If you've already played F.E.A.R. for the PC, then you know what's in store for you on this console debut for the franchise. First-person shooter fans currently enjoying what the Xbox 360 has to offer should consider F.E.A.R. for a variety of reasons. After all, this isn't just another tech demo turned game like the many that saturate the shooter market. Instead, it's a downright frightening single-player experience that'll keep you on the edge of your seat and playing with the lights on, just in time for some post-Halloween fright.

The single-player campaign is F.E.A.R.'s most satisfying feature, and the real reason why every Xbox 360 owner should play this game. The story places you as a special operative, the new guy in an elite force of field soldiers that tackle threats of a paranormal nature. The exact nature of this particular situation is best left undisclosed, but be assured that you'll more often than not find yourself to be the last survivor of your group, facing swarms of highly trained soldiers that will challenge everything you've come to know while playing other first-person shooters. These soldiers are in fact psychically linked by one Paxton Fettel, a man you will grow to be incredibly frightened of as the game plays on.

The intelligent AI will challenge anyone who chooses the appropriate difficulty level. Enemy soldiers in the game will hear your footsteps, work as a team, and pinpoint your location, making full use of that information. Thinking I could outsmart one squad, I ducked behind a pipe and was preparing to use the game's slow-motion system to duck out and unleash a hail of bullets. Just before popping out from behind cover, I heard "He's behind the pipe!" over the comm system and just freaked out, staring at the pipe like a sucker as I was soon flanked, and flushed out of my cover by an incoming grenade. It's moments like these that really make you appreciate the strides that Monolith has made in enemy AI. It's just too bad that these clone soldiers are just about the only enemy you'll face in the game, with a few noteworthy and exciting exceptions.


You're described as having reflexes that are off the charts, and this manifests itself during the game as the ability to enter a slow-motion mode, allowing you to pull off superhuman assaults and escape otherwise deadly situations. The slow motion mode turns a lot of the firefights into visual spectacles, as blood spray will hang in midair, bullets will deform the air on their way towards a target, and enemies will contort themselves into amusing positions as they take a headshot. The robust melee combat is particularly fun when used in conjunction with slo-mo. There's little more satisfying than setting your guns aside as you sneak up on a patrolling soldier, activating slo-mo, and then literally kicking his skull in with a well-timed jump kick. This will admittedly be harder to pull off in the ultra-fast-paced multiplayer experience, of course.

One nagging issue is the cumbersome set of controls, and the difficulty you may have with picking up objects in the field, including health kits and new weapons. It's somewhat annoying to have to pan your reticle onscreen slowly over a weapon until you get the option to swap out. To counter this, you can set your weapons up in a preferred list, and it will auto swap-out a lower-tier weapon when you walk over a better option, but this doesn't take situation or ammo into consideration.