So I’m going to defend Lith a little. This game runs fine on my system, and I know people saying it runs (and looks) better than Doom 3 does on their systems. NOLF 2 ran like a charm on any PC I put it on, and looked it too. With that title, my opinion of their engine writing abilities altered, although, technically, they didn’t write that engine.

They were originally like Epic, a company that has an engine department, and a game design department. That was up until around the time NOLF came out. then they split into two seperate companies, Monolith and Lithtech (now Touchdown). What’s interesting about F.E.A.R. is that Monolith made the engine, not Touchdown.

So really, it has no relation to their old technologies, and easily looks better than any other PC game out there. So I have to run it at a lower resolution than Half Life 2 and Doom 3, it still looks a load better at that resolution.

Sorry to any 1280 x 1024 monitor owners, but you have to realise that it’s a different aspect ratio and therefore is going to take more work to support it’s native mode. You bought a monitor with a funky aspect, you should have realised that any game you ran out of native would look extra worse by being in the wrong aspect, and if your pc can handle F.E.A.R. in that resolution and high detail, daymn it’s a good pc.

seriously, this is a game where you want to lower your resolution and keep it in high detail. if you lose all the smoke and the shadows you’re losing a lot more than just pretty effects… you’re losing gameplay and swathes of atmosphere too. i’m running it in 800 x 600 so that i can have everything (but texture detail on high and soft shadows) turned up, and the game looks awesome.

that resolution looks decent on my LCD 19″ because it’s exactly half of my native resolution of 1600 x 1200. yeah my 19″ has 1600 x 1200 native. no, they don’t still make them that way. i still can’t believe that no one else has started making 19″ that offer anything better than 1280 x 1024. I got mine 3 years ago.

Any game that involves big robots blowing shit up gets my vote. Shogo gets a bigger vote than most from me because the guns on foot were so loud and dual-pistols was just a great starting weapon.

It’s also one of the very few games that I enjoyed enough that I played it through to the end. Fantastic stuff. Quake 2 is the only other game that I can think of like this. NOLF was interesting but never really did it for me.

In other news, what the hell is with the “supply your age” form at the front of some gaming web sites now? I had to do this recently at a site I can’t remember and now the F.E.A.R. website wants it to. Why? Has the US introduced another stupid law that incourages children to lie or something? Answers on a postcard to …

I guess my standards are a bit high after that Haunted Mansion Level in Vampire Bloodlines. To really amplify the shocks, one must create a sense of unease. That worked in Bloodlines since you couldn’t do much to the ghosts themselves. In FEAR, however, walking around with a nail gun tends to subdue any vulnerability. Still, it’s only the first level, I look forward to seeing the rest of the game.