Tuesday, March 3, 2009

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Demo Review

PC gaming is not dead. However, significant efforts to make it dead are underway.

Project Origin demo sucks. Apparently, the game itself sucks too, judging by reviews at Amazon and Newegg.

First of all, it's a poor PC port of a console game. Excuse me, folks, but if I wanted to play a console game, I would've bought a console version of it.

It's not only the dialogues that are obviously built for a console, it's even the mouse behaviour (note, the menu doesn't even call it "mouse" any more, it's "aim" now. Move the mouse a bit too sharp even on the minimum "aim" sensitivity setting, and the game performs a dizzying spin, and you're no longer sure where the hell you're looking. Smells with motion control tuned for the console controller and reused for mouse - unacceptable.

What used to be scary is now simply annoying. Just like Doom 3, every time they jump from behind the corner you think "Damn, I knew they would be here!".

Save is gone, replaced by checkpoints now. I don't know how many checkpoints the actual game has, but the demo has one. And the end of the demo for me was... when I got stuck in a puddle next to the place where the sniper rifle is, unable to move. An attempt to "reload last save" popped me up right there, stuck. That was the end of it, 'cause the other option ("exit to menu") obliterated all the process made, and I'm not going to repeat this exercise in humility again. (update: the game also has one save slot - now, that is dumb, what exactly do you do if you get stuck like I did in the demo?)

Maybe I'll buy the game when it drops to $14.99, though probably not. And it is definitely not worth the price it's being offered for today.

Too bad, I was looking forward to it.

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