I love how in the introduction when Jankowski says "You're putting him in the field? Are you crazy?!" the subtitles flicker and you hear static just like when Alma manifests her powers because Pointman was angry at being underestimated so he accidentally displayed a little bit of his latent powers. It's the little touches
If we are to accept this, then we also have to accept that Pointman was never angry again throughout the rest of the game. Not when he was being shot at, dodging grenades, or being mind invaded by his brother. Balls of steel.
The entire gimmick is comedy gold, treating FEAR like it's a particularly awkward Thanksgiving weekend and Point Man has to pick up Alice from Alma's house
@@TheRoboKittyonce you know the lore, it’s all essentially one fucked reunion. I learned to take these games not so seriously, since it’s literally a game of family. Just with guns.
Possibly some of his greatest jokes by far. "Lot of anger in this room." "REALLY councillor Troy there was a lot of anger in this room of blood?" "Why are all the floors lighting up?" "Because God hates us and the Devil thinks it's funny."
In the pre-release trailer, that was originally a line from Holiday. "There's a lot of anger in this room" "Great, anything useful to add?" "Yo get off my dick, man, you asked what I thought"
One of my favorite things in this game is when there's only one enemy left. They call out once, and when they realize they're alone, they're dead silent for the rest of the fight (except screaming at getting shot of course).
@@buttlord2223 this kinda thing is built on in the game's spiritual successor Trenpang2 where the last guy alive calls out and basically goes "fuck, I'm all alone with a time dilating super soldier who can turn invisible on command."
I get the feeling it's because he actually *likes* Fear. I feel like the videos of him playing games he _enjoys_ are, in turn, more enjoyable to watch. At least for me.
The AI is good but it's not nearly as good as it's been memed into urban legend. I think as Mandalore pointed out, a huge collection of vocal call outs help and so does the AI and level designer practically holding hands the whole time. You can see the AI start to lose it a tad in the expansions when the maps open up a little bit more.
@@Ty2188 Yeah the AI, while great, is specifically programmed to give the illusion of being more intelligent than it is and is heavily tailored to the different arenas themselves.
@@The1of1000 Which, when it comes to video game enemy AI? Is perfection. That's the goal, that it seems intelligent and provides a challenge to the player in the process.
It is good, there is no question. The people shitting on it need to get some better hobby. If that's bad (i.e. the programmer is basically hand holding it, or what we sometimes call "programs the game") then wtf are other games doing where the AI is far worse? I didn't even know that programmer works on actual AI with Google now, that's dope.
@@Sorain1 But that has nothing to do with Google AI. In gaming faking things often gets the best results, when you're developing a generalist tool faking things will only lead to problems.
I love the ideas of point man just being a guy trying to distance himself from his strange family members. And whose brother keeps invading his life to make things awkward for him.
“God damn it Paxton I told you that you weren’t invited to my daughters birthday party. Did you really think dressing up one of your psychic soldiers like fucking John Wayne Gayce was a good idea? There’s a damn good reason we don’t send you family Christmas cards.”
I remember Mandalore remarking on how "if a 100-page novel is shot in a John Woo movie, it needs to explode into 200 pages". And that's the experience F.E.A.R provides. Married, of course, with the aforementioned Japanese horror influence.
Whoever puts the effort into the TH-cam subtitles for your videos does a fantastic job. My wife is hearing impaired and loves watching your videos because of this level of quality
Oh yeah subtitles are the main reason i love to watch civvie because i have severe hearing loss! Of course civvie is also funniest lad i know in youtube.
It's worth noting that while each individual AI actor didn't know about the others, they still affected one another. They didn't have any build-in flanking subroutines, for instance, but when one enemy was engaged with you, it would increase the traversal cost for chunks of navmesh along its firing line, meaning that other AIs would prefer not to path across them unless absolutely necessary. That, combined with a bit of clever level design, meant you had enemies that would automatically flank you as a side effect of their basic A* pathfinding algorithm. Really ingenious stuff.
it looks simple on the surface but to make it that simple and the result is so convincing thats why the team that did it are top level a.i guys in the field today.
I can't help but wonder at how much of a step up that A.I. is The only thing I really even have as a decent frame of reference was halo CE 4 years prior, where the elites would duck, dive, bob and weave to evade your fire, actively use cover if fire was overwhelming, flank you if an opportunity was there, and push aggressively whenever your shields were down
The level design was also a big part of it, in a way that you can't actually see. Most game AI systems have only limited ability to interact with and perceive the environment, in FEAR the maps contain nodes which give NPCs a much more detailed ability to path around and take certain actions based on positioning. This same concept was used in Half Life 2 but more sparsely.
The Replica freaking out when you go into Bullet Time was always so satisfying to me. Hearing a bred for combat, knows no fear soldier call out "He's too fast" or "Oh shit" in slo-mo always puts a smile on my face, before I proceed to wipe them from existence. Love this game. Hell, I kinda love the whole series to an extent (yeah I can even find things to like about F3AR).
@@ThompsonExpress The gameplay is actually solid, the co-op is stupid but entertaining, the weapons are actually fun to shoot (even if the shotgun is an abomination), enemy variety was pretty solid, there's a standout level in a department store that's been overrun by Alma Cultists which is one of my favorites in the series, and (when the servers weren't dead) the co-op mode where you ran from the death clouds was really fun. Just a few of the things I liked in F3AR, but its still the lowest on the totem pole for me.
@@ThompsonExpress If you can stand some jank, think of it not as a mainline FEAR game (imagine it's a crazy spinoff, makes things easier), and want to play a faster paced game than FEAR 2 that tries some new things, you may enjoy it. Its usually really cheap, so if you've got a few bucks burning a hole in your wallet I'd say you could actually do way worse. Also, it takes a bit before things "click" at least to me, so give it a bit before writing it off if you just can't take the fact that FEAR is now a dead series and that was the last game.
@@ThompsonExpress The gameplay is better than FEAR 2 but worse than FEAR 1. It's worth a playthrough for the interesting co-op aspect and campaign alone. Other than that though, it's story was so bad that it killed the franchise that to this day still hasn't recovered.
F.E.A.R. really is the perfect example of "greater than the sum of its parts". I can't imagine how this game could work were it not for the drab, realistic office and industrial environments and generic faceless soldiers. Those elements add to the mood so much and reinforce the game's goal of being a perpetual urban shootout that making anything more fantastical would feel disingenuous and compete with the core attraction, that being the beautiful, BEAUTIFUL combat. Also Alma did nothing wrong
the lighting does a lot of work bringing the environments to life. really shows how important art direction is, making bland industrial office environments really memorable
Love the reveal that Civvie has just plain been hallucinating Ramses. And the unsettling implication that the "horrible baby thing" has just been recordings used to torment Civvie and drive him insane, and he's convinced.
Guess he played too much PowerSlave. (Honestly, I initially thought he was referencing the Homeworld games, what with the Battle of Kadesh sounding like a certain series of events in the first game.)
Interesting little tidbit: the rats in game have the same AI as the soldiers, so they take up the same resources. In the one level where a swarm of rats runs past you afraid of Alma, they run down a pipe and stay there, taking resources from the game until the level is over
There is a little detail that was discovered in 2015 i beleave. As you say they have a similar AI as the soldiers, yes, however they lack an action about what to do after seeing the player and fleeing, this causes a constant accumulation of calls of memory requesting an order, leading to what could be considered a memory leak. In order for this oversight to actually have an effect in the performace, the game had to be running for like 6 hours though.
Now I have the mental image of Skaven acting like F.E.A.R soldiers. And honestly, that'd probably make for a hell of a Vermintide spinoff. That in mind, I don't know if The Last Exterminator is going to have rat soldiers in it, but I at least hope they end up in an expansion.
@@DinnerForkTongue "The man-fools ALL deserve to die-die!" If you went up against Skaven Replicas, you'd probably need the Serum of Blistering Heat from DUSK.
@@bootblacking i lov et win sivy sais the funny and his robots to actionals pun detec and it remind me of time whe ni was it in in the origin fasily and the doctor come and i was didnt wantted to go and he taser tasrer taser deploy and i went NO and he zapped me and i was realy sad so whe ncivvy 11 (eleven NOT THE TRASNGER THINGS SEASON 4 FINALY CHARACTER ELL EVEN) when shtivy does the funny pun i get a hard pp
"For I walk through the shadows of the halls of Armachan, I will fear no evil, for your are with me, my buckshot rod, my staff of liquification, prepare a table before me in the presence of mine enemies cause I'm serving lead!" Probably the best line I've heard in a while.
Despite early voicemails not being plot relevant, I still love them a lot because it’s nice to see the outside world reacting to the events of the game, as well as helps make the environments feel more real.
seriously. hearing loved ones voicemails asking if they're okay and hoping they're on their way home when you know damn well they're dead is surprisingly effective
Like, even Umbrella would like to have words with Armacham at this point, and their whole shtick is insane bioweapons and experiments involving Zombie plagues and the like.
