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Good day, and here we have the one and only expansion pack for FEAR 2. Now this is a very
interesting game, much more interesting than FEAR 2 itself, and that's because you get
to play as a clone trooper. You get to experience the game world from your enemy's perspective.
But in so doing, this game has no pretensions to horror whatsoever. Why? Because you start
up the game in a suit of powered armour and you can massacre literally everything. However,
I have to say this: The power armour, while cool, makes no sense. Why does this exist?
In the first game, the powered armour could be.... eh.... potentially plausible, but this
piece of powered armour basically makes no sense in that technology required to make
this would thus make the clone troopers entirely superfluous. You wouldn't need clone troopers
if you had something like this. Why? Because this suit of armour alone should revolutionize
warfare for centuries. This thing is absolutely amazing! Who knows what even powers it? That
should revolutionize the world in general. Also, it has self-repair abilities! And it
can self-repair in a couple of seconds! THAT would revolutionize everything! Really, at
this point, clone troopers are just absolutely pointless. Also, before the game actually
starts up you get a little bit of text that says you get dropped from orbit. When did
this company have a space station?! When did this extreme sci-fi stuff actually come into
the game?! Where's the horror in it?
So basically, horror is dead. It's gone bye-bye. You're playing a full, straight, unadulterated
sci-fi FPS. And you know what? It works. Quite well. When FEAR tries to be sci-fi, it succeeds.
When FEAR tries to be horror, it fails miserably. There are still a few freak outs in the game,
but they aren't scary because they're not really hurting you, but rather they're helping
you. After one freak out, you get partially possessed by Paxton Feddle and now finally
get to have bullet time, thus making the game excruciatingly easy and boring and repetitive.
However, the game does have some really nicely designed levels. And it actually is much more
entertaining than FEAR 2 was. Also, apparently, the bloody clone troopers have more power
armour than they ever had, because in this game, you fight their small suits of power
armour quite a bit. In fact, the power armour has sort of suffered the conservation of ninjutsu
in that they're barely stronger than the basic cone trooper. Which is pretty sad, because
the original power armour from the first game used to be great mini bosses. Here, they're
just once again obstacles in your way to victory.
Do I recommend FEAR 2: Reborn? Yes I do. It's a lot more entertaining and compelling than
the base FEAR 2 game, and it does a great job being a sci-fi FPS. And there are far
too few of those these days, to say the least. And so, this is Jon, signing off.