F.E.A.R.

The twisting corridors are merely deceptive coverage from the danger lurking around every corner. 

Scan left, scan right, and don’t forget to look up to the second floor in the foyers the open up unexpectedly. The enemy could be up there.

The radio crackles – “Man down!” The sound of gunfire, distant at first but drawing steadily nearer, lets you know that you don’t have far to look to find the battle – it’s coming to you.

Sierra/VUG has released a multiplayer beta for F.E.A.R.  The test in place is rather simplistic in design, and game types are rather standard for the shooter format. The PC title utilizes the GameSpy matching network. The game modes include deathmatch, elimination, SlowMo deathmatch, team SlowMo deathmatch, team deathmatch, and team elimination with up to eight players participating. The arenas are an office, construction site and the docks. There are seven initial weapons to choose from – dual pistols, submachine gun, shotgun, assault rifle, nailgun, semi-automatic rifle and plasma weapon. You can also pick up a missile launcher, and a battle cannon

F.E.A.R. stands for First Encounter Assault Recon but in the multiplayer it is very much head-to-head competition. And, of course, the parameters can be set up for friendly fire. During the initial combat, the trigger finger was a little itchy and the shadow that popped out from around the corner, dropped with a machinegun burst to the upper body and head, turned out to be a team member (sorry about that).

The environments are also reactive to some extent. You can blast out windows and leave bullet scoring on the floors. The battles can rage under a time limit, with teams and individuals racking up kills to determine the winner.

While the action was extremely fast paced, some of the game’s requirements also were highly evident.

The multiplayer beta was first pulled up on a machine with a P4 2.26 GHz processor, Nvidia GeForce Ultra FX 5200 card, cable connectivity and 768 megs of RAM. The game was very laggy, and movement was – at times – reduced to a crawl. But use the same connectivity on a machine with a P4 3.4 GHz processor, Nvidia 6800 card and 1 gig of RAM, and the game cruised. The action was smooth and the pacing produced an adrenaline rush.

The game’s graphics also employ dynamic lighting and shadows, which means that you have to be aware of your positioning at all times least you throw a shadow out there to give your positioning away. 

The control scheme is easy to learn and players can hop into these battles quickly.

While the multiplayer really does not deviate much from the norm for these types of games, it is apparent that the action is fast-paced and intuitive, as well as highly entertaining.