FileFront Forums - FEAR vs. HL2

I just bought both recently, and I have to say I was dissappointed on certain issues in each that left me underwhelmed, even though both have pretty good immersive gameplay. I will first point out that all my opinions and ratings are based soley on the sp part of each game, as that is what I assumed we were talking about moslty.

HL2:
Good storyline, and very tangible involvement with most details of the story.
Really crappy squad AI, they should stay the hell where you tell them to go, until told otherwise. They actually sometimes say "I think I'll stay right here", instead of going where you direct them. This combined with numerous narrow hallways, tight doorways, and the game's tendency to stutter when going thru doorways, is very annoying.
Lighting and shadows not on par with quality of physics used, 'nough said.
Good variety of terrain, weapons, and vehicles, including enemy vehicles. The love/hate relationship with the Antlions was rather cool too. At first I thought they got in your way just as much or more so than your squad, but clearly it's in how you use the baitsac. In that sense they're less trouble than the "Follow Freeman" dummies.
Ending way too easy, though has some of the best effects in the game.
Terrible stuttering, with very few effective tweaks to cure it, in fact nothing seems to. This is something that Valve is responsible for, not ATI, Nvidia, or the customer's choice of PC spec for that matter. There are also way too many pauses in the maps where you have to wait for textures to load ("Loading" messages). This along with Steam is HL2's greatest failure.

F.E.A.R.
Lousy storyline IMO, I found it to be not nearly as deep or immersive as the advertising hook showing the Ring rippoff. Hmmm, let's see, Ringu, Ring, Ring 2, Dark Water, is using a little girl that's been abused, deformed, and disgruntled all it takes these days to make a story somehow all of a sudden grippingly horrifying? Worse yet, are all the crappy sounding answering machine messages you get the story details from, never being tied in enough tangibly to the details they're they talking about in map layout.
Repetetive map environments, and very little variety in enemies. Not enough boss fights, especially tough ones, and not nearly enough monsters. I'm not sure there even were any non humans in the game, even the Assassins looked to be humans wearing high tech stealth suits. This is supposed to be about very scary paranormal events, not just technology gone wrong.
Very good AI, enemies respond to sounds, flashlights, and react very quickly warning others, and working in unison. They take cover well, fire over and around cover after noting your position, advance when you don't suppress, and communicate well (sometimes too well) with their squad. Wearing full head gear and being equiped with radios would in reality allow them to speak in wispers without being heard, but when you grade on a curve, FEAR's AI is among the best out there. I just wish on the highest difficulty mode the reality part mentioned would kick in.
Very good lighting and shadows, even with soft shadows turned off and shadow detail at Minimum, it looks better than most games. I see soft edges to shadows even with these lower settings.
Absolutely awesome physics, especially the gunplay, though the extreme amount of dust kicked up by the projectiles is WAY overdone, which tends to kill the enjoyment of it some. I really got tired of the shoot, wait for the dust to settle, then shoot some more routine, otherwise you can't even see the enemy through the dust.
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Bottom line, HL2 is a shooter with a long detailed story that continues on, and is very well implemented, through other characters, situations, monsters, and devices you encounter.

F.E.A.R. is purely a shooter for the physics end of the spectrum, and does not live up to the hype of the elements conatined in it's very weak story. Had they pursed more intricate and detailed aspects like the now ghost having been used in life as subjects for experimental purposes in suspened animation devices for space travel (which is what the spheres tend to look like), or vessels capable of traveling other dimensions, along with some real hands on missions pursing their investigation and destruction, I'd have been much more immersed in the gameplay.

Instead they left you countless phone messages with a vague way of describing some kind of high tech genetic/technological weapons experiments, with no real way of resolving it in detail, other than blowing up the place. You don't even get to find out much from Harlan Wade, then when you come across Fettle, it's one easy pop to the head with the pistol, and the rest of the game is a foo foo, shooting gallery arcade against one shot-one kill ghosts, the only challenge of which is being able to react quickly, step back, enable flashlight, and focus on each one.

This is clearly a game that has too easy an ending, like HL2, though not as spectacular a story, and not nearly as rich with map variety. I also found it was not nearly as scarey as it is touted to be, and many if not most of the crawlways are not placed well, except for those used to turn off power to turrets, etc.

There are many places where I fought a battle, entered a crawl space after shooting a lock, thinking, wow, let me try that again to see if I can attack from a surprise position, or even sneak by. In most cases though, you end up being spotted before you can get to the locked gate, which is loacted at the wrong (enemy) end of the crawlway anyway, making alternate routes unviable.

This only aggravates the lack of map variety further, but despite these things, FEAR has enough immersive gameplay and effects to make it an above average shooter. I would have rated it more like 80%, rather than the 90% average it received, but I also think HL2 does not live up to it's 95-100% rating, more like 90%.

I'm a tough critic, granted, and some might think go overboard with it, but when I see some great things in a game, I think of what parts of it keep it from being REALLY great.

I have a feeling five years down the road, the HL2 story will still be talked about with reverence and intrigue. At that point in time we very well may look back on all the "little girl" stories and say, oh yeah, that use to be creepy and scary, but what was the point?

Perhaps though the real appeal of the HL2 story is merely the future-society-out-of-control/police-state/aliens-invading stuff that's always sold well in sci fi books and movies, but it takes some skill to put it all together well. There are also many elements of HL2 that are very unique and creative, despite the rehashed subject matter.