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FEAR 2: Project Origin
Instead of blending together all of these delicious flavors, men turned inside-out, science corrupted by greed, the demonic rage of a woman stripped of her humanity, the game seems to try desperately to keep them all compartmentalized. The dramatic cutscenes stay (more or less) non-interactive, something not even the original did, the gore lives in its own part of the levels like they're there to keep the soldiers from spending too much time in the bathroom, the Alma-quick-time events never overlap with combat, and the horrifying visions never cross over into anything other than cutscenes. And they want to so badly! It's like eating a sandwich in order by ingredient. Of course, it'd be a corpse sandwich, with mayo and bile. Wait, that works. It's like eating a bowl of bile when there's a mouth-watering corpse just begging for you to eat it. See, works great.
The game's intro sequence gets you used to fighting, then it gets you used to jumping, then there's jumping and fighting, then there's jumping, fighting, sniping, then becoming immortal, and then not giving a shit, then it's over. Eventually, it becomes the tactical shooter it is and the fear doesn't keep you suspended. At last, we get to what this game has to offer: it's a pretty good tactical shooter, although it's maybe been done better before, the combat is completely satisfying, to the point where I know that I can melee through their numbers but really enjoy lobbing that perfectly-cooked grenade right in the middle of the crowd. It does seem a bit easy since, even in someone's luxury suite, you find grenades and armor, but the game makes up for that with really unique fight locations. While it could get by with your standard textures from a blood-stained military industrial complex, the level design takes you through some really unique places that make the world stand out. It's got that clean/ dirty future down pat, and mixes it up with gore and holocaust. It's not just that, but the levels themselves are nuanced and intricate, and most of the fighting is set up to take advantage of the areas, rather than just constantly pummeling you with enemies in a line.     The AI isn't half-bad, either, you see the soldiers take cover and use their environment, covering each other's flanks, and acting pretty damn convinced that you don't already have so many kills under your belt that there's nothing left to stamp. Combat changes with each venue and so do the weapons, so if you like shooting games, the ride this game takes you on is fun and easy on the eyes. That ride doesn't steer or anything. The game has a narrative and pushes you through it. It's pretty easy to push yourself through it, again, who would want to deliberately subject themselves to horror when you can charge past it and come out fine? Playing through each subsection of the game could be tedious, avoiding the freakouts, looking for the next cool fight or cool gun, but imagining that I was Serious Sam in Bizarro World was what made it fun for me. There were some slipups that the developers probably didn't intend, including auto-save crashes (although that only happened twice). If I would pick one immersion-breaker, that's it. Probably not the weird lighting artifacts, those can just be relegated to "this place is psycho." I can't really argue with auto-saving when I'm really throwing myself into a game. I don't ever remember to stop thinking about what's moving behind that highly suspicious organic potted plant long enough to save unless I've just satisfactorily dispatched a wave of guys in killsuits. But the game staggers at save points like it's been drinking so I can't say that's much of an improvement--it both sets up and breaks the tension. It's also very frequent, which makes the game easy, even when it's not set to be. Some of the dialogue is just outrageous, which, since laughing at everything was getting me through the game in record time, it honestly caused me to belt a few out. The characters aren't just stereotypical, they're iconic. I really expected to meet Steve Buscemi and Ice-T at some point.    
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