Fear 2..Um what?

[DreXxiN]

So I haven't played through the first one, but played a good bit of it, and played it quite a bit at lans with friends. Very awesome, creep factor. all the good stuff you want in a scary shooter game, in fact it may have very well lead the way for the genre.
So I take a look into the Playstation Store. OMG FEAR 2! *Instant download*.


...What the fuck.

Ok maybe this will be a very good game on a PC, but was it just extremely horribly optimized for the consoles? If a 360 user has tried this demo, PLEASE reply and tell me whatsup.

I start the game expecting a very good, clean looking, high definition frightful experience, but I load it up and there is the instant fuzzy "Uscaled DVD" quality look, and though it runs in 720p, It looks so damn grainy that anything that should be impressive visual quality in the game is a complete turn off. Through the whole demo the game didn't frighten me at all, and everything seemed very cliche.. "Swinging lights, exploding corpses, little "scary" girls, the guy that goes "I'm going after her!" (that never ends well).

If that wasn't annoying enough, every time it enters a battle sequence, the framerate drops to probably around 10-15. What..the..hell..Yes that is very frightening...frighteningly unplayable, and I probably won't even bother renting this game if the whole game runs half as terrible. And did I forget to mention the random AI? The second I ran up the train to fight the first few soldiers, one of them got confused as I backed away and began running left and right...for at least a full minute...until I shot him..Beautiful

I haven't played the whole thing and really enjoyed FEAR 1 for the little bit I played it (Though I watched my bro play it all the way through) and I hope I'm wrong, but, what the fuck? I really hope EVERYONE in the gaming industry isn't rushing their games to get after the quick buck, because they are going to get bit in the ass later. Discuss.

[SpikeOtacon]

The framerate wasn't bad on the demo for the 360, but the gameplay sure was.

EDIT: oh yeah I didn't play it on a TV with a screen higher than 480p because i'm too lazy to move the Xbox every time a demo comes out.

[DreXxiN]

That's one thing that bugged me the most is the gameplay. The slowdown-time is cool, but it was so sloppy and sluggish that it bothered the piss out of me. The controls just seemed very iffy and uncomfortable (Push the right analog stick in to crouch..Lolwut? I like that to be ZOOM thank you..L2...Not grenade?. Oh THATS zoom..) The worst part is it's not even customizable. *sigh* Not to mention switching between weapons and type of grenades is very aggravating.

[afterthoughtz]

Sooo, worth downloading or not?

[DreXxiN]

It's free, so I can't say that it isn't, and since I'm just one opinion you shouldn't take my own, but you could try it and see for yourself and see if you have similar issues. This is just my opinion; I'm not particularly impressed.

[afterthoughtz]

Hmmm, i'll try it out sometime later and let ya know
Forgot demos was free wtf lol

[CelestialBlade]

All I've heard about the 360 one is gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. I've never played either FEAR myself but bad gameplay kills a game entirely, as far as I'm concerned.

[gorefiend]

I'm gonna get it for pc. =]

THen it'll rule.

[DreXxiN]

It always does on PC xD. Perhaps I'll do the same :P

[afterthoughtz]

All I've heard about the 360 one is gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. I've never played either FEAR myself but bad gameplay kills a game entirely, as far as I'm concerned.I agree 100%, which is why some older games, even tho insuperior to todays games are still being played because they are fun, not because their awsome graphics

[Rust]

If anything, the first FEAR game (as well as Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate) was extremely poorly optimized for PC.
I have a friend who can run Fallout 3 and BioShock at max settings no problem, but still got terrible slowdowns in some parts of Perseus Mandate, and nothing justifies those. The graphics aren't THAT great compared to the two previous mentioned games, so yeah.

Still, it was a very enjoyable game. But for some reason, the sequel doesn't seem very appealing to me. I kinda miss Raynes from Perseus Mandate ; this guy was so badass.
(Well, Chen too, 'till he miserably died. ;-; )

[amtalx]

The game uses a film grain filter. That's what the fuzzy look is. Mass Effect used it too. I think they use it to give the feeling that you are looking through the display on your helmet. I'm not a big fan of film grain, but hopefully there will be a console command/hack to disable it.

There have been wide reports of hitching during gameplay on PC, like it was auto-saving, but not much about low framerates. I was running in 1680x1050 with max details and 4x AA and still getting 60+ FPS during firefights.

[DreXxiN]

So yes, definitely something I'll be getting for my PC, just sounds like a poorly ported PC game to the consoles.

[amtalx]

Oddly enough it was built with consoles in mind. On PC, the 16:10 resolutions display in 16:9 with letterbox bars.

[Nitro Vordex]

letterbox bars.

LETTERBOX BARS
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[Blitzkommando]

The hitching is because they combined a bunch of different areas of the game together, which all use different resources, so it has to load constantly. It happens on both demos and happened with the original FEAR demo as well from the same issue. So, if FEAR is any indication, it shouldn't happen in the final version because it won't be trying to load resources from all different points of the game.

That said, I figure I'll get it for PC as I don't have a 360 and can't play FPS games with controllers anyway.

[amtalx]

A bit of an old topic...but the film grain effect that people were complaining about isn't really used in the full game. Its used for the first level and then goes away for good. I'm on Interval 05 and I haven't seen it since the very beginning of the game. Good thing too because its actually a very pretty game.