61 Frames Per Second : monolith

F.E.A.R. 2 and Crafting the Bigger Sequel That’s Actually Better

John Constantine — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:30:00 GMT

It was F.E.A.R. that pulled me, for the first time in twenty years of gaming, into first-person shooters. Like everyone else, I played my fair share of id’s shooters throughout the ‘90s. But being a console gamer, my time with turn-of-the-century FPSs, games that saw the genre evolve into a serious creative force and not just “Doom clones”, was always second-hand. I downloaded the demo for F.E.A.R. off of Xbox Live just looking for something to play and was entranced. The scares weren’t exactly gripping. Spooky little girl walks down the hall and *GASP* disappears! Walk into a room that’s covered in bloooOOOoood and then *WHOA* it’s not! The action, though, was unlike anything else I’d played up until 2006 thanks to the game’s still-impressive enemy AI. Walking down a hallway with the barrel of a shotgun jutting from the base of the screen was something I was used to. Bad guys jumping through windows to avoid exploding grenades and cursing at me wasn’t. Every single encounter was dangerous and forced you to consider how you moved through the mundane office cubicles and hallways that made up the bulk of the game’s setting.

Unfortunately, F.E.A.R. was a classic example of how a game needs to have more than just an excellent set of fundamental rules to be great. Despite the incredible programming that made the baddies so interesting, there wasn’t much else to F.E.A.R. Every environment was the same, the story too vague to ever really hook you. After nine hours of wandering through identical hallways and realizing I was only three-quarters of the way through the game, I shelved it, opting to watch the ending on YouTube rather than finish it myself.

If the demo of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin I played today is indicative of the entire game, I think I’ll be finishing the whole thing this time out. It seems I wasn’t the only one fatigued by the repetitive environments of the first game as the first thing associate producer Eric Studer pointed out was both the variety of the game’s levels and the development team’s emphasis on an expanded color palette. Visually, F.E.A.R. 2 has more in common with the over-saturated primary colors of Monolith’s Condemned 2 than its predecessor, to its benefit. The second big change in the sequel is the more explicit narrative. F.E.A.R.’s story was told through voicemail recordings and other incidental environmental finds, and while it was an interesting touch to make the exposition an optional part of the game, it was far too easy to miss these bits of information. It’s hard to care about a plot if you have no idea what’s actually at stake. F.E.A.R. 2 takes a page out of the Half-Life playbook by letting you play through cutscenes (albeit in a limited capacity) and actually giving this outing’s silent protagonist a name and history. The game’s first level, picking up thirty minutes before the end of F.E.A.R., is immediately engaging. Play wise, the game felt at home with the Xbox 360’s controller, sticking close to the usual triggers-for-shooting, analog-sticks-for-moving that act as the standard for most FPS and the enemy AI was cagey as ever. I was actually treated to a look at two of the game’s new enemies as well, Specters and Remnants (disembodied human souls and soulless bodies respectively.) They’re an interesting change of pace from the militaristic opponents that populated the first game but I wasn’t able to tell from the demonstration whether they have the same versatility as AI’s that the soldiers do.

All told, F.E.A.R. 2 looks like everything a sequel should be: a dramatic expansion and improvement on the original that does away with its failures. Bigger, for once, may actually be better.

Related links:

The Art of Gore in Project Origin
The Strange Case of Hype
The 61FPS Review: Dead Space
Trailer Review: The Conduit
Meet People (Yay!) On the Internet (Oh.) Play Games With Them (Fine, I Guess…)

Aliens and Games and TV, Oh My: The Jace Hall Show

John Constantine — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Videogames, they’re played on televisions. Well, they’re played on computer monitors too, but those have all but turned into televisions in recent years, right? Right. Of course, 61 Frames Per Second has been pondering and expounding on the relative merits of televised programming based on and about videogames of late. As our very own Amber Ahlborn made the point the other day, videogame television aimed at avid players is typically schlock ridden garbage, marred by a need to come off as both cool enough for the cool kids and geekily informed enough to appeal to the really cool kids. Amber’s spot-on in saying that the best game television is on the internet. When it comes to quality, the comedic characters created by Yahtzee and the Angry Video Game Nerd are joined by the first truly successful preview/review show, The 1up Show. Ryan O’Donnell and Jane Pinckard found the winning formula of scripted dialogue, personality and informed journalism lacking in every other attempt at the form, and O’Donnell has kept it strong for three years running.

The golden rule of entertainment is that when you make something that works, someone is going to imitate you on the quick. Until today, I had all but forgotten about the recently launched The Jace Hall Show, relegating to the section of my brain labeled “Mildly Interesting Things N’Gai Croal Wrote About and Failed to Hold My Attention Oh Look Metroid Fan Fiction”. For anyone unfamiliar with the name, Jace Hall is the founder of Monolith Productions (creators of F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins) and has been a significant player in the games industry for over a decade. I watched my first full episode of the show today because Hall was visiting Gearbox for a look at both Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines. The show’s slick production works well and its premise of sneaking quick looks of games still early in development – the pilot had a-sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it look at Duke Nukem Forever – is a novel hook. But it’s hard not to notice its attempt to mimic The 1up Show’s casual tone and the similarity is a little off-putting. The coverage is there, but it still needs a personality of its own to thrive.

You can catch the whole first season here on Crackle.com or on your Xbox 360 via Live Arcade.

Related links:

Video Game TV: Can It Ever Be Good?
Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independent Developer (He’s Right.)
Video Game Television the Canadian Way, Eh?
Horrors That Time Forgot: GamePro TV
Game Over, Man: Aliens – Colonial Marines Penned By Battlestar Galactica Writers

The Art of Gore in Project Origin

John Constantine — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

There are many, many first-person shooting games. Doom was the ship that launched a fleet of thousands fifteen years ago and, since its release, a lot has changed in the genre. Engrossing narratives (Bioshock), ever evolving team play (Team Fortress, Counterstrike, etc.), the capacity for sociopolitical commentary (Call of Duty 4). But, as the old folks say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. First-person shooters are still about shooting and, like their ancestor Doom, are very pre-occupied with blood. Loathe as I am to admit it, I’m still pretty engaged by it myself. I find bombastic, gory violence deeply satisfying in my entertainment, often as much as a perfectly portrayed human relationship or an honest, unsentimental depiction of emotion. Like anything else in fantasy, it’s the heady experience of the unreal that satiates. Blood’s just another type of icing.

Mark Wood, developer Monolith’s FX artist extraordinaire, has written up a short essay on the process of creating blood effects for Project Origin, the poorly-titled sequel to F.E.A.R. It’s a fascinating read that shows off the art in an expert craftsman’s work. Regardless of whether or not blood’s your thing, good work is always interesting. Wood walks us through the whole process, from using the first game’s assets to gathering artist Dusty Peterson’s physical references on to finally implementing the new blood in game.

F.E.A.R. was something of a mixed bag that married tired horror clichés (spoooooOOOOOoooky little girls!) with some of the best artificial intelligence I’ve ever seen. If everyone on Project Origin is as devoted to their craft as Mark Wood, it could turn out a bloody success.

Our thanks to Joystiq for pointing us to the piece.