8 Bad Video Games With Great Combat

After the uh, climactic, ending to F.E.A.R. 2, F.E.A.R. 3 takes you back into the shoes of Point Man, now being helped along by his brother Paxton Fettel. Now, you might have some questions since Fettel died in the first game, but we already know that death is more of an inconvenience for psychic people in the F.E.A.R. universe.

The campaign is a mess. The tone is inconsistent, and the scares are nowhere near as fresh as in either of its predecessors. New developers, Day One, have fallen for that modern horror pitfall and decided to show us all the dark background details of the original story instead of allowing us to fill in the gaps ourselves. And what we don’t see is always scarier than what we do see.

Despite the issues with the story and the direction of the campaign, the gameplay is as tight as ever. Both Point Man and Fettel play drastically differently, given Fettel doesn’t have a physical form which you'd expect to lower his combat efficiency somewhat.

Point Man sticks to his tried-and-true formula of turning on bullet time and eviscerating rooms full of enemies with gunfire and flying kicks, but Fettel’s combat is much more interesting.

With his ability to possess enemies and fire psychic blasts from his hands, Fettel puts enough of a spin on the gameplay that you can absolutely forget how big of a step-down F.E.A.R. 3 is in terms of narrative and characterisation.