Review by: Tom Chick

Fear 3 is easily the best of the Fear games for one simple reason: it has a clear sense of its own identity. Monolith's earlier games consisted of an erratic blend of incoherent storytelling, pointless jump scares, and shooter playgrounds with good AI. But Fear 3, handed off from Monolith to Day 1 Studios, focuses on the three rules of making a good shooter: gunplay, gunplay, gunplay. The result isn't much of a story and it isn't very scary. Instead, it's just a shooter. A very good shooter.

Not to say Fear 3 doesn't appreciate its heritage. It leans on a lot of the trappings of the previous games: Apocalyptic horror fallout. Devil dog thingies. Squads of super soldiers. And, of course, scary little ghost girl Alma. Her appearances in Fear 3 are doled out more sparingly, and hardly ever for scares. "Oh, look, it's that nice little girl again!" is the more common reaction. In fact, many of Alma's appearances are as a frightened little girl who vanishes when you draw near. This time she's more Little Sister than Samara.

Similarly, all the hoo-ha about Harlan Wade and Fairpoint and some woman you're rescuing are mostly footnoted into the gaps between levels. You get to see some cool stuff about the brothers as boys and the last level is pretty much a story-based fun house in which child abuse in the name of science is personified as a boss monster. But for the most part, the story stuff sits quietly in the back seat while you play your very good shooter.

If you liked The Club, Bizarre Creations' little-known score-based shooter, or even what Bulletstorm attempted with less success with its sadly canned skill kills, you'll love Fear 3. Each level tracks a wide variety of achievements for a final score, and you can call up a display at any moment to see how best to get the most points. But your score isn't just for leaderboards. Your points accumulate across play sessions, like experience points, to unlock mild perks like more health, extra ammo clips, or another grenade. Nothing too dramatic, but since it's derived from and applied to every way you play the game, including single-player and multiplayer, it's enough to pull you forward from level to level.

The gunplay is based on the series' slow motion gimmick, which you can use regularly thanks to your regenerating pool of slo-mo juice. Previously, this let you line up headshots and admire the graphics. But here it lets you finesse whatever scoring challenges you might need. It also gives the gunplay a nice tension/release dynamic. Sometimes you’ll have to stay in cover to “catch your breath”, i.e. let the slo-mo juice refill. Fear 3 includes important moments of cowering, so it earns its cover system. During these moments of tense downtime, will an enemy chuck a grenade or work around your flank? It's not the relentless shootshootshoot of a Call of Duty. It's a calculated pace.

As a single-player campaign, this is a short game, not because there isn't much game; instead, it's short because it's entirely without filler, a lean muscular package consisting of distinct levels, solid enemy AI, and varied challenges, including some gleeful mayhem courtesy of a few mech sequences. What's more, Fear 3 is built so that you can play through each level as either a heavily armed soldier with his slo-mo juice; his ghostly companion who can levitate, blast, and possess enemies; or as a cooperative multiplayer game with one player as the soldier and the other players as the ghost. Fear 3 is about gunplay, ghostplay, and combining the two online or in splitscreen so you and a buddy can crank up the difficulty and paint the halls red. It's like Call of Duty crossed with Jedi Knight crossed with Lara Croft and the Guardians of Light with the scoring system of The Club. Why can't all shooters simply be this straightforward and good?