First Person Shooters are always a conundrum in my mind.
It is not so much that they exist, but that they exist in such an amount that it's hard to fathom just how many there are. F.E.A.R. is just one of many where you'll spend a lot of time running through brown corridors and poorly lit hallways, but what works with F.E.A.R. is that it has a developed, technical combat system. The idea of using a slow motion feature to fight and the fragility of the player character is something that coalesces nicely most of the time. However, there are certainly areas where the game feels as though it's downright unfair unless you are playing the game in a certain manner, and only being able to use a few weapons at a time can certainly constrict the player's ability to have fun. There are also only a few weapons which will see practical usage. The story of the game, if you can call it that, is highly similar to the grunge scenario of every other game. Some trademarked monster has created some trademarked havoc and it's your job to go in and kill said monster.
As a game, the chief monster in F.E.A.R. is not unlike monsters in most games about creating monsters. It comes from some project with a human God complex and has ambitions of being deeper than it actually is. The story is entirely throwaway except for the instances where you are moving back and forth between the game world and a secondary game world where constructed instances of play are displayed. In these, nothing much really happens, but they do contribute to the feeling of unease that the player might have about the world, later verified, unfortunately, by simple damage. The problem with the story sequences is that there is a lot of potential in them, as they sensibly take you out of the game world and put you into a place that is logically congruous and potentially frightening. The problem is that when the only consequence is damage and that damage is easily mitigated, to actually be worried about the sequences requires a stretch of the imagination. In other words, you can always "fight off" these sequences, despite the persistence of them throughout the game. That's always hard to understand, especially when it is clear that a lot of painstaking effort went into their placement throughout the game. The sequences don't induce fear at that point, they become a sort of paint-by-numbers fight sequence and that clearly wasn't the goal of the sequences as an illustration of the character's connection and weakness to the characters and game world.
The game world itself can be described as dark and brown. That's not really something that a player can complain about anymore, because it seems like that's the precedent for games which are trying to be "realistic." To be honest, I could go for more pastels, greens, blues, and purples, in my First Person Shooters. When you have psychic monsters running around, manipulating the entire world to their whim, you would think that certain characters, particularly 15 year old girls, wouldn't necessarily cover their entire world with black and brown. Maybe they might get bored with that, seeing as how they have ultimate control over seemingly everything, and instead decide to go for a shade of purple or blue. These characters are insane, so to say that bright color choices, in particular, don't make sense, seems somewhat illogical. There seems to be a problem with games where the game itself is so caught up in a color palette that it doesn't seem to really consider what characters might think about them. That may not be a fair argument for all games, as not all games have the characters of F.E.A.R., but it should at least be important that color is not always plain. Aside from colors, which I'm far from done complaining about, is also a bit tricky, as corners and boxes seem, unfortunately, highly malleable. What that means is that enemies tend to be quite good at hitting you around corners, no matter how much you use the functions given to you to let you shoot around them and take advantage of them. There are two primary mechanics that are both a bit tricky to fully utilize within the game's environs, partially because enemies seem much better at it than you are and also because full cover is rarely useful.
F.E.A.R.'s primary mechanics, slow motion and leaning are two rather interesting mechanics that are implemented rather poorly. Leaning is something that should have probably been available both automatically and functionally, as manually performing leaning is never something that I found practical. The primary reason as to why is mostly because, unless the player has an eagle claw grip on their computer, it's almost impossible to use. You have to press two keys together at the same time, in order to lean and move, and doing these things in concert with aiming and slow motion is a nightmare. Also, leaning is directional, the E key being assigned for right and the Q key being assigned for left. The reason that it's not exactly practical to perform leans is because slow motion is extremely effective. After reading a bit on the wiki, I found that the world slows by five times while in slow motion, and you also take action two times faster. Essentially, while in slow-motion, enemies are extremely susceptible to everything that you do, and you can dodge particularly dangerous attacks such as rockets or even blow them up in mid-air. What that means for you is that the process of leaning, while necessary or useful in some rare contexts, is largely outstripped by the speed by which you can effectively eliminate enemies while in slow-motion. Thus, slow motion is probably the better of the two ideas when deciding how to fight enemies, since it's difficult to use both at the same time. What makes slow motion work well is the fact that enemies are particularly nasty and are good at killing you while not in slow motion.
Enemies are nasty in that you get the distinct feeling that they are not only highly trained, but also just outright better. You feel squishy, they feel like bullet-absorption sheets. The only real advantage you have is slow motion, and it creates a large enough gap that you can often conquer otherwise impossible odds. Enemies always outnumber and outgun you in situations of three to one or more, and they will attempt to actively flank you. The AI is not exactly what I would describe as intelligent, but it is challenging because of the numbers. What that means is that enemies are largely attempting to distract you from getting shot by one of them so another can shoot you. The language and constant cursing by the enemy soldiers over your communications link is somewhat annoying, as the game informs you right from the start that most of these soldiers are supposedly mindless drones. An unfortunate weakness is that the game does have a number of tells, provided by that communications link, by which you can judge how many enemies there are, what they're trying to do, and where they are. That may not seem meaningful, but when a grenade can kill you in one hit, the fact that the enemy is telling you that they're throwing one kills the challenge just as quickly.
F.E.A.R. is not a bad game. Technically it's actually a pretty good game. But it's not a terribly original game in terms of characters, the whole dark corridors with baddies has been done many times before, and by the end of the game you get a feeling that you've seen certain assets of the game before. In fact, as far as the level design is concerned, you get that feeling by about the middle of the game and it never really goes away. The game is definitely challenging on its hardest setting and takes a good deal of mastery to fully play through, but the nature of the game is one that's satisfied with instances of play that can feel unfair, often spinning genres in ways which don't really work. There's a section of the game that will literally remind you of every shooting gallery game you've ever played, except it's completely dark and you're uncertain how many enemies there are. That uncertainty often leads to save-a-thons where sections of the game can be sniping targets off one at a time because there's no practical way to proceed otherwise. That can be a fun process, if presented originally and with some reservation, but in F.E.A.R. it's tedious. And that may be the best way to describe F.E.A.R. A technically good, but ultimately tedious exercise.