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The levels are quite large, repetitive, and bland. You tire quickly of the office, construction and industrial themes that are used, and this is compounded with the lack of convincing textures. However the level of interaction you have with your environment in very impressive. You can knock containers off shelves, see bullet holes in walls, kick objects along the floor, break windows, etc. The only issue with this is that the noise associated with objects moving doesn’t appear to accurately represent the degree of movement of the object. For example, a plastic container wobbling on a shelf will sound like someone trying to play it as a percussion instrument. Having an interactive environment helps the paranormal slant. An item falls off a shelf in a room, you quickly wonder if that was you or if you are sharing the room with something else. Your unease and nervousness is a testament to the successful blend of all the right ingredients.

It wouldn’t be fair to talk about FEAR and not mention the audio as this is another significant strength. Weapon sounds are convincing, as is the radio chatter that you frequently hear. You will experience just the right acoustical accompaniment for whatever situation you find yourself in. The voice acting is very well done, and the scary moments receive the perfect complement of haunting melody or eerie noise to set your hair on end. The sound is enough by itself for you to spin 360 degrees looking for something to shoot. In addition to all that, you get to hear your enemy swear, quite a bit. Especially as you sprint straight at them in slow-mo. Well, I would too if I were them.

In addition to the bland and repetitive level format, there is some occasional frame rate stuttering, but it doesn’t occur that often and doesn’t adversely affect game play. Another annoyance is seeing parts of your own shadow appear like hanging vines in the top corners of the screen. This is distracting initially, but unfortunately you do get used to it. It is also possible for your character to lean from cover by pressing left or right on the D-pad, but doing this successfully simply doesn’t work half of the time which is unfortunate, as it’s an ability that would see greater use if it was more consistent. All these problems do remove some of the polish to the game as they could easily have been fixed, but are not enough by themselves to sully the overall gaming experience. The quick save feature found in the PC version has been dropped in favour of the checkpoint system. This works reasonably well, though you sometimes find that it’s a long way to the next checkpoint.

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