@@MyScorpion42 Actually no, sure several of their scientists went rogue after Racoon City and started discreetly selling BOWs on the Black Market but the only thing that Umbrella actually DID do is take advantage of the chaos of Racoon City to field test various BOWs. The Outbreak happened because of some BOWs escaping the Spenser Estate and attacking people, thus spreading the T-Virus and eventually infecting the city, meanwhile the G-Virus got lose because Umbrella's USS team (The guys who shot Birkin) lost the briefcase with G-Virus samples in it and various pests like Rats got into it and contaminated the city's water reservoir. There's also the fact that Umbrella's Disposal Facility they built for the waste of the NEST lab (Incineration Disposal Plant P-12A or as it's also known the Dead Factory) couldn't keep up and the viruses in THOSE corpses mutated, really Umbrella didn't directly do anything like purposefully release the Viruses.
@@MyScorpion42 In the W.S. Anderson movies, yeah. In the games they caused an outbreak in one city and all the investors pulled out, leaving the company as bankrupt financially as it already was morally. And that's how you kick off Resident Evil 4.
One of the things I find rarely gets talked about when F.E.A.R comes up is just how on point the soundtrack is. It's so densely atmospheric and tense, it's got lots of really cool experimental touches and there's lots of bangers for the combat sections, Nathan Grigg really went all out with it.
@@Vengeance19 as long as we can get other people to kick replica assassin knees out, it's all good lol Fun tidbit: also works in FEAR 2 the same I think, it still one-shots them last I tried
I've never thought through the story of fear enough to realize that it's essentially a twisted family drama when you get down to it, and Civvie treating it exactly like that so casually is amazing
@@DatBoi-mo9vc I personally was a bit disappointed by it's direction - I really liked the bleak, apocalyptic direction expansion pack Extraction Point took myself, where it was implied that Alma is out to destroy rest of humanity to live in peace together with Point Man, and Point Man just tries to survive the cataclysmic mayhem.
One cool thing he didnt mention is that especially in slow mo, if you kill an enemy and they go into ragdoll mode, they'll sometimes fire their weapons and you can see the bullets hit walls/ceilings/the floor in a really cool ark and it just adds to how amazing the combat is.
I think it was a mistake to make slow mo regenerate. It was way too OP to be an automatically replenishable resource. Like, the whole game on a maximum difficulty is a cakewalk with just leaning out of a cover and headshotting everything in slow motion It should have been a resource you get from killing enemies or picking up stuff (like with ammo and health) I think dev team thought of this as well but maybe they were way too hyped on that feature Everything else i believe this game did perfectly, the design, the atmosphere, the combat. Gunplay could be a bit better but it's still way ahead most games of that time. The music isn't something to listen on it's own but it fits the game itself like a thread in a needle. One of the biggest mysteries is why F.E.A.R. didn't became a cult game like CoD or Quake. It did everything to appeal to both casual gamers and those who were into small details. The graphics look good even after almost 20 years, yet even back in the days it didn't require you to sell an organ like ID games did for example.
@@maxpavlovskyTrepang2 is a wonderful spiritual successor to F.E.A.R, it makes slow mo a limited resource that’s only refilled with kills. It works really well, especially when it’s more fast paced
You missed one magical trick that the FEAR Shotgun (Blessed be its name) does: saw fools in half. Seeing a torso pirouette through the air in slow motion while firing their gun and their legs tumble around on the floor is truly majestic.
FEAR is so good that it managed to make audio logs unobtrusive. The voicemails deliver backstory without feeling like self-narration, and sending data to your handler lets him summarize the findings while keeping extraneous details to a minimum. Both work with the game's overall good pacing and presentation to convey a sense of unfolding dread. While you've got your face full of hostile clones, giant robots, a psychic cannibal calling you 'brother', and an off-brand Ring Girl, you get the impression the guy looking at spreadsheets isn't having a much better day. And god *damn* but "brace yourself for the assfuck of the century" is a one-in-a-million phrase. Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that you can fend off the final Alma encounter with a snap-kick to the face? Pointman doesn't have time for awkward family reunions, he's gotta go watch Delta Force lose another chopper.
the audio logs are unobtrusive because they are completely skippable and not worth listening too. I *love* FEAR but the story is nonsense filler and the horror elements feel tacked on (outside of the overall atmosphere which is A+).
@@Flameb0 The story is nothing to write home about, but I wouldn't say that it's nonsense. People complain about the beginning of the game at the water treatment plant but that was intended to be a diversion from Armacham to distract the FEAR team. The rest of the plot is discovering the origins of the horrible projects Armacham was apart of. FEAR 2 was definitely better at handling the story aspect, but if the story was nonsense to begin with then FEAR 2's story and ending cliffhanger wouldn't be regarded so highly.
It's a shame that FEAR basically perfected audio logs and yet pretty much every game after to include them just features them as droning exposition the player inorganically picks up off the floor, or long-winded emails in conveniently placed terminals. Bioshock came out ~3 years later and while it's still a fantastic game much of the lore and world building is given to the player via random tape recordings that are basically random people of vague importance making overly detailed entries in a personal audio diary for no particular reason. There's also the huge gameplay contradiction of audio logs being something you typically pick up so you can keep playing while you listen to them, yet most players who care enough to pay attention aren't going to keep moving. They're just going to sit there waiting for the log to finish on the off-chance something happens while they're playing and they miss half of it and need to relisten to the whole thing from the start. AvP 2010 is the most egregiously incompetent audio log implementation I can think of, not only do you find them after pointless exploration to completely nonsense areas half the time, not only are they the droning exposition of someone recording themselves journaling while running from xenomorphs, but the game actually expects you to listen to them in the pause menu with the buzzing static noise and the bright janky CRT TV effect background the game uses for the menu. The entire mechanic feels like some executive demanded audiologs be included halfway through development because they've become so common and no one on the dev team knew how to stick em in in an organic way.
I actually thought this game was just a spooky sort of horror. I've avoided it all this time not realising what sort of game it truly is. I sort of regret not playing this in my younger days now, where I would have definitely appreciated it way more for it's originality. Still, I'll definitely give it a go. thank you for sharing this, Norton
@@desmasic Incorrect. This game is plenty scary the first time you play it and is still my go-to for a horror game. "You have guns, therefore not scary" is a bullshit argument, since a) it's a game, not a walk and hide simulator and b) your guns don't actually do shit to the supernatural elements like Alma anyway. Hell even Paxton only dies when he lets you shoot him and then comes back to life in both timelines regardless. As Civvie points out, none of your arsenal or abilities affects the story or even slightly inconvenience the antagonists. You're just along for the ride.
I regret not being able to play through it a second time. I was genuinely scared by the game as a teen, so I wound up taking it slow and cautiously instead of as a cracked-out spider monkey like I've seen more experienced players do. I might have to hunt down a copy for the 360 (my most modern game platform right now) to go through it again.
The shotgun being so godlike is another John Woo thing. It was Tequila's weapon of choice in Hard Boiled and Chance's too in Hard Target and they used them to devastating effect.
Little bit of trivia I picked up: in Hong Kong, shotguns are known as 'Remingtons' regardless of who actually made them: th-cam.com/video/G_S75AvNe4Q/w-d-xo.html
I'm just now appreciating the canvas of "clearing a spooky area with a battle buddy but they don't experience the same things you do" that Monolith dug. I dug it too.
F.E.A.R is such a gem of a title. It was one of my late grandads favourite games - he enjoyed setting traps for those scripted sequences. Cheers Norton Mapes for the quality vid!
I used to love doing that - as soon as I knew something was gonna break down a door, I'd plant every single mine and remote bomb there, and watch the ensuing explosion in slow motion.
I've just completed the game again - this time on an OLED display. It really comes alive on here what with the stark contrast shadows and light sources. Looks absolutely stunning!
I played this for the first time back in 2016, and even then I was absolutely floored by how immersive it was. Even while dated, the environments and lighting are masterfully done, and the AI had a huge part in making the game actually scary for me. I wish more horror games followed suit instead of bullet sponges slowly walking towards you.
I especially like the quote at 2:58 because so many horror games for me just become tedious and annoying in the forms of "tension" they add to them. Like in most I can jive with the premise that there would be limited resources like healing and bullets, but why would I not grab some of the obviously useful objects that I could smack zombies with to defend myself? Or the games where they have stealth but it's the most extreme example of having to wait out the patrol path of the enemies (a thing that good stealth games get backlash for and then their sequels over-correct and go a more action oriented route, but horror with stealth seems to get a free pass?).
A lot better idea playing it in 2016 than 2005. This was the Crysis of its day, capable of bringing even the mightiest and most expensive hardware to its knees at max settings. Only the thjen-rapid pace of hardware advancement (helped by the rise in popularity of dual video cards) prevented "Can it run FEAR?" from becoming an enduring meme. I get a little thrill when I start FEAR on a modern system, set all the settings to max, and it still runs buttery smooth.
