F.E.A.R for free

[Friend_Bear]

http://www.joinfear.com/us/

This will be interesting!

[Mochan]

I think this is a smart move, actually. People who would have bought Fear, would have already bought it. This move on the other doesn't really cost the company anything, and instead is a giant PR and marketing move.

People who didn't buy FEAR before now get to get their hands wet, and may end up wanting to play the singleplayer portion and buying it eventually after getting a taste of the multiplayer.

Moreover, it generates free massive advertising for FEAR 2, and we all know FEAR 2 is going to come out later on. This ingrains FEAR into the playing public sort of like how Counterstrike is, creates a strong brand, and makes the sequel so much more anticipated.

And finally, it gives Sierra a lot of goodwill among the gaming public, I mean how can you hate a company that gives you quality freebies?

[DBS]

You know..Fear was one that everyone praised and I did like it but I was never really blown away with it. It is tough to impress in the fps market I think. Even the overhyped Doom 3 left me flat.

[Mochan]

FEAR was a game everyone loved and praised, but I didn't like it much. The cheap scares and thrills were the only thing it had going for me.

FEAR multiplayer is supposed to be real good... but they said FEAR singleplayer was also really good.

[Friend_Bear]

The big question is if they can keep all the cheaters out, I've noticed on pbbans the people banned for cheating in f.e.a.r is slowly creeping up, and next week when fear combat comes out i'm pretty sure a whole new horde of cheats will flock to it. I know you guys hear me rave on about cheaters but they really do $%#$ me off, they ruin great games.

I'm actually playing a kids mmo at the moment, mostly because my wife likes it and begged me to play it, the game is Toontown Online......its actually not a bad online mmo, in fact better than some of the mainstream mmos i've played LOL But the funny thing is, there are still cheaters and hackers not to mention people using fishing bots in it..

[Friend_Bear]

Well its out, and my intial concerns are correct. Within 5 minutes of joining a game, spotted a ton of people using rather obvious wallhacks. Still, I expected it....

[BaneNWN]

Well i had this game since it cameout.Played it for maybe a night shelved it wasnt really impressed with it,then watching it collect dust for the last few months i just had to give it a real shot this time and all i can say is if you play this game with the lights on your not playing it the way it was meant to be played.This is far and away the creepiest game ive ever played,not to mention the game does slow motion better then max payne could ever do it.The special effects are awesome.I was also suprized to find that stealth was actually implemented in the game.Several times ive gotten within 10 ft of my enemy before they realized i was there,sneaking from the back of them ofcourse.The AI is pretty good to they seem to take to the cover or runoff and wait for you to find them.This game is halflife 2 on crackIve also messed with Multiplayer and is good fun its really nothing special but its deffenitley solid.Not as fun as halflife 2 deathmatch but the singleplayer campaign totally kicks hl 2 arse.Yes the levels are repetetive but use your stake gun aim for the head of the enemy standing next to a wall and see what happens.The physics this game has is ridiculous.Once again hl 2 on crack.this is a cross between hl 2 and maxpayne it combines elements in both games and improves upon them.Anyways the free multi is great however i suggest buying a version to play through the sp camapaign.funny i had the game all this time and wasnt expecting this to be that great

[ilnadmy]

I actually just reinstalled FEAR today and played from where I left off like 8 months ago, and I was amazed by the AI. They take cover and actually perform flanking maneuvers, which really impressed me. I was hiding behind a wall shooting at them when I see them go around to the left side of the room. I go around to the left side of the wall and kill one guy, then quickly run back to the right to see two guys heading towards me. I was like ZOMGWTFBBQ!! It was awesome. I killed one guy, the last guy took cover, then I turned on slo-mo, ran towards him, and filled his head with lead.

It's an amazing game. Played some multiplayer, and it's really fast paced. The maps are pretty small though.

[Mochan]

Could never understand why people cheat in Online games. I mean, you're not meeting the people in question so you can't brag about it to them. Well I guess it's similar to why I cheat in singleplayer but I still don't quite get it, might as well just play a singleplayer game.

So ilnadmy, you're now a FEAR fan? :) I feel that if I played this game with a faster, better PC I would have liked it better. I always say framerate is life in FPS, and when your framerates are awful you just can't get into the game as much. A lot of my complaints with this game probably came from how slow it felt.

The corridor shooter-ness of this game was probably there to make the flanking maneuvers of the AI possible. Still made the game feel pretty confined but at least the AI was pretty good, even I will admit that, though I still dusted them off pretty easy. :) People loved the graphics of this game but I said the graphics were one of the most overrated points -- like said a better PC would probably fix the issue.

[BaneNWN]

I play Fear at 1024x768 res and it still looks good to me.I can understand why people might not get into it though.If you get past the repetetive corridors it does have alot to offer.I swear it keeps me on edge the whole time.been a long time since i could say that about any game

[ilnadmy]

Yeah FEAR is amazing. The best thing about it is when you shoot a gun, you actually feel like you're shooting a gun. Your stray bullets take chunks out of the walls, rip cardboard boxes to shreds, and I swear when they hit enemies it's almost like you can see the bullets puncture their armor (it's more an animation thing when they get hit, but still it's amazing). I remember being impressed with it as soon as I started playing it last December. Of course two hours into the game my Alienware broke down (for the first time in a long line of problems to come), and I just never got around to finishing it until now.

Yeah, you definitely need a good computer to appreciate it. I play it at 1024, and some of the graphics features are turned to max, but the stuff like volumetric lighting and all that other fancy stuff is either off or set to low. It still looks amazing though, and while I'm not pushing 60 fps consistenly, it still looks good. I can basically handle anything above 20 fps without it bothering me; as long as the framerate is consistent it's cool. It's when the framerate stutters and changes speeds constantly that it starts to irk me. That said, I average around 40 fps, which is not bad. FEAR is coming out on the PS3, so you can enjoy it on that if you want to get the full experience (now I see why you would switch to consoles if they gave you mouse and keyboard :D)

Multiplayer like I said is fun and frantic, but the one map I played was pretty small. The cool thing is they don't check to see if your CD Key is authentic :D. Although I haven't updated it past installation, since it's like a 600 MB patch, and our ISP has a 15 GB upload/download threshold every month (aren't monopolies great?), so they might have implemented some checks there. In fact, the map was so small that you could run through the entire map and back to your spawn point in less than a minute. Also, the max number of players per server I've seen is 12, but again that might be because I have version 1.00.

[BaneNWN]

Yeah FEAR is amazing. The best thing about it is when you shoot a gun, you actually feel like you're shooting a gun. Your stray bullets take chunks out of the walls, rip cardboard boxes to shreds, and I swear when they hit enemies it's almost like you can see the bullets puncture their armor (it's more an animation thing when they get hit, but still it's amazing). I remember being impressed with it as soon as I started playing it last December. Of course two hours into the game my Alienware broke down (for the first time in a long line of problems to come), and I just never got around to finishing it until now.

Yeah, you definitely need a good computer to appreciate it. I play it at 1024, and some of the graphics features are turned to max, but the stuff like volumetric lighting and all that other fancy stuff is either off or set to low. It still looks amazing though, and while I'm not pushing 60 fps consistenly, it still looks good. I can basically handle anything above 20 fps without it bothering me; as long as the framerate is consistent it's cool. It's when the framerate stutters and changes speeds constantly that it starts to irk me. That said, I average around 40 fps, which is not bad. FEAR is coming out on the PS3, so you can enjoy it on that if you want to get the full experience (now I see why you would switch to consoles if they gave you mouse and keyboard :D)

Multiplayer like I said is fun and frantic, but the one map I played was pretty small. The cool thing is they don't check to see if your CD Key is authentic :D. Although I haven't updated it past installation, since it's like a 600 MB patch, and our ISP has a 15 GB upload/download threshold every month (aren't monopolies great?), so they might have implemented some checks there. In fact, the map was so small that you could run through the entire map and back to your spawn point in less than a minute. Also, the max number of players per server I've seen is 12, but again that might be because I have version 1.00.Ya i see a few 16 player servers but im fully updated.Heck with the little maps ive seen 16 is even overkill.Heck i was on a map with 6 and it felt about right to me anymore would have been overkill imo.this would be a cool game to get a a little group from VGR to have fun with "hint hint" not sure all the game modes it has ive only tried the DM and got my ass handed to me but ya it was still fun.Would be sweet if they could figureout a way to utilize slomotion in an online DM Lol.

[ilnadmy]

There IS slo-mo in multiplayer. There are certain modes where one person picks up a slo-mo powerup and he gets to use it to slow down everyone else. When you kill him, he drops the powerup. Haven't played any of these though, just read about them.

[BaneNWN]

Yep played a slomo DM some wild stuff for sure!!Man if i knew i could get enough people id host this http://fear.filefront.com/file/Coop_Warfare_v05;68502

CO-OP for fear sounds like it would be a blast.Heck everyone the multiplayer is free now so anyone can download it and i can host the CO-OP.Im willing to try some next weekend if anyone wants in.In a sense i hate being a PC gamer right now theres just to much to play.The past 2 years has been crazy with all the good games coming out.

[ilnadmy]

I was looking at their forums, and there seem to be multiple glitches on single-player levels when it comes to co-op (padlocks can't be shot off, certain items block the way forward, elevators don't work, etc...) Seems like it would be a hassle to play single player levels in co-op, but I'm sure there are some fan-created co-op levels that we could use.

I'm in, btw. It seems interesting.

[Mochan]

Lemme download it first....

[ilnadmy]

For some reason I can't play FEAR online today. Something about CD Key validation. Which is weird considering I played the game yesterday.