Oh man, I'm looking very much forward to F.E.A.R.!! I've played the demo at a friend's house, and wow! Great atmosphere, superb graphics and cool frags! And spooky, spooky shit...that's what I like. And that AI! man, they really screwed me over badly a time or two-three there.

Now the demo is one thing, but I've been reading a hands-on preview by my gaming mag and the shit they describe is just awesome, especially with the little girl in the red dress. It's like a horror movie with you in the lead, you already get that feeling from the intro in the demo eh. Basically their conclusion is: you're stuck between the choices playing on to get to the bottom of the story or shutting down the pc and crawling in a corner shaking. I like that.

I wish I could scan in parts of the hands-on preview for you Derf, but i don't assume you learned Dutch by now. As for the breathing...no effect afaik. When your comm device and HUD (health and armor) are flickering it means there's heavy paranormal activity going on tho, if that helps. So you can get ready for the worst.

I'm getting this game, for sure. The MP mode looks kinda primitive, but pff...SP still ownz u. F.E.A.R. for teh win!

I played the FEAR demo recently too. I have mixed emotions, though.

Graphics: good. A bit dark, but certainly nice.
Amibance: great. I love when you're in the hallway. That was excellent.
Level design: small, tight spces, claustrophic layouts that make little architectural sense...that's what I got from the demo. IE, contrived. So a negative there.
AI: Nice. I love how they dive through stuff. But how come I can't dive through stuff too? Or did I miss the button?
Controls: crap. Maybe if I played it some more, I'd dig it, but the controls handled like ass. They changed just enough (and left just enough the same) that I regularly hit the wrong button to do stuff. I typically play games with the default key layour (with maybe one or two changes) because most game designers get it right, or at least close enough. In this case, it was off by enough that it irritated me.

So...I'll probably get it. And I'll probably spend 30 minutes customizing the controls until they stop pissing me off.

I always switch controls. FOr example, in FEAR, they had SHIFT as "aim" and right-click as "melee". Im used to the CoD melee attacking, so i switched those two.

I didnt think the AI was particularly excellent. They often failed to see me when i was up close. When I shoot them while theyre jumping over obstacles, they dont react to the shot, until they land on the floor. I think thats more of an animation issue. Also, i was able to pick off a soldier easily, he knew i was there, but could do nothing about it.

[quote=Rinox] arm-to-arm moves. [/quote]

just noticed this. And Ox wonders why he has trouble passing his master's level English courses.

I'm not so excited about FEAR. I figure BnW2 will come out about the time I get tired of BF2 (unless BF2 really holds me), and that should keep me busy for awhile. If I get bored with all my games prior to the star wars RTS and/or oblivion, I may have to get FEAR to plug the hole.

I almost hate buying SP FPS games now. I mean, I drop $50 and I'm lucky if it fills a week before I'm done and uninstall it. It just doesn't seem worth it when San Andreas kept me SP-engaged for several months.

I never really got into Quake either. The only instance is that years ago at secondary school, some kid managed to install Q2 on the school network. So sometimes at lunch we would all go to the computer room and have a huge secret-Q2 LAN party. That is, when we didnt play football.