@@CptJistuce It honestly ran pretty well. I got it on PC, which is nice, but I've been putting off looking up guides to make it work well with Windows 10 lol. Someday
I like how instead of starting off supernatural before revealing that it's actually science fiction, F.E.A.R. starts off as science fiction until the end when you find out Alma is just an incredibly pissed off ghost.
@2:58 Probably one of my favorite quotes to be followed for a horror game, and to think this was achieved in a literal first person shooter, where it would've been fine to just establish tension through losing your progress, but Monolith went all out in creating what I believe to be a smarter and a more engaging horror experience, and that's why I appreciate them even after all these years. FEAR really hasn't aged a bit.
Definitely. Moments like that show how much he appreciates games music. I loved when he put the special stage music for Sonic 2 in one the Nightmare Reaper videos when he went to show a weapon off.
FEAR is an absolute best FPS games of all time. It’s seventeen years old and it still looks amazing. The gameplay,the enemy soldiers and of course the weapons in this game is phenomenal. Especially when you wield the Shotgun in this game in slow motion mode. That gun is an absolute beast and I loved using it. Makes me wanna play this game again.
The only thing I remember the AI doing in FEAR was one particular moment where there was a shelf that was knocked over and leaning against a wall. An AI decided to crawl under it right in front of me rather than run around it, making him the easiest headshot I've ever done. It was hilarious enough that even damn near 20 years later I still remember it.
This shotgun is my all time favorite. The sound, the impact, the feedback. It's all perfect. I don't really care if it isn't the most powerful, it is far and beyond the most fun one to use. Just slow-mo jump kicking through glass while firing that gun into a squad of clones...... Perfection!
It is, It is the most powerful shotgun of all time. Blood or doom super shotguns dont even come close. Hear me out, when has a shotgun been so op that it turns enemies to mush in 1 shot.
The moment from FEAR that I always remember (and it's been too long to remember when it happens in the game), is seeing a bad guy walk around a corner into an alley, following to kill him, but when I round the corner there's no one there, turn back around and freakin' Paxton doing his ash-dissolve walk into me. I was so confused as to where the soldier went that the random jump scare got me so good.
The moment I remember is when the wall-crawling assassin guys first showed up and I thought they were a hallucination until I walked into a cubicle and one kicked me in the face and scurried into a vent. After that, I was never TRULY sure what was "real" and what wasn't.
Civvie gushing over an FPS shotgun is truly a wonderful thing, like poetry. Although not as magical as when he referenced the doom 2 super shotgun in that video, this is definitely a glorious second.
My favorite thing about this game is the look of the replicant soldiers, to this day they're still some of the most badass looking enemies in fiction. Their voice actor also did a fantastic job.
@@luichinplaystation610 they're cloned from Paxton Fettel's DNA, which is confirmed in the Reborn DLC for F.E.A.R. 2 because the replica soldier you play as, referred to as Foxtrot 813, has an exact facial resemblance to Fettel meaning he was the primary genetic donor to make them.
The reason I remember this game is pretty weird - it was the first game I played where you shoot at a wall and it gets bullet holes with actual depth. That was impressive and I couldn't explain it back then. Now it's common, and.. yeah.. Impressive effects for 2005!
I remember game journals creamed their pants about tech that made bullet holes have actual depth. It's not real depth, btw, but the illusion is very convincing.
I can't emphasize enough how different this game felt when it came out. It felt like every other game at the time enemies were always aware of you, so if you decided to throw out a grenade the enemies would yell "Grenade!" loudly but calmly and dive roll out of the way only to get caught in the explosion anyway. In Fear I see the shadow of a guy patrolling a small room. I throw a grenade through the window shattering it. The guy shouts "Fuck!" a fraction of a second before the grenade explodes. Physics objects and glass shards thrown out the window blood covering the walls, a lamp swinging back and forth casting intense shadows. Pragmatically I did the same thing, I threw a grenade and killed a single enemy but it felt so much better!
I'd finished the series and its expansions a few years back, and while I enjoyed it, until Civvie pointed it out, I didn't realize the degree to which the game mechanics encourage getting the drop on/startling your enemy, especially in maximising the benefits of your Slow-Mo abilities. In comparison to, say, Half-Life, where you would immediately get perforated by the HECU the instant you made line of sight contact, that half-second of surprise the squads have when you pop up seemingly out of nowhere was an extra touch of class and realism.
@@BirdmanDeuce26 And you know the best part? The enemies move to flank, but so can you. Draw their attention and fire to an entrance, then circle around to another door and bushwhack them from there. It's so good, you can beat Extreme Mode without Slow-Mo with it.
I seriously can't wait for Trepang2 to be fully released. It may not have the backing and experience that Monolith had, but god damn does it have the heart and intentions.
Guess somebody's gonna put that Owl House meme featuring Amity and Eda then. Oh, and as Grímsdóttir once said to Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory: "I have bad news for you, Sam. *You are old."*
I played this game on PS3 console years ago. I miss it. I understand that Fear is now only available (last time I checked) on Steam in a collector's 3-pack that costs +60 dollars & has horrible ratings & compatibility issues on PC.
@@Claymann71 The GOG build is available separately, but unfortunately has traces of SecuROM in it. The files seem to be dormant though, shouldn't cause much harm.
10:29 "I was really enjoying that sherry Dr. Gorman bought for me, and I was going to share it, but no, because you ATE HIM PAXTON! That's the kind of social faux-pas that could RUIN THIS FAMILY!" No matter how many times I hear that line, it still makes me crack up.
Man oh man did I love the extra movement + melee mechanic options they gave you in this game. You didn't HAVE to use them, but you could if you wanted to feel like an action movie badass Btw, loved that seamless slowmo voiceover transition
one issue... The jump kick always fucked me over and I think I landed it 2-3 times... ish? I wish it was just a jump kick instead of a bicycle kick, it lock your animation and Replica have much better hand-to-hand training then you do.
The whole introduction that CV-11 does to the shotgun is absolutely amazing. Even for me who never played this game can feel how amazingly well done it is.
Got this game back in 2010 from a used game shop on a summer up in Columbus, Ohio. I didnt have my big desktop with me, so I played it on a Compaq 515 laptop that could barely handle it. I thought it was the best game ever for like a year and gifted it to a friend so he too could experience the magic. Thanks for showcasing this absolute gem Civvie11.
After sitting down with my reheated slices of leftover meatball pizza, I began looking for something to watch that I’d enjoy enough that I wouldn’t have to switch to something else and disrupt my amazing meal. Then I noticed you uploaded a new video and I said to myself “ah, a civvie video, perfect!”…and that’s when I realized how grateful I am for your content. Civvie, your videos are always a pleasure to watch and I just wanna say thank you. You made my pizza even better
@@t850terminator It doesn’t have controller support. Mapping the controls is a bit of a process, but they end up working fairly well. I edited a community layout to my liking. I found that a low-sensitivity gyro setting helps with the finer aiming present in the game.
Timeless masterpiece NOPE not even remotely close, yes, yes I know the AI is "amazing"......The game is good at best and every single expansion and sequel is worse than the one before it.
playing without using "Bullet Time" is actually really fun. it makes the firefights extra tense and satisfying for a challenge and is extremely possible, which shows its a great bonus mechanic and not a dev crutch.
Man, Fear. I played this with my cousin around 2013 (We live in a poor country, so lots of old games) and I was just amazed by it. The environment, bullet time, how scary it can sometimes be... It really is Monolith's magnum opus.
@@Treblaine you will find it easily on your main path. There is one elevator shaft where a body falls right in front of your eyes, like a scare. If you approach it and look down, there is a big pile of bodies.
40:30 - the repeating canon is one of my all time favourite FPS weapons. the way it can go through an enemy and create a crater in the wall behind them, then throw them TOWARDS you with that explosion from the wall? Amazing.
They were trying to make Civvie in a Pointman-style supersoldier, however , his skills and powers only work when playing retroshooters, so they tried to recoup on the investment by opening this channel
One of my all time favorite games. Aside from the amazing slow-mo combat, the enemy AI, the practical effects during the gunfights there is just something that keeps pulling me back to it. Even when there is no little girl scares, a sense of loneliness and alienation lingers around that makes the bland offices spaces and empty city streets haunting. Also, the ambient soundtrack to this is one of the best I've heard in a horror game.
It's funny how you mentioned "Sense of loneliness and alienation" of the Armacham offices. I thought about this as well. It is IMO quite close to the liminal place/backroom trend that is in full throttle nowadays, but 15 years ago.
FEAR is such a good game and holds up even today. I remember drinking sweet tea and eating saltines on cold winter nights in the dark at my great grandparents' place. Good times.
Its the only part of that game that I vividly remember. Cant tell you how many people I've told about it over the years. I hate jump scares, but man that one was done so well.
F.E.A.R. may easily be one of my abdolutely favorite games of all time. It might be pushing twenty years old but the sheer level of quality and polish on display still makes this game an absolute benchmark that I will forever hold newer first person shooters against. So far very few other games have come very close.
I LITERALLY just started playing this game again and was browsing TH-cam for some background noise and LOOK WHO I FOUND. your timing is impeccable civvie.
