Here's a move I pull in most gunfights in Trepang2: slidekick into an enemy, grab them out of mid-air, briefly hold them in front of me as a human shield, only to pull the pin on their vest's grenade and hurl them into a group of their pals, who do try to scatter before this meaty bomb bursts but sadly forget that they also need to avoid me and my shotgun. Often this is all in slow-motion. Trepang2 is unashamedly aiming to be a new F.E.A.R. and does a pretty great job of it for a game made by a core team of only four people (plus external artists and such). Give me a shotgun, a slidekick, and slo-mo, and I'm happy.
]]>Every month I throw half a dozen broken shovels at the sleeping forms lying around the RPS treehouse floor. I demand they dig a new hole for the monthly RPS Time Capsule of games we'd like to save from a certain year, and usually it isn't a problem. This time, however, the staff complained a lot about the year choice: it's 2005, baby, and they struggled. I'm okay with it though, because we ended up with a lot of cool abandonware and interesting choices I couldn't have predicted. Especially because, since I got to the Time Capsule first, I got to stuff in the most obvious choice.
]]>FPS games are a classic PC gaming staple, and whether you've been playing them since the 90s or started your journey more recently with the boom in battle royales, there are plenty to choose from when it comes to the all-time greats. To help you narrow down what to play next, we've created this list of the best FPS games to play right now, from single-player epics to team-based shooters you can play with mates. Heck, some don't even necessarily have guns in them at all, and you may find the odd boomerang or bow in here too.
]]>The shadows on the wall tell me they’re coming. Two of them, both with assault rifles swinging idly at their hips. If I’m quick enough, I’m sure I can take them both out in one go. I peek out of cover as they round the corner, and let my stake gun sing, pinning the first enemy to the wall with 10mm steel projectiles. But at the sound of gunfire the other one legs it back the way he came, hunkers down in cover, and yells for reinforcements down his radio.
This five-second episode tells you a lot about the attention to detail in F.E.A.R., a 12-year-old game with AI that puts many modern-day shooters to shame. Its army of clone soldiers feel smarter than any enemy I’ve faced in an FPS since, and remain razor-sharp to this day.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I’m still annoyed at F.E.A.R. 2. The first F.E.A.R probably has the best shotgun in any game ever. It’s a masterpiece of virtual ballistics, a simple black tube that, when fired, has the force of a punch from Mars himself. All F.E.A.R 2 had to do was carry it over exactly as it was. Instead, Monolith redesigned it and made it utter dogshit. It’s an absolute travesty and I demand this be acknowledged.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
F.E.A.R. may not be the best first-person shooter of all time but it has the best shooting of any first-person game.
]]>F.E.A.R. Online's open beta test begins on October 7th, ahead of full launch on the 17th, and signups are now active. Go! Run! Register! It's free!
Or perhaps not. The original F.E.A.R. takes place almost entirely in a succession of rather ordinary office buildings but that doesn't matter because the combat is absolutely splendid. Bullets have tremendous impact and slow motion slides across debris-strewn rooms, ending in a chunky boot to the face, are like a John Woo shoot-out with weighty momentum in place of balletic grace. Thanks to a hard-working community, the multiplayer component is still available to play and I'm not sure how F.E.A.R.O. intends to lure people into its own take on the series' combat and...gulp...lore.
]]>Once upon a time Monolith made the candy/1970s-colored No One Lives Forever, but then the years passed and the colors drained away. The result? F.E.A.R., which traded NOLF's yuck-yuck-yucks for some spooky, splattery "oh... yucks." Flash forward to today: all of the color is gone, with six Monolith vets producing the gloomily black-and-white Betrayer. It's got scares in spades and thick cobwebs of dread lingering in every corner of its 1604 Roanoke colony setting, but is it any good? Now you can find out. Launch trailer below.
]]>Update: A second conversation with Craig Hubbard revealed a few more details, so I've added them where appropriate. The section 'Mergers And Executions' now talks more about cut villain Conrad Krige and the game's improbable original opening (a car chase), while a new section on its famous radio chatter has been added to the end.
In this second of three conversations with the Monolith veterans at Blackpowder Games, whose debut Betrayer is kind of available now, it's time to look at FEAR: First Encounter Assault Recon. Well, it is if you do things backwards.
]]>I awake at 6 am, fully-clothed, drool-covered hands on drool-covered laptop keyboard, nonsense half-sentences on the screen. I brush the sleeping cat off my feet, I rub my agonisingly cricked neck, and I cursecursecurse my decision to go drinking with Kieron and his comics friends rather than cook myself a sensible supper. I also realise I am at least six hours late for Thursday's posts on RPS. I must do them now! But about what? I scour my boozy dreams for inspiration. One in which a PR agency was circulating an image of Felicia Day with a badly Photoshopped-on beard and claiming it was their new hiring, Dave. Something about birds fighting. No, I can't tell you that one. Ah yes, F.E.A.R 3. I actually dreamed about sodding F.E.A.R. 3.
]]>Fans of increasingly unadventurous corridor shooters, rejoice! It appears Monolith's horror-FPS F.E.A.R. is due another sequel, and it is to be known as Effthreearrr. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? I have a dream. The dream is that Effthreearr and Thifourf are released on the same day, and the resulting shop displays look so ridiculous that no publisher ever attempts to bring about game titles which look like a rich idiot's personalised numberplate again.
]]>A new Project Origin trailer appears, in what appears to be a series attempting to put us off the game as much as possible. This time with 34 seconds of company logos!
]]>While we've previously talked about how weren't exactly impressed with the name they settled on - though we do like the list of close-but-no-cigars, including the immortal Little Miss Bloodshine - the actual whole story behind the change itself remains perhaps the most fascinating of recent times. Publisher keeping the name while the Developer keeps the engine has happened before, of course (with the separate directions the name and the game of Championship Manager went when Sports Interactive and Eidos split), but in this case it seems even more startling.
That the whole game is working under a new name doesn't seem as shocking when it's such a pure-mechanic thing as in the now-Football Manager. It's just a bunch of numbers. The name isn't a character. But Project Origin is just... F.E.A.R. 2, in any real way we can measure. It's got all the iconic elements of the first game, including the bloody girl they stuck on the bloody box.
]]>As if the terrible name wasn't enough, the Perseus Mandate demo turns out to be a shambolic outing for the ailing FEAR series. You can download the 734.82MB sampler from here. Once installed and playing, you'll probably find yourself saying: "woooOOOooo" in that sarcastic way that you do when things just aren't scary.
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