F.E.A.R. review

It's easy to miss in the melee of combat, but Monolith equipped its clones with a sense of preservation, and actual defensive postures. The best of these is a panicky, over the shoulder gun-spray as the clone tries to get to cover.

They don't just stand there and back off, leaving you with the biggest possible target. No, they run away, spinning their body sideways and firing. Get too near to them and they'll even take a kick at you.

If they have cover, they'll use it effectively. Sofas are flipped over to make firing nests, computers are swiped from tables to create fields of fire. I've seen clones crawl under toppled cases and lockers to get a better position, and dive headfirst through windows to escape certain death.

Of course, knowing this is half the fun; sticking a landmine outside a diveable window is one of FEAR's guilty little pleasures.

It's not just that they can shift out of the way: these guys have enough moves in their repertoire to prove a credible threat to your insurance premiums.

They'll kick as mentioned, throw grenades with unbelievable accuracy, and work together. Try that old FPS tactic of luring them blindly around a corner into your gunfire and you'll find they've decided to flank you instead (level design permitting). It happened to me again and again. There's always a purpose to what they do.

Listening to their radio chatter is a great tell, but they're smart enough to never fully give anything away. The orders and responses are curt and undescriptive.

And these are just the everyday guards. You're occasionally thrown a curve ball of heavy armour, or ED209-style robots, or building-based security devices that you have to blast your way around.

Sadly, these things are mostly there to provide a huge target to shoot at; they instinctively know where you are, but give you enough time to circle strafe around. They're really a diversionary tactic.

There's some nice weaponry, like a handheld multiple rocket-launcher and a shotgun that can strip a chicken from its bones. Not to mention the particle gun that turns guards into blackened, char-grilled skeletons.

Kung Fu takes the combat to another level. The basic melee attacks are expanded to give you a jumping kick, a roundhouse kick, a sliding kick, and a couple of punches.

These moves require finesse and often leave you vulnerable to counter-attack from the rest of the squad, but are as deadly as a headshot, once mastered.

Quicksave and quickload were made for days like this. Run in and gut everyone with the heaviest gun you have, then reload and try the same thing with Kung Fu - aiming kicks at heads, uppercuts at jaws and sliding into shins with terminal force (oddly, the sliding kick can be used as a one-hit kill move).

There are some nice extra touches too, such as the health bar that automatically fills up a little when you're too low, and Monolith are aware that they've created a game that's as tough as nails, so the difficulty level can be changed on the fly.

FEAR's biggest bone of contention is that there's not enough variety. As slick and brilliant as the action is, it's all just variations on the same theme, either expanded to fill larger areas or slimmed down for tight corridor or office-based action.

You play through four distinct areas, and aside from a few brilliant setpieces (a thrilling escape from a parking garage, an unbelievably funny lift fight, the insane ending level) the action is the same 30 seconds repeated over and over again.

The largest chunk of the game involves infiltrating the Armacham tech company but the section is mercilessly stretched out and by the end you're begging to be let loose in another area.

One nasty trick lets you come within touching distance of rescue but then you're forced back down through the level. And when you eventually escape, it's just, well, the same. The same sort of space with different textures, populated with the same enemies. It grinds.

While I'm on a rant, I might as well slap Monolith's wrists for picking such conventional FPS locales in the first place.

It goes: water-plant, high-tech office, run-down warehouse area and underground high-tech facility. For all Monolith's brilliance, they have fallen into the FPS pitfall of generic locations.

Also, little use is made of the other FEAR operatives. You begin with a squad whose sole purpose is to be ground into tiny bits. After that you're on your own.

It's often the case that your FEAR team-mates only appear after a huge battle that you just managed to escape.

At the conclusion of one sequence, I was blown backwards out of a window (FEAR's flair for the dramatic is exceptional). It's a stunning blow: Alma appeared, everything lit up in flames and the concussive force of the explosions threw me and the rest of the room through a window.

The rest of the team gathered around, staring at my prone body... before being ordered to let me go on ahead. It's a theme repeated through the game: contrived ways to split you up from the team.

I swear, for the first five hours FEAR was on its way to a Half-Life sized score. The favourable comparisons were many and various: the thoughtful and dangerously accurate guards, the beautifully designed levels... but FEAR never upped the ante.

It stayed almost exactly the same from start to finish. And as brilliant as that was, it's not quite enough to deserve a mammoth score. By all means buy it, play it to the point of repetitive strain injury and scream your lungs out. No reservations from me: buy it.

FEAR deserves a lot of attention, but there's a game here that could have been so much better if the developers had just pushed a little harder.

FEAR is out for PC on 18 October