One neat trick is that your slow-mo is just crazy good reflexes, so not only does it give you a speed boost relative to your enemies but all the bullets remain hitscan so you avoid the Max Payne 1 issue of having to lead your shots by a country mile
@@thewraithwriter22 indeimaus made a video about this game few years prior, the whole "PRO [insert game here]" thing was used by civvie in his doom & blood videos, and indeimaus decided to use that title too in his F.E.A.R. video series (and maybe others as well but idk)
@@wildanmustopa9624 To further elaborate this is why Civvie jokes that he ripped him off. But yeah, Indeimaus, IIRC, DID play on Extreme whereas Civvie did Hard so technically, his IS the Pro FEAR video.
![[TH] 2024 PMSL SEA Finals D2 | Fall | ต้องรักษาฟอร์ม อย่ายอมให้ใครแซง](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/x38QsGn7A3M/mqdefault.jpg)
"I don't know how he survived" "Two guns and zero fucks, that's how" Is my new favourite Civvie 11 quote
God quote. 👍
T-shirt now
I was scrolling down to type exactly that, then I read this. Job done :)
Same.
@@matthayward7889 I’ll buy that for a dollar
I love how in the introduction when Jankowski says "You're putting him in the field? Are you crazy?!" the subtitles flicker and you hear static just like when Alma manifests her powers because Pointman was angry at being underestimated so he accidentally displayed a little bit of his latent powers. It's the little touches
All my years of playing and I never even noticed that.
Distressingly enough, the console version of the game had no subtitles at all.
If we are to accept this, then we also have to accept that Pointman was never angry again throughout the rest of the game. Not when he was being shot at, dodging grenades, or being mind invaded by his brother. Balls of steel.
@@xAutoTx i saw the overlay flicker many times throughout the video and thought it was maybe a bug but this explains everything
@@xAutoTx that is some work ethic right there.
The idea that Alma is popping up at Point Man's work day is very funny, it's canon Alma loves her kids like that.
The entire gimmick is comedy gold, treating FEAR like it's a particularly awkward Thanksgiving weekend and Point Man has to pick up Alice from Alma's house
It's also cannon alma rapes soldier boys because they reminds them of her son.
@@TheRoboKittyonce you know the lore, it’s all essentially one fucked reunion. I learned to take these games not so seriously, since it’s literally a game of family. Just with guns.
(Sees your profile pic)
Huzzah, a man of quality.
Possibly some of his greatest jokes by far.
"Lot of anger in this room."
"REALLY councillor Troy there was a lot of anger in this room of blood?"
"Why are all the floors lighting up?"
"Because God hates us and the Devil thinks it's funny."
The Troy one got me so good.
In the pre-release trailer, that was originally a line from Holiday.
"There's a lot of anger in this room"
"Great, anything useful to add?"
"Yo get off my dick, man, you asked what I thought"
The voice slowing down and going back to normal speed because of bullet time at 35:53 is such a wonderful touch
plus the dialogue is amazing
the slowmo adds a lot to it to just make it amazing
comedic genius
Those slow mo bits are my favorite
So much production value, it's nuts.
One of my favorite things in this game is when there's only one enemy left. They call out once, and when they realize they're alone, they're dead silent for the rest of the fight (except screaming at getting shot of course).
"Squad, check in." *silence*
I know they're just mindless clones but it makes you feel for em a bit.
@@buttlord2223 this kinda thing is built on in the game's spiritual successor Trenpang2 where the last guy alive calls out and basically goes "fuck, I'm all alone with a time dilating super soldier who can turn invisible on command."
Man, civvie was really in his element when he was writing this episode. Easily one of his best.
Yeah. The shared hatred I have for Norton Rapes is a plus. I’m glad someone hated him as much as me.
I was just thinking the same thing. The editing and comedic timing is at peak. Civvies like a fine wine.
Different feel to this one. Much stronger Ross Scott vibes.
love it how he developed a sibling rivalry with Paxton, even saying his name with contempt.
I get the feeling it's because he actually *likes* Fear. I feel like the videos of him playing games he _enjoys_ are, in turn, more enjoyable to watch. At least for me.
The clones screaming "OH SHIT!!!" in slow motion is forever imbedded into my vocabulary
"CONTACT!!!" for me.
@@michaelandreipalon359 WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHH
@@-k-b- Isn't that also Ork speak?
“Oh Sh*pops slo-mo* iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit”
Mine is: "He's trying to flank!"
fun fact. The person who did the AI-programming has an PHD in AI and one of the leading people in Google AI development. No wonder it was soo good
The AI is good but it's not nearly as good as it's been memed into urban legend. I think as Mandalore pointed out, a huge collection of vocal call outs help and so does the AI and level designer practically holding hands the whole time. You can see the AI start to lose it a tad in the expansions when the maps open up a little bit more.
@@Ty2188 Yeah the AI, while great, is specifically programmed to give the illusion of being more intelligent than it is and is heavily tailored to the different arenas themselves.
@@The1of1000 Which, when it comes to video game enemy AI? Is perfection. That's the goal, that it seems intelligent and provides a challenge to the player in the process.
It is good, there is no question. The people shitting on it need to get some better hobby. If that's bad (i.e. the programmer is basically hand holding it, or what we sometimes call "programs the game") then wtf are other games doing where the AI is far worse?
I didn't even know that programmer works on actual AI with Google now, that's dope.
@@Sorain1 But that has nothing to do with Google AI. In gaming faking things often gets the best results, when you're developing a generalist tool faking things will only lead to problems.
I love the ideas of point man just being a guy trying to distance himself from his strange family members. And whose brother keeps invading his life to make things awkward for him.
And then his brother becomes Point-Man's ghost-stand in part 3. What a weird family.
“God damn it Paxton I told you that you weren’t invited to my daughters birthday party. Did you really think dressing up one of your psychic soldiers like fucking John Wayne Gayce was a good idea? There’s a damn good reason we don’t send you family Christmas cards.”
There's a sitcom premise right there. "FEAR wil return after these messages *cue Seinfeld theme"
Hey Nico, it's your brother! Let's go bowling!
It's weird that Alma isn't trying to kill you, yet Paxton is...
Craig Hubbard saying his impetus was to make the game feel like that opening to Hard Boiled is all the motivation I need to play it. What a film!
Somehow despite Blood being my all-time favorite, I did miss this one. Fake fan, I guess
I remember Mandalore remarking on how "if a 100-page novel is shot in a John Woo movie, it needs to explode into 200 pages". And that's the experience F.E.A.R provides. Married, of course, with the aforementioned Japanese horror influence.
@@GmodPlusWoW sounds good
when you watch the making of videos, you really get the feeling that they wanted to make something special here
I've wanted to watch John Woo films for years but they've always been hard to track down, any suggestions?
Whoever puts the effort into the TH-cam subtitles for your videos does a fantastic job. My wife is hearing impaired and loves watching your videos because of this level of quality
No problem! 👍
@@AliaImmortalis Toutes tes traductions sont vraiment excellentes. Merci.
@@dntbther9298 👍
Oh yeah subtitles are the main reason i love to watch civvie because i have severe hearing loss! Of course civvie is also funniest lad i know in youtube.
@@Grindemsam 👍
I remember asking you on Twitter to do a Pro FEAR two years ago. I'mma credit this video to me. Thank you, Civvie. Very cool.
Thanks for the FEAR video, Fredrik.
Thanks for the FEAR video, Fredrik.
@@moonmerchant7148 Yeah, thanks Fredrik
Thanks, Freddy!
Thanks, Frederik.
It's worth noting that while each individual AI actor didn't know about the others, they still affected one another. They didn't have any build-in flanking subroutines, for instance, but when one enemy was engaged with you, it would increase the traversal cost for chunks of navmesh along its firing line, meaning that other AIs would prefer not to path across them unless absolutely necessary. That, combined with a bit of clever level design, meant you had enemies that would automatically flank you as a side effect of their basic A* pathfinding algorithm. Really ingenious stuff.
To memory the AI was squad-based. This meant larger encounters could have more squads, but also contributed to some slowdown.
he said that in the first few minutes of the video.
it looks simple on the surface but to make it that simple and the result is so convincing thats why the team that did it are top level a.i guys in the field today.
I can't help but wonder at how much of a step up that A.I. is
The only thing I really even have as a decent frame of reference was halo CE 4 years prior, where the elites would duck, dive, bob and weave to evade your fire, actively use cover if fire was overwhelming, flank you if an opportunity was there, and push aggressively whenever your shields were down
The level design was also a big part of it, in a way that you can't actually see. Most game AI systems have only limited ability to interact with and perceive the environment, in FEAR the maps contain nodes which give NPCs a much more detailed ability to path around and take certain actions based on positioning. This same concept was used in Half Life 2 but more sparsely.
The Replica freaking out when you go into Bullet Time was always so satisfying to me. Hearing a bred for combat, knows no fear soldier call out "He's too fast" or "Oh shit" in slo-mo always puts a smile on my face, before I proceed to wipe them from existence.
