in constant anticipation of her next mind game.
As a First-Person Shooter, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is a solid title with achievements and multiplayer modes that offer significant replayability. As a cinematic experience, however, it absolutely shines, with a dark and disturbing atmosphere that will grip you ruthlessly. Just make sure you play it in a dark room with headphones on to squeeze every last drop of terror out of it.
By Hugh Milligan
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