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FEAR 2 Project Origin Review

Previous F.E.A.R games have been quite repetitive in their environments and are famous for having long corridors with samey rooms and not much variation in between. So I approached this game with the feeling it would be more of the same. How wrong was I? The developer Monolith has given us a game which has a big variation in the environments and also a different style to some of the levels. Sure there is still some corridor fighting, but it is no longer just an office block with countless computer rooms all that look the same.

Some examples of the scenes you will encounter are a school, a hospital, a railway station, and the scene of a plane crash in a town. Hospitals, schools and train stations have been done to death in games and Monolith will lose a little bit for lack of imagination, however they have done the levels with such flair and detail that it would be rude of me to mark them down especially given the brilliance of some of the open levels in the game which were so much fun. In fact all of the game was fun and it is very sad that I have now finished the game as I did not want it to end.

In addition to the locales mentioned above, there are also a couple of levels where you step inside a giant mech-suit with rocket laucnhers and just stampede through the town destroying everything. You can get out of the suit at any time to gather ammo and health left behind or indeed you can do those sections without the suits but they might be quite hard to complete. There are also several sections where you use a gun turret to kill everything in sight.

One of my favourite bits of the game is where you are chasing after a spirit that keeps bringing up soldiers like puppets on string. Annoyingly fun stuff.

As with all F.E.A.R games before it, the AI in the game is brilliant and I don’t know of any game I have played yet which can surpass it. The AI will run for cover properly, they will upturn furniture to provide cover and they will crawl through spaces to get to you. They are always moving and running from cover to cover so it is sometimes diffcult to pin them down. This is where the slow motion (press Y) comes in handy. I rarely used it, however if you have a big firefight with lots of enemy moving at you at once you can press Y to slow things down and have more time to aim.

“Alma” the ghostly child returns but is older now and is a young woman and is there to provide you with the scary bits of the game. Games do not usually scare me, but if you are of a nervous disposition you might find it scary yourself. For me, the scary parts concentrated the mind and sometimes I was concentrating so much on the ghostly goings on I could hear myself breathing. In comparison to the older games, this has more weird spooky things happening than before so if you liked the previous games then this is a winner.

There is one very important thing you need to know. The demo is a slicing up of various little sections of the game. It is not a set level but little pieces of most of the levels. Personally I think because of this, it does not give the game justice as the demo is a disjointed mess with the action going from one area to another very quickly. So please do yourself a favour and do not judge this game on the demo alone, it is there to give tasters of the various action within the game but the retail version of the game is very different.

Ammo and health is aplenty on easy mode and you could get by without dying if dying is your frustration. The game took me approximately 10-12 hours to complete.

Graphically, the game is highly detailed and looks every part a current generation game. It has some amazing effects especially when it switches to weird spooky mode. The sound effects are equally as awesome and you would definitely want your speakers turned up – children and neighbours permitting.

I urge everyone to play this game. Hide behind your sofa with your Dr Who Collection if you wish, but you must play this game. Beg or borrow if you must, or if you cannot afford it now, wait until it is a little bit cheaper, but in my uneducated opinion you would be doing yourself a dis-service if you did not play this game sooner or later.

This game is amazing and is one of the best games I have played in a few years and it is clear that Monolith have taken the time to deliver an experience that is well detailed and most of all, fun to play.

EXCELLENT/10

F.E.A.R 2 Project Origin is out now in stores on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

Find more FEAR 2 reviews at GameRankings and TestFreaks.

Vista on Advent 4213 Netbook

So I have my shiny new netbook but it comes preinstalled with Windows XP.  Having used Vista since beta versions and got used to it’s features and way of working, I felt it was a backwards step to go back to XP and not have those extras.

First of all I installed the Vista compatibility wizard program to see if the netbook would be capable in theory of running Vista and thankfully everything passed the test.  Next I had to decide which Vista version I wanted to buy.  I didn’t think I would need all the features of Vista Home so I went for the cheaper option and purchased Vista Basic Upgrade from the Microsoft online store as it was quite a bit cheaper than the Home Premium version.

I downloaded all the files and ran the installation from the XP desktop.  It got to the expanding of files part and just threw me out with an error that it could not overwrite the boot – without the ability to overwrite the boot it would not be able to install it no matter how many times you re-try.

I searched for hours online and was even on the phone to Microsoft support for nearly an hour trying to get it to install but no joy.  That is, until while searching I happened across a forum with a topic dealing with this exact problem.

http://www.4winmobile.com/forums/netbook/ – that is the forum you want, check the sticky at the top for the Vista upgrade guide.

The problem only exists if you are doing an upgrade from the XP desktop, so if you are doing a clean install with an upgrade or full version booting from the disc this problem should not apply to you.  The problem is the boot folder hidden within XP.  This tells the computer how to boot the machine into XP.  The way to complete the upgrade is to delete or rename the folder into something else so the installation thinks it is not there.  But be warned, if you delete the folder you will not be able to reboot the machine if the installation does not work.  So I renamed mine so it was still there if I needed it.

The folder is located in the root of the C:\ drive.  Go to C:\ and then go to tools – folder options – click on the view tab.  Place a tick in “show hidden files and folders” and untick “hide protected system files” – this will ensure that you can see the boot folder and can rename it to something else.

Once I renamed the folder and restarted the upgrade it went all smoothly without a hitch at all and soon enough Vista was installed on the machine.  After installation everything worked as normal.  All the hotkeys worked and the Avantquest connection manager for the sim card worked fine.  I had to get a few driver updates but that is to be expected. The machine is very speedy and I have had no problems whatsoever.

For those who like numbers, my Windows Experience Score is 2.7 It is really only let down by its “gaming graphics” which really is not an issue as netbooks are most definitely not gaming machines.

Experience Score

Experience Score

Brothers In Arms Hells Highway

Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway has been receiving fairly good reviews across the board and I was eager to play this game as I have such a love of World War 2 games.  It is a squad based tactical shooter which I am not usually keen on though.  The controls are quite intimidating at first and it is confusing to start off with how to use them effectively, but with perseverance I found that they were really easy to use and I could use the options to good effect. 

It is not a short game by any means, I suppose it took me between 12-14 hours which is an average length game and 3 times the pitiful length of Call of Duty 4. 

The game is a little buggy in places and occasionally members of my team would get stuck in scenery but if you progress they will come running forward.  The AI is very strong and you must use cover properly or face a quick death.  Your team mates will even shout at you to get to cover if you are not doing it properly. There are some sections where the AI are really hard to break through and one level very near the end took me many attempts to complete.  It is vital you use suppressing fire from the front with one or two teams and flank them from the left or right so they are unsuspecting.  Oddly, the game went from easy to hard to easy to hard and so on throughout the game, not a continual increase in difficulty.  The tank sections were really easy though and the tank guns made easy work of the enemy. 

Visually the game looks good but is not a stunner with the likes of Call of Duty 4 or Bioshock for example.  There’s the odd clipping against scenery and occasional framerate dips but on the whole it is good, but not awesome.  Graphics in the cutscenes looked fantastic though and the models of soldiers were impressive.

The best part of the game though has to be the storyline.  WW2 shooters have never had the best storylines to accompany the games but this story was very interesting and I was compelled to watch the cutscenes throughout – something which I rarely do. 

Despite a few bugs here and there and the spikes of difficulty, I have thoroughly enjoyed this game and I would recommend fans of WW2 games to play it.

GREAT/10