Love this game. Hell, I kinda love the whole series to an extent (yeah I can even find things to like about F3AR).
Damn even F3AR? Well i wanna hear that. What you like about F3AR?
@@ThompsonExpress The gameplay is actually solid, the co-op is stupid but entertaining, the weapons are actually fun to shoot (even if the shotgun is an abomination), enemy variety was pretty solid, there's a standout level in a department store that's been overrun by Alma Cultists which is one of my favorites in the series, and (when the servers weren't dead) the co-op mode where you ran from the death clouds was really fun. Just a few of the things I liked in F3AR, but its still the lowest on the totem pole for me.
@@vahlok1426 should i give it a shot if i get the chance?
@@ThompsonExpress If you can stand some jank, think of it not as a mainline FEAR game (imagine it's a crazy spinoff, makes things easier), and want to play a faster paced game than FEAR 2 that tries some new things, you may enjoy it. Its usually really cheap, so if you've got a few bucks burning a hole in your wallet I'd say you could actually do way worse. Also, it takes a bit before things "click" at least to me, so give it a bit before writing it off if you just can't take the fact that FEAR is now a dead series and that was the last game.
@@ThompsonExpress The gameplay is better than FEAR 2 but worse than FEAR 1. It's worth a playthrough for the interesting co-op aspect and campaign alone.
Other than that though, it's story was so bad that it killed the franchise that to this day still hasn't recovered.
F.E.A.R. really is the perfect example of "greater than the sum of its parts". I can't imagine how this game could work were it not for the drab, realistic office and industrial environments and generic faceless soldiers. Those elements add to the mood so much and reinforce the game's goal of being a perpetual urban shootout that making anything more fantastical would feel disingenuous and compete with the core attraction, that being the beautiful, BEAUTIFUL combat.
Also Alma did nothing wrong
Harlan, on the other hand, did almost everything wrong.
the lighting does a lot of work bringing the environments to life. really shows how important art direction is, making bland industrial office environments really memorable
I mean r🦍ing an innocent guy is kinda wrong
@@lweaver2988 only kinda tho
@@lweaver2988 Like father like daughter :v)
Love the reveal that Civvie has just plain been hallucinating Ramses.
And the unsettling implication that the "horrible baby thing" has just been recordings used to torment Civvie and drive him insane, and he's convinced.
Guess he played too much PowerSlave.
(Honestly, I initially thought he was referencing the Homeworld games, what with the Battle of Kadesh sounding like a certain series of events in the first game.)
@@michaelandreipalon359 He can do both.
The administrator is getting back at him after the nunclear meltdown called "Eminence Front"
I can't believe you didn't think to suggest the "baby" is a hallucination of the Postal 3 Eraserhead baby.
Where's this happen? I'm stupid
Interesting little tidbit: the rats in game have the same AI as the soldiers, so they take up the same resources. In the one level where a swarm of rats runs past you afraid of Alma, they run down a pipe and stay there, taking resources from the game until the level is over
There is a little detail that was discovered in 2015 i beleave. As you say they have a similar AI as the soldiers, yes, however they lack an action about what to do after seeing the player and fleeing, this causes a constant accumulation of calls of memory requesting an order, leading to what could be considered a memory leak. In order for this oversight to actually have an effect in the performace, the game had to be running for like 6 hours though.
@@LordofSadFac So killing them has a practical purpose then
Now I have the mental image of Skaven acting like F.E.A.R soldiers. And honestly, that'd probably make for a hell of a Vermintide spinoff.
That in mind, I don't know if The Last Exterminator is going to have rat soldiers in it, but I at least hope they end up in an expansion.
@@GmodPlusWoW Jesus H Christ, Skaven with actual Replica-tier competence is a terror that Warhammer is *not* ready for.
@@DinnerForkTongue "The man-fools ALL deserve to die-die!"
If you went up against Skaven Replicas, you'd probably need the Serum of Blistering Heat from DUSK.
Civvie slowly driving the robots insane via pun-ishment is my current joy in life.
Actionable pun detected.
@@bootblacking *BIZZZAAT*
Sin and Pun-ishment
It’s shocking how bad his puns are. BZZZZZZZ-
@@bootblacking i lov et win sivy sais the funny and his robots to actionals pun detec and it remind me of time whe ni was it in in the origin fasily and the doctor come and i was didnt wantted to go and he taser tasrer taser deploy and i went NO and he zapped me and i was realy sad so whe ncivvy 11 (eleven NOT THE TRASNGER THINGS SEASON 4 FINALY CHARACTER ELL EVEN) when shtivy does the funny pun i get a hard pp
18:35 "Ridiculous. Overpowered. Legendary."
This just turned into an Ahoy video... 👍
Was thinking the same :D
I can hear his buttery smooth voice saying it too.
Clever Girl
I thought the exact same thing lol
Man, I miss Ahoy :'(
"For I walk through the shadows of the halls of Armachan, I will fear no evil, for your are with me, my buckshot rod, my staff of liquification, prepare a table before me in the presence of mine enemies cause I'm serving lead!"
Probably the best line I've heard in a while.
Amen, Brother!
Despite early voicemails not being plot relevant, I still love them a lot because it’s nice to see the outside world reacting to the events of the game, as well as helps make the environments feel more real.
Same.
Ahh.... World building. I have heard of that.
seriously. hearing loved ones voicemails asking if they're okay and hoping they're on their way home when you know damn well they're dead is surprisingly effective
They actually are quite plot relevant and give quite a bit of background info
I really love how your own body feels in this game. Feels like it has real weight and momentum. The jump + kick move is so satisfying.
Prey 2017 had that too, you could feel how the main character's body had actual physicality to it.
I loved killing people with melee in the multiplayer back in the xbox 360 days
Kind of reminds me of the Riddick games.
@@marcellosilva9286 The most slept on game since Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines imo.
Ah, yes, love the physics of the Riddick games. Really hope they come back in Steam/GOG soon.
The visual of Wetland-Yutani looking at Armacham like "Have a little class, would you?" Is hysterical.
Like, even Umbrella would like to have words with Armacham at this point, and their whole shtick is insane bioweapons and experiments involving Zombie plagues and the like.
@@kabob0077 hasn't Umbrella ended the world multiple times over or something
@@MyScorpion42 Actually no, sure several of their scientists went rogue after Racoon City and started discreetly selling BOWs on the Black Market but the only thing that Umbrella actually DID do is take advantage of the chaos of Racoon City to field test various BOWs. The Outbreak happened because of some BOWs escaping the Spenser Estate and attacking people, thus spreading the T-Virus and eventually infecting the city, meanwhile the G-Virus got lose because Umbrella's USS team (The guys who shot Birkin) lost the briefcase with G-Virus samples in it and various pests like Rats got into it and contaminated the city's water reservoir.
There's also the fact that Umbrella's Disposal Facility they built for the waste of the NEST lab (Incineration Disposal Plant P-12A or as it's also known the Dead Factory) couldn't keep up and the viruses in THOSE corpses mutated, really Umbrella didn't directly do anything like purposefully release the Viruses.
@@MyScorpion42 In the W.S. Anderson movies, yeah. In the games they caused an outbreak in one city and all the investors pulled out, leaving the company as bankrupt financially as it already was morally. And that's how you kick off Resident Evil 4.
Reverse Flash is looking at this company like a disappointed Catholic school teacher.
Contrary to expectations CIVVIE is most entertaining when he is actually having fun
Ehh I'd say it's about equal. Depends what you want out of it.
He's at his best when he cries in agony.
@@DarkOmegaMK2 Hopefully emulators for older computers are still improving, we need more episodes with dos trash ahahaha!
@@plasmaoctopus1728 Yes... we need more of his tears... MORE!!!!!
One of the things I find rarely gets talked about when F.E.A.R comes up is just how on point the soundtrack is.
It's so densely atmospheric and tense, it's got lots of really cool experimental touches and there's lots of bangers for the combat sections, Nathan Grigg really went all out with it.
The garage battle music is one of the all time greats for video game action BGMs.
Straight fax. The music during the intro cutscene is the one of the most beautiful and emotional game tracks I've ever heard
Yes, it is distinctive, which is one of the most important aspect,
great mix or female vocals and tribal, recognizable samples used throughout
Sometimes I like to just turn it on while I'm working and let the atmosphere seep into whatever I'm doing.
I love the clown music with Mapes. It's so unlike anything else in the game
22:58 "The Shotgunner's Prayer" - Civvie 11:1
the bicycle kicks are the most underrated mechanic in this game. especially oneshotting the assassins in slow mo.
The slide kicks too, somehow they one-shot nearly everything and is my funny preferred way to take out those Replica Assassins.
@@GuntanksInSpace I was gonna mention this after the video but im so glad you guys already did
@@Vengeance19 as long as we can get other people to kick replica assassin knees out, it's all good lol
Fun tidbit: also works in FEAR 2 the same I think, it still one-shots them last I tried
I've never thought through the story of fear enough to realize that it's essentially a twisted family drama when you get down to it, and Civvie treating it exactly like that so casually is amazing
Civvie has completely recontextualized the Pointman for me. Like Ross did with Freeman's Mind.
