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Coming Soon > PlayStation Game Cheats > PlayStation Reviews > Staff Review | |
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| Playability: When I first started playing Fear Effect I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a very well produced Anime flick…but I was actually playing it! The game starts out with a nicely produced introduction where you gain some background on the kidnapped girl and then shifts to a scene happening 24 hours prior to the actual event. In this scene two of the games three playable characters are introduced (Hana and Glas). From this point the game shifts seamlessly to the actual action and you get to take control of Hana as she navigates her way around a helipad. Considering the fact that the backgrounds are all FMV's the camera work has a certain amount of leeway. For the most part this works out nicely with superb cinematic zooming and rotating being pulled off, but still your character is occasionally left in the distance somewhere making it a bit difficult to identify objects around you. This is not a normal occurrence and most of the game plays out nicely but it's still in there non-the-less. The control of your character is rather straightforward…use the directional (or analog thumbstick) to move the character up or down. Turning the character left or right is accomplished by moving the pad left or right…get it? Pushing another button in addition to moving forward can cause the character to run or to move in stealth (crouched) mode. This is particularly effective for sneaking up on your opponents. You can also have your character evade bullets by pressing a shoulder button and the left/right/forward/down directional buttons. Targeting your opponents is done automatically (the first opponent to be in range) and you even have the option of targeting dual enemies when two weapons are armed! I thought this little trick worked great and really helped plowing down more than one slug at a time. Running through your arsenal and inventory is as easy as pressing the "circle" or "square" buttons to scroll forward or backwards through your stuff. Once you see what you want to use, press the "triangle" and it's there. Actually playing the game was a mixture of pure joy, absolute frustration and a few unexpected surprises. First up, the story is superb and engaging and will certainly hold your interest enough to get you through the games few "sticky" points that I will identify in a moment. As you play through the game you really begin to relate to the characters and their causes. You will get to control