I'm playing F.E.A.R. now. It's spooky and cool looking. But it is the

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

system resource hog of ALL TIME. I have a high end system and if I go high, high settings it will still slideshow a bit at times.

It's pretty fun but starting to get repetitive. Do they ever reveal any more of the plot, for heaven's sake? Okay, okay. There's a spooky little girl stolen out of "Ringu". And there's the evil vampire looking dude I've got to find and neutralize. And I've got to fight squad after squad of mysterious enemy soldiers in room after room of warehouse/factory after warehouse/factory. Got it.

Even though this game is pretty cool, I'm still rating Far Cry above it and Half Life 2 (which I'm part way through also). Far Cry is just over all more fun (to me) to play, even replaying levels, than playing these other 2 the first time. Hard to say exactly why, just the feel of the game most of all...

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

1. Keep going...

Little by little, the plot is revealed, and it's a bit of a shock at the end.
The ending is sooooooo worth it.
And I just love toggling reflex, then clearing a room of 4 or 5 of those clone mercs, finishing the last one before the first body hits the floor.

The atmosphere is very well done, although a bit dark. And I had to tone down the graphics just a bit too.

At least we finally find out what HARM stands for. (No One Lives Forever fans will get this)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. Is there any info on the relative damages of the weapons? For instance,

I get pistol ammo often but I don't know if there's any reason to ever carry this once the other weapons are available, I would if I knew it had decent damage.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

4. I don't know...

For some reason, dual pistols (why do all these games love peopel wielding two pistols?) is rather effective
when you're in Reflex mode. Low recoil and you can easily get headshots in a crowded room.
The only reason I'd carry a pistol is because later in the game, ammo would be scarce for some other weapons, like that
nail-gun type...I don't remember the name, but it drives these large metal spikes into your target, pinning them to the walls.

On edit: here's a link to Gamespot's guide for the game: www.gamespot.com/features/6136085/p-2.html

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. I think it dates back to the cool slo-mo fight sequences in John Woo films

which he started doing in his Hong Kong Chinese films, and continued with once he started making big budget U.S. features.

A signature "John Woo" scene would have the hero, jumping horizontally through the air, in slo-mo, wielding dual 9mm's or whatever, blasting bad guys all over the place.

So he was a big influence on people like Quentin Tarantino, and those Matrix guys, and then in games I think Max Payne was the first to pick up on this kind of action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woo

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

8. Okay I'm about 2/3 of the way through now. Some comments:

Very cool visuals, and the atmospheric spooky stuff is pretty well done.

Little to no variety of scenery. Would it have killed them to have some setting other than the same endless office building/factory scenery, in the dark? Somehow it doesn't seem as monotonously dark as in DOOM3 though.

I would have liked to have some kind of stealth kill weapon, but I realize the game is more about heavy duty combat. The soldiers are always in small squads so you really wouldn't get a chance for a "quiet kill" not alerting others I guess.

Currently my standard equip includes the shotgun, the green assault rifle (whatever it's called, the more advanced, longer barreled one), and the particle/sniper weapon.

I virtually never use the sniper weapon unless in a real bind or against the few "boss" type things that show up, but I just have it in case of emergencies, the assault rifle seems pretty good for just about anything else, and the shotgun for when you're inside offices, stairwells, and other close quarters.

The coolest visual effect is the "warping of the air" with grenade explosions and shotgun blasts.

I'm escorting the girl to the roof. She reminds me a bit of Cameron Diaz.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

10. Okay, just finished. Fun game. I still had more fun with Far Cry though,

and I don't have too much drive to replay FEAR except maybe to goof around with some of the weapons I didn't use very much like pistols, melee, and the "penetrator" (spike gun).

So much of the game is spent in "reflex" (slomo) mode that I don't know what it would be like playing multiplayer without constant access to this.

I feel that the much touted A.I. of the soldiers is overrated. If you do things like duck back into a room, the soldiers rarely charge you in there despite having the numbers, and don't seem to like to come through doors.. I feel that if they had really good A.I., if they saw you pinned in a corner or hallway (which is frequently how the firefights start), one squad member should pin you with suppressive fire while the others flank you, or successively toss grenades into your position while they move in. The one thing they DID do well was use grenades sometimes, but not very consistently. Far Cry mercenaries did a much better job flanking you and were more aggressive about advancing on your position.

Also the placement of the soldiers was too predictable. They were rarely ever present in the many stairwells, so it took some of the tension away, since you pretty much knew you didn't have to fight in those areas. I felt there should have been more soldiers in the many offices you had to go through. You pretty much knew you would only encounter soldiers in the larger open areas, so that made it a bit too predictable.

The visual effects, especially the slomo firefights, and the "warped air" explosion effects, are among the most impressive I've yet seen.

On edit: Oh, and the thing with all the ghosts is annoying as all hell. As well as the sentry guns, and the flying drones. I hated flying drones in HL2 and I hated them here too, LOL.

[The Revolution]

2. F.E.A.R. is a lot of fun

I played though it about a month ago. You do learn more about the plot as the game progresses. You'll probably be able to piece the details together before the very end though :)

[Hatalles]

6. How IS the plot?

Been thinking about buying this game for a while now... have picked it up and put it back down a handful of times now. My favorite single-player games are the kind with a great story and engaging characters. I know this is an FPS, so I'm not expecting it as much...

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

7. What FPS if any would qualify as "great story/engaging chars" to you?

[Hatalles]

9. Good question.

Hehe.

I guess that's the kind of FPS I'm still waiting for.

Still, I did enjoy the single-player Half-Life 2 just as much as the mods... but the reason for that may have been because of its immersiveness. I don't know... it was more than just a shoot-'em-up. I can't stand gorey FPS like Doom...

[benEzra]

11. I thought Halo had a good story...

my wife actually played through Halo and Halo 2 co-op with me, not because she likes FPS games so much, but because she got hooked by the storyline and wanted to see the rest of it. Bungie blew the ending of H2, though (reportedly didn't have time to finish the last level, so they saved the ending for Halo 3, I guess...)

[The Revolution]

12. It's pretty good.

For an FPS game. You're not going to get something really in depth like you would with an RPG though. Overall, I would rate the plot better than Doom 3, but not as good as HL2. There really aren't that many characters, and the ones that are there don't hang around very long.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

13. It's not bad.. I think it's more about the scary atmosphere, than the

specifics of the story.

I don't think the story behind most FPS is particularly great. The main thing is generally, how does it feel to move and fight as the character?

The original DOOM had the simplest story. Corporation experiments open doorway, aliens and demons from another dimension cross the "gateway" into our world. Nobel or Pulitzer material it's not. But the game was great.

As much adulation as the original Half Life gets (and it IS a great game), the story is kinda muddled. More interdimensional gateways allowing aliens from Xen to come, and a spooky government/corporate conspiracy to keep things quiet. Complete with a white male executive/government conspirator figure just like the "cigarette smoking man" from the X-files. And the final resolution of THAT story is no more clear than the confused conspiracy story line of the X-files. Though I'm not through with HL2, I will admit the story seems stronger there so far, with nice in-game cinematics.

At least Far Cry took a tongue in cheek approach to its hokey story, which I appreciated.

Come to think of it, I think No One Lives Forever actually had one of the better stories of shooters.

WWII shooters have a ready made story line, and it's a classic. So much the better if they can involve a squad you can care about.

I never played Deus Ex or System Shock or Hitman, so I can't comment on those.

Story line in Thief was pretty good. I liked that main character.

[Occulus]

14. The end of HL2 is open

the story isn't over with the end of the game.