So, Point Man's Mind?
Fear 2 has one of the most fucked up storylines dude
@@czarnakoza9697 more like "me and my boys trying to resolve a spiritual anomaly and i end up getting held down and raped by a teenage girl" but sure
@@DatBoi-mo9vc I personally was a bit disappointed by it's direction - I really liked the bleak, apocalyptic direction expansion pack Extraction Point took myself, where it was implied that Alma is out to destroy rest of humanity to live in peace together with Point Man, and Point Man just tries to survive the cataclysmic mayhem.
One cool thing he didnt mention is that especially in slow mo, if you kill an enemy and they go into ragdoll mode, they'll sometimes fire their weapons and you can see the bullets hit walls/ceilings/the floor in a really cool ark and it just adds to how amazing the combat is.
Details man.
Its all in the small details.
You can also see it happening in regular speed too, but slow mo adds a lot to the spectacle.
Yeah and sometimes those bullets hit you, which is kind of annoying, lol
I think it was a mistake to make slow mo regenerate. It was way too OP to be an automatically replenishable resource.
Like, the whole game on a maximum difficulty is a cakewalk with just leaning out of a cover and headshotting everything in slow motion
It should have been a resource you get from killing enemies or picking up stuff (like with ammo and health)
I think dev team thought of this as well but maybe they were way too hyped on that feature
Everything else i believe this game did perfectly, the design, the atmosphere, the combat. Gunplay could be a bit better but it's still way ahead most games of that time. The music isn't something to listen on it's own but it fits the game itself like a thread in a needle.
One of the biggest mysteries is why F.E.A.R. didn't became a cult game like CoD or Quake. It did everything to appeal to both casual gamers and those who were into small details. The graphics look good even after almost 20 years, yet even back in the days it didn't require you to sell an organ like ID games did for example.
@@maxpavlovskyTrepang2 is a wonderful spiritual successor to F.E.A.R, it makes slow mo a limited resource that’s only refilled with kills. It works really well, especially when it’s more fast paced
The way you talk about Paxton as if he's the annoying brother, and the whole family gag in general, had me in tears. Absolutely hilarious.
One might call these segments of the video "Point Man's Mind".
@@michaelandreipalon359 I would kill for a Freeman's Mind style playthrough of FEAR by Civvie like this.
Absolutely old chap. Pop another organic mushroom in the oven.
You missed one magical trick that the FEAR Shotgun (Blessed be its name) does: saw fools in half. Seeing a torso pirouette through the air in slow motion while firing their gun and their legs tumble around on the floor is truly majestic.
FEAR is so good that it managed to make audio logs unobtrusive. The voicemails deliver backstory without feeling like self-narration, and sending data to your handler lets him summarize the findings while keeping extraneous details to a minimum. Both work with the game's overall good pacing and presentation to convey a sense of unfolding dread. While you've got your face full of hostile clones, giant robots, a psychic cannibal calling you 'brother', and an off-brand Ring Girl, you get the impression the guy looking at spreadsheets isn't having a much better day. And god *damn* but "brace yourself for the assfuck of the century" is a one-in-a-million phrase.
Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that you can fend off the final Alma encounter with a snap-kick to the face? Pointman doesn't have time for awkward family reunions, he's gotta go watch Delta Force lose another chopper.
the audio logs are unobtrusive because they are completely skippable and not worth listening too. I *love* FEAR but the story is nonsense filler and the horror elements feel tacked on (outside of the overall atmosphere which is A+).
@@Flameb0 The story is nothing to write home about, but I wouldn't say that it's nonsense. People complain about the beginning of the game at the water treatment plant but that was intended to be a diversion from Armacham to distract the FEAR team. The rest of the plot is discovering the origins of the horrible projects Armacham was apart of.
FEAR 2 was definitely better at handling the story aspect, but if the story was nonsense to begin with then FEAR 2's story and ending cliffhanger wouldn't be regarded so highly.
It's a shame that FEAR basically perfected audio logs and yet pretty much every game after to include them just features them as droning exposition the player inorganically picks up off the floor, or long-winded emails in conveniently placed terminals. Bioshock came out ~3 years later and while it's still a fantastic game much of the lore and world building is given to the player via random tape recordings that are basically random people of vague importance making overly detailed entries in a personal audio diary for no particular reason.
There's also the huge gameplay contradiction of audio logs being something you typically pick up so you can keep playing while you listen to them, yet most players who care enough to pay attention aren't going to keep moving. They're just going to sit there waiting for the log to finish on the off-chance something happens while they're playing and they miss half of it and need to relisten to the whole thing from the start.
AvP 2010 is the most egregiously incompetent audio log implementation I can think of, not only do you find them after pointless exploration to completely nonsense areas half the time, not only are they the droning exposition of someone recording themselves journaling while running from xenomorphs, but the game actually expects you to listen to them in the pause menu with the buzzing static noise and the bright janky CRT TV effect background the game uses for the menu. The entire mechanic feels like some executive demanded audiologs be included halfway through development because they've become so common and no one on the dev team knew how to stick em in in an organic way.
I actually thought this game was just a spooky sort of horror. I've avoided it all this time not realising what sort of game it truly is. I sort of regret not playing this in my younger days now, where I would have definitely appreciated it way more for it's originality. Still, I'll definitely give it a go. thank you for sharing this, Norton
@@desmasic Incorrect. This game is plenty scary the first time you play it and is still my go-to for a horror game. "You have guns, therefore not scary" is a bullshit argument, since a) it's a game, not a walk and hide simulator and b) your guns don't actually do shit to the supernatural elements like Alma anyway. Hell even Paxton only dies when he lets you shoot him and then comes back to life in both timelines regardless. As Civvie points out, none of your arsenal or abilities affects the story or even slightly inconvenience the antagonists. You're just along for the ride.
I regret not being able to play through it a second time. I was genuinely scared by the game as a teen, so I wound up taking it slow and cautiously instead of as a cracked-out spider monkey like I've seen more experienced players do. I might have to hunt down a copy for the 360 (my most modern game platform right now) to go through it again.
FEAR2 improved on some aspects of the game, mainly the spooky scares. So many memorable moments.
@@desmasic ??? The atmosphere, soundtrack and pacing creates plenty of horror in this game.
@@shmekelfreckles8157 even on a second playthrough Wade Elementary still scares me lol.
The shotgun being so godlike is another John Woo thing. It was Tequila's weapon of choice in Hard Boiled and Chance's too in Hard Target and they used them to devastating effect.
A shotgun in a John Woo movie is practically a grenade launcher
I don't remember where or who I heard it from, but I like to refer to shotguns like this as "street howitzers"
Little bit of trivia I picked up: in Hong Kong, shotguns are known as 'Remingtons' regardless of who actually made them:
th-cam.com/video/G_S75AvNe4Q/w-d-xo.html
Now if only the one in FEAR was anywhere close to as good as people claim it is.
That bit in the warehouse fight in Hard Boiled when Tequila whips the shotgun off his back and starts blasting: good shit.
13:38 I love how John Carmack's name gets longer and more descriptive every time 😂
i await the day civvie will go
"God. Just... straight up god himself John Carmack"
It's part of the incantation to keep him asleep
I'm just now appreciating the canvas of "clearing a spooky area with a battle buddy but they don't experience the same things you do" that Monolith dug. I dug it too.
Dead Space series does this too
I’m picturing Civvi’s version of Pointman as Archer which makes the sibling rivalry bit so much funnier.
So….
Don’t you dare brother!
Your the reason for the danger zone I’m in?
"t r u s t m e I ' m a p r o f e s s I o n a l and I've got a shotgun". Absolutely brilliant Civvie.
F.E.A.R is such a gem of a title. It was one of my late grandads favourite games - he enjoyed setting traps for those scripted sequences. Cheers Norton Mapes for the quality vid!
I used to love doing that - as soon as I knew something was gonna break down a door, I'd plant every single mine and remote bomb there, and watch the ensuing explosion in slow motion.
@@NicholasBrakespear This! Absolutely satisfying.
I've just completed the game again - this time on an OLED display. It really comes alive on here what with the stark contrast shadows and light sources. Looks absolutely stunning!
I played this for the first time back in 2016, and even then I was absolutely floored by how immersive it was. Even while dated, the environments and lighting are masterfully done, and the AI had a huge part in making the game actually scary for me. I wish more horror games followed suit instead of bullet sponges slowly walking towards you.
I especially like the quote at 2:58 because so many horror games for me just become tedious and annoying in the forms of "tension" they add to them. Like in most I can jive with the premise that there would be limited resources like healing and bullets, but why would I not grab some of the obviously useful objects that I could smack zombies with to defend myself? Or the games where they have stealth but it's the most extreme example of having to wait out the patrol path of the enemies (a thing that good stealth games get backlash for and then their sequels over-correct and go a more action oriented route, but horror with stealth seems to get a free pass?).
A lot better idea playing it in 2016 than 2005. This was the Crysis of its day, capable of bringing even the mightiest and most expensive hardware to its knees at max settings.
Only the thjen-rapid pace of hardware advancement (helped by the rise in popularity of dual video cards) prevented "Can it run FEAR?" from becoming an enduring meme.
I get a little thrill when I start FEAR on a modern system, set all the settings to max, and it still runs buttery smooth.
@@CptJistuce You might wince, but I played this on an Xbox 360 at the time. 😂
@@winlover37 Oh man, I forgot there was a console version.
@@CptJistuce It honestly ran pretty well. I got it on PC, which is nice, but I've been putting off looking up guides to make it work well with Windows 10 lol. Someday
I like how instead of starting off supernatural before revealing that it's actually science fiction, F.E.A.R. starts off as science fiction until the end when you find out Alma is just an incredibly pissed off ghost.
"My litmus test for good dual wielding is if you can play Painkiller with the pistols" 15:02
Beat me to it. It's literally Painkiller
nice catch
Thanks!
Pro Painkiller when?
@2:58 Probably one of my favorite quotes to be followed for a horror game, and to think this was achieved in a literal first person shooter, where it would've been fine to just establish tension through losing your progress, but Monolith went all out in creating what I believe to be a smarter and a more engaging horror experience, and that's why I appreciate them even after all these years. FEAR really hasn't aged a bit.
i think losing progress or risk of it can be fun but almost none games done it in fun or engadging way
This video continues the amazing trend of needlessly complicated titles for Carmack that Civvie keeps making and I love it.
next time, he might use non-existent words to describe Carmak
18:25 [Pointman twirls the shotty like it’s a trick revolver because his reflexes are totally off the charts] *_”Twelve shots…”_*
*Enough to kill anything that moves.*
"You're pretty good..."
@@michaelandreipalon359 and some things that don't
The unexpected Megaman X4 track is honestly the type of thing that makes Civvie11 stand out and earn me as a subscriber
It was very surreal, like when he played Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow music in one of the Petty Thief videos.
Yeah, this is the last channel on which I expected an X4 track to show up.
Definitely. Moments like that show how much he appreciates games music. I loved when he put the special stage music for Sonic 2 in one the Nightmare Reaper videos when he went to show a weapon off.
Oh, yes and the song hit so-o good!
For me, it's the Exorcist 3 snippet from Dourif's amazing screaming monologue situated within the animated WB logo. {chef's kiss}
fun facted, when Alma is coming at you at the end of the game, she is trying to hug you. but sadly for her, her touch will kill
nah m8 she tryna do the fear2 ending but failed
@@flooku987bro that's just wrong, its her son 💀
@@kronadc Like Father like Daughter.
Nah, she’s really just trying to touch your bussy
Where’d you get that from?
FEAR is an absolute best FPS games of all time. It’s seventeen years old and it still looks amazing. The gameplay,the enemy soldiers and of course the weapons in this game is phenomenal. Especially when you wield the Shotgun in this game in slow motion mode. That gun is an absolute beast and I loved using it. Makes me wanna play this game again.
The only thing I remember the AI doing in FEAR was one particular moment where there was a shelf that was knocked over and leaning against a wall. An AI decided to crawl under it right in front of me rather than run around it, making him the easiest headshot I've ever done. It was hilarious enough that even damn near 20 years later I still remember it.
Here I was so focused on the replica soldiers that I didn't even realize that one of them was crawling towards me.
Speaking of legendary, that Beetlejuice gag with John Woo's signature pigeons was comedy gold.
I love how Civvie act with the mute protagonists. He nods, looks towards the NPC talking to him.... Brings a new angle to them.
This shotgun is my all time favorite. The sound, the impact, the feedback. It's all perfect. I don't really care if it isn't the most powerful, it is far and beyond the most fun one to use. Just slow-mo jump kicking through glass while firing that gun into a squad of clones...... Perfection!
The euphoria of blasting away shitheads with the VK-12 never goes away no matter how long you play. It's always awesome.
It is, It is the most powerful shotgun of all time. Blood or doom super shotguns dont even come close. Hear me out, when has a shotgun been so op
that it turns enemies to mush in 1 shot.
@@cactusmann5542 I'm quite certain that Doom's super shotgun can exactly do that, turn enemies to mush in one shot.
Civvie's sarcastic wit and humor are very strong in F.E.A.R.
Best moments:
7:17 - meet Spencer Jankowski
8:52 - Rat hunt
11:54 - John Woo Slo-Mo
14:33 - Civvie 11 is Neo
17:15 - VK-12: ridiculous, overpowered, legendary
22:59 - "Bruce "Ash" Campbell's Prayer
23:44, 31:15, 31:54 - Civvie's arch nemesis: Norton "Ginger Meat Boulder" Mapes
32:31 - Civvie goes Mega X
34:30 - Family reunion
40:46 - "No!!! He's Mine! MINE!!!!"
44:05 - Jason Lives
missed the battle of Kadesh one, but maybe that's me being autistic
The moment from FEAR that I always remember (and it's been too long to remember when it happens in the game), is seeing a bad guy walk around a corner into an alley, following to kill him, but when I round the corner there's no one there, turn back around and freakin' Paxton doing his ash-dissolve walk into me. I was so confused as to where the soldier went that the random jump scare got me so good.
The moment I remember is when the wall-crawling assassin guys first showed up and I thought they were a hallucination until I walked into a cubicle and one kicked me in the face and scurried into a vent. After that, I was never TRULY sure what was "real" and what wasn't.
Civvie gushing over an FPS shotgun is truly a wonderful thing, like poetry. Although not as magical as when he referenced the doom 2 super shotgun in that video, this is definitely a glorious second.
My favorite thing about this game is the look of the replicant soldiers, to this day they're still some of the most badass looking enemies in fiction. Their voice actor also did a fantastic job.
Clones from who?
@@luichinplaystation610 Replica Soldier. The main enemy you face in the game.
@@luichinplaystation610 they're cloned from Paxton Fettel's DNA, which is confirmed in the Reborn DLC for F.E.A.R. 2 because the replica soldier you play as, referred to as Foxtrot 813, has an exact facial resemblance to Fettel meaning he was the primary genetic donor to make them.
Now THIS is a game I remeber as a kid and am excited to watch all over again
I thought that this game was 18+ or something . I guess not.
@@footballambler go find me these 2000's kids who gave a f about age restrictions.
so, what the first thing you remember?
Well, if you want to watch a really good playthrough of it, there's one by patologTV.
Always good to start off an episode with a nice dose of Brad Dourif.
coincidentally, I watched the Exorcist 3 again yesterday. great underrated psychological horror movie.
@@KilliK69 IT REALLY IS
Appropriate & legit to describe the situation at-hand. 👌
One of the most talented and underrated actors of our time, the guy is fkn awesome
Gotta love his roles in Child's Play and Myst III.
That WB/Exorcist 3 Brad Dourif bit was so well done, and I actually laughed out loud at it.
Never thought I’d see exorcist 3 in a Civvie vid, it deserves more love
The reason I remember this game is pretty weird - it was the first game I played where you shoot at a wall and it gets bullet holes with actual depth. That was impressive and I couldn't explain it back then. Now it's common, and.. yeah.. Impressive effects for 2005!
I still find those bullet holes better than games nowadays, because it's huge. Makes the guns feel truly powerful. Tiny ones are boring.
still utilized all those effects significantly better than most games today
Also, the lighting system is awesome
I remember game journals creamed their pants about tech that made bullet holes have actual depth. It's not real depth, btw, but the illusion is very convincing.
Yeah the use of normal maps in this game definitely stood out to me. Same for the Chronicles of Riddick game
@@desmasic Yes it is.
I hope one day there will be someone who talks about me like Civvie talks about FEAR's shotgun.
He had to one-up Mandalore talking about Marathon 2's shotgun somehow
or about super intergalatic intelligence carried by an android made of pure brain matter John Carmack
You killed me with the "17 years ago".. Holy crap....insane how fast time seems to move.
Same here. I had to pause the video and reflect on that for a few moments.
@@debaser38 17 years ago...
i just got my PS2 and played SSX Tricky, Stuntman and Lego Star Wars all day long... 17 years ago...
@@ThompsonExpress SSX Tricky ruled. need to bring that franchise back.
The fact that Civvie used Mega Man X music in this video makes it one of my new favorites. Also this makes me wanna play F.E.A.R more than ever
Amazing.
I'd also like to add that Mark Lund's voice acting for the Replicas adds so much to the intensity of firefights.
Really impressive, coming from a bunch of soulless clones.
I can't emphasize enough how different this game felt when it came out. It felt like every other game at the time enemies were always aware of you, so if you decided to throw out a grenade the enemies would yell "Grenade!" loudly but calmly and dive roll out of the way only to get caught in the explosion anyway. In Fear I see the shadow of a guy patrolling a small room. I throw a grenade through the window shattering it. The guy shouts "Fuck!" a fraction of a second before the grenade explodes. Physics objects and glass shards thrown out the window blood covering the walls, a lamp swinging back and forth casting intense shadows.
Pragmatically I did the same thing, I threw a grenade and killed a single enemy but it felt so much better!
I'd finished the series and its expansions a few years back, and while I enjoyed it, until Civvie pointed it out, I didn't realize the degree to which the game mechanics encourage getting the drop on/startling your enemy, especially in maximising the benefits of your Slow-Mo abilities. In comparison to, say, Half-Life, where you would immediately get perforated by the HECU the instant you made line of sight contact, that half-second of surprise the squads have when you pop up seemingly out of nowhere was an extra touch of class and realism.
@@BirdmanDeuce26
And you know the best part? The enemies move to flank, but so can you. Draw their attention and fire to an entrance, then circle around to another door and bushwhack them from there. It's so good, you can beat Extreme Mode without Slow-Mo with it.
He was only named Point Man because it was noticed in training that he always seemed to have an erection.
I seriously can't wait for Trepang2 to be fully released. It may not have the backing and experience that Monolith had, but god damn does it have the heart and intentions.
What ever happened to it
The game doesn't launch on my PC for some reason
Again, Migor Rortis, there's nothing wrong happening to it, it's just not out from Early Access yet.
@@Jtoob-z5n its has no funding, the devs are basically doing it for free so it takes a while
damn.
The bomb expert's nose growing when he says the civilian will be fine? Good touch. Details like that make Civvie videos so rewatchable!
33:55 The CC is adjusted for the slow-mo
That is *unreal* attention to detail. HUGE respect
It's a good day when Civvie makes a new video
You misspelled week and month and year 🤭
Always
Gotta love the blood filled screen with cheetoh's floating around in it, that's top tier funny!
I'm still surprised at how good this game looks, even...17 years later???
2005 doesn't feel like *that* long ago. Christ, I'm getting old.
Also - "Ginger Meat Boulder" is the funniest fucking insult I've heard in ages
Guess somebody's gonna put that Owl House meme featuring Amity and Eda then.
Oh, and as Grímsdóttir once said to Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory: "I have bad news for you, Sam. *You are old."*
FEAR 2 still looks fantastic too from 2009. It even looks better than F3AR
If you wanna feel older, I was born in 2004
Thank you for making a video about this masterpiece of a game, civvie.
I played this game on PS3 console years ago. I miss it.
I understand that Fear is now only available (last time I checked) on Steam in a collector's 3-pack that costs +60 dollars & has horrible ratings & compatibility issues on PC.
@@Claymann71 You can get it on a decent price once steam sales hit. Thats how i got it on steam.
:clueless:
:clueless:
@@Claymann71 The GOG build is available separately, but unfortunately has traces of SecuROM in it. The files seem to be dormant though, shouldn't cause much harm.
10:29 "I was really enjoying that sherry Dr. Gorman bought for me, and I was going to share it, but no, because you ATE HIM PAXTON! That's the kind of social faux-pas that could RUIN THIS FAMILY!"
No matter how many times I hear that line, it still makes me crack up.
The shootout in the parking garage remains one of my favorite moments in any FPS.
Max Payne 3 was the same
Man oh man did I love the extra movement + melee mechanic options they gave you in this game. You didn't HAVE to use them, but you could if you wanted to feel like an action movie badass
Btw, loved that seamless slowmo voiceover transition
one issue...
The jump kick always fucked me over and I think I landed it 2-3 times... ish?
I wish it was just a jump kick instead of a bicycle kick, it lock your animation and Replica have much better hand-to-hand training then you do.
The whole introduction that CV-11 does to the shotgun is absolutely amazing.
Even for me who never played this game can feel how amazingly well done it is.
Got this game back in 2010 from a used game shop on a summer up in Columbus, Ohio. I didnt have my big desktop with me, so I played it on a Compaq 515 laptop that could barely handle it. I thought it was the best game ever for like a year and gifted it to a friend so he too could experience the magic. Thanks for showcasing this absolute gem Civvie11.
22:59 Okay THIS is my new favorite Civvie quote
20:20 is an honorable mention
Oh yeah- IT REALLY is!
"Look, I spend a lot of time in slow-mo with dual pistols. If you don't, you're playing it wrong."
John Woo approves of this comment.
After sitting down with my reheated slices of leftover meatball pizza, I began looking for something to watch that I’d enjoy enough that I wouldn’t have to switch to something else and disrupt my amazing meal. Then I noticed you uploaded a new video and I said to myself “ah, a civvie video, perfect!”…and that’s when I realized how grateful I am for your content. Civvie, your videos are always a pleasure to watch and I just wanna say thank you. You made my pizza even better
Playing through this on Steam Deck right now. FEAR is a timeless masterpiece of an FPS
How are the controls for that, idk if it had controller support
@@t850terminator It doesn’t have controller support. Mapping the controls is a bit of a process, but they end up working fairly well. I edited a community layout to my liking. I found that a low-sensitivity gyro setting helps with the finer aiming present in the game.
Timeless masterpiece NOPE not even remotely close, yes, yes I know the AI is "amazing"......The game is good at best and every single expansion and sequel is worse than the one before it.
@@lutherheggs451 Ok and?
playing without using "Bullet Time" is actually really fun. it makes the firefights extra tense and satisfying for a challenge and is extremely possible, which shows its a great bonus mechanic and not a dev crutch.
Man, Fear. I played this with my cousin around 2013 (We live in a poor country, so lots of old games) and I was just amazed by it. The environment, bullet time, how scary it can sometimes be... It really is Monolith's magnum opus.
Also, finding all the Armacham employees executed and thrown to the bottom of an elevator shaft is still chilling 17 years later
I never found that (how did I miss it) where was it in the Offices level?
@@Treblaine you will find it easily on your main path. There is one elevator shaft where a body falls right in front of your eyes, like a scare. If you approach it and look down, there is a big pile of bodies.
@@Jell-o-cide I do have a recollection of seeing a body fall, I should have been more curious.
40:30 - the repeating canon is one of my all time favourite FPS weapons. the way it can go through an enemy and create a crater in the wall behind them, then throw them TOWARDS you with that explosion from the wall? Amazing.
They were trying to make Civvie in a Pointman-style supersoldier, however , his skills and powers only work when playing retroshooters, so they tried to recoup on the investment by opening this channel
One of my all time favorite games. Aside from the amazing slow-mo combat, the enemy AI, the practical effects during the gunfights there is just something that keeps pulling me back to it. Even when there is no little girl scares, a sense of loneliness and alienation lingers around that makes the bland offices spaces and empty city streets haunting. Also, the ambient soundtrack to this is one of the best I've heard in a horror game.
It's funny how you mentioned "Sense of loneliness and alienation" of the Armacham offices. I thought about this as well. It is IMO quite close to the liminal place/backroom trend that is in full throttle nowadays, but 15 years ago.
Are they really practical effects if it's a video game?
FEAR is such a good game and holds up even today. I remember drinking sweet tea and eating saltines on cold winter nights in the dark at my great grandparents' place. Good times.
Such a good game. I still remember that jumpscare at the top of the ladder, 17 years later.
Its the only part of that game that I vividly remember. Cant tell you how many people I've told about it over the years. I hate jump scares, but man that one was done so well.
The cannibal saying the dead man's name was Hamberder almost killed me.
30:18 This double bounce grenade throw was perfect, too bad they weren't enemies.
F.E.A.R. may easily be one of my abdolutely favorite games of all time. It might be pushing twenty years old but the sheer level of quality and polish on display still makes this game an absolute benchmark that I will forever hold newer first person shooters against. So far very few other games have come very close.
I LITERALLY just started playing this game again and was browsing TH-cam for some background noise and LOOK WHO I FOUND. your timing is impeccable civvie.
One neat trick is that your slow-mo is just crazy good reflexes, so not only does it give you a speed boost relative to your enemies but all the bullets remain hitscan so you avoid the Max Payne 1 issue of having to lead your shots by a country mile
I was wondering why it wasn’t called Pro FEAR, then I realized the crimes Mausy commited
Elaborate, please
@@thewraithwriter22 indeimaus
@@wildanmustopa9624 Explain, plz
@@thewraithwriter22 indeimaus made a video about this game few years prior, the whole "PRO [insert game here]" thing was used by civvie in his doom & blood videos, and indeimaus decided to use that title too in his F.E.A.R. video series (and maybe others as well but idk)
@@wildanmustopa9624 To further elaborate this is why Civvie jokes that he ripped him off. But yeah, Indeimaus, IIRC, DID play on Extreme whereas Civvie did Hard so technically, his IS the Pro FEAR video.
*"I don't know how he survived" "2 guns & zero f*cks that's how" that is a badass line right there.*
It's always fun when Civvie gets the MMX music going
These John Carmack jokes give me life & will live forever in my mind rent-free.
#FreeCivvie11