Almost a year ago when Monolith and Sierra released F.E.A.R. onto the PC gaming market, it was critically hailed for being a tense, action-packed, psychological thriller that would pump action into you as quick as it would frights and chills. The graphics and game play made the game stand out among the rest of the FPS games on the market and for good reason. The game featured a full sized single player experience as well as an exceptional multiplayer aspect that featured the usual game play modes; CTF, TDM and DM, that, in a unique feature, incorporated the games slow motion feature. A year after the release of F.E.A.R. and just before Monolith gears up for the soon to be released PC Expansion, Extraction Point, and Xbox 360 version of the original, Monolith and Sierra have done the unthinkable and released the full multiplayer aspect of F.E.A.R. for a free download to the general masses so that they can enjoy the fast, furious action with those that have downloaded F.E.A.R. Combat as well as those who have purchased the retail version.

For those that have not experienced F.E.A.R. before, the visuals of the game are comparative to those of other FPS heavy hitters such as DOOM 3 and Prey. The light and shadows are brought alive in a fantastic form and prove to be useful; not just for eye candy but in strategy as well. Stray bullet hits on walls leave chunked out plaster, wood splinters apart when shot and fills the air with dust, leaving it to slowly float to the ground. Grenade explosions bend the air around it and creates a great visual, showing the area get warped and distorted where its effect reaches to. Players that find themselves on the receiving end of some slugs will find their blood getting splattered across their uniforms and whatever else happens to be behind them. Rag dolls physics are exceptional when enemies take their licks. Watching bodies and body parts go flying from explosions and kicks to the head is as fun and awesome to watch as it is when a player gets nailed with the Penetrator, nailing limbs and torsos to walls. Before the game begins, you can customize your character, selecting its player model and its insignia. Insignias are used in the game to float over your team mates heads to help you distinguish friend from foe, which is much easier then a color difference on the sometimes too dark maps.

Being a free download doesn’t mean that the game skimps on any of the features that people received when they purchased their copy of the full game. The game features the full 19 maps from the retail version and 10 game modes to keep players entrenched in brutal and bloody battles. The game modes range from the regular FPS fare of CTF, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Elimination and Team Elimination - the regular last man standing type of game play - with a couple of others known as Control and Conquer All where players need to take over and remain in possession of control points spread through out the map. For a twist on the CTF, DM and TDM modes, they are also available in Slo-Mo versions where players can access the SloMo Recharge Boost which will fill up your reflex bar at the bottom of the screen. When it is full, players can activate it and the world around them slows to a snails pace except for you and lets you unleash all hell on anyone around you, but be warned, your position will be given away by a navigation marker above your head that all players will be able to see.

The map environments are mostly indoor maps of offices, buildings and a collection of corridors, with a few exceptions of outdoor maps like Deadwood which features a full scale war in a pine tree filled forest. Many of the indoor maps are in different locales but quite a few of them are similar to each other in looks and layout. Although the map Office is in, well an Office, it seems quite similar to say, Construction which is basically an office building in the middle on renovations. Each map has weapons and heath pick ups spread out through them to keep you loaded up and ready for a fight. Each map is strewn with objects and various light sources that can be used for and against you. Knocking over a vase or popping out a window can alert your enemies as well as an unnoticed light casting your shadow around a corner you are sneaking up on can give away your position unwittingly.

The weapon load out in F.E.A.R. features some pretty decent fire power as well as some fun detonators. As each map loads up, you are able to select which weapon you want to roll with ranging from submachine guns, a shotgun, pistols and the not-so tender 10 mm Penetrator that fires large nail type projectiles. Some other main weapons that can be found through out the maps are the railgun style Particle Cannon that vaporizes enemies and the powerhouse MOD-3 Rocket Launcher for some mucho damage and fireworks. The grenades that you can find scattered about come in a few flavors as well. There are the regular, run of the mill, Frag Grenades that you toss, along with the nifty M77 remote grenades that you can lob against walls and ceilings so that they stick there waiting for a victim to come along and for you to detonate them. Proximity mines can be placed in some nefarious places such as around corners and behind objects, so that when an enemy gets a little to close, it pops up and takes them out in a glorious explosion of destruction. For those that can’t get their weapons up in time to take down an enemy in close quarters, you are able to use melee attacks such as jump kicks and leg slides, which can get frustrating since melee attacks will take you in a blink of an eye.

F.E.A.R. Combat is an early Christmas present from Monolith and it is some violent and vicious online action that looks absolutely gorgeous, although players will need a pretty hefty gaming rig to experience it in all its glory. With the recommended specifications rounding off at a Pentium 4 3.0 or equivalent, 1 gig of RAM and a GeForce 6600 or an ATI Radeon 9800, some settings can be scaled down to increase performance, but too much and you will be cheating yourself of an awesome visual experience. If you have some time to kill, get your download fired up, but it will take some time seeing as the download itself pulls in at a hefty 2 gigs, which is no small file, but it is so definitely worth it. With all that F.E.A.R. Combat has to offer, and for the whole kit and caboodle being absolutely free of charge, it really is a game that no FPS fan should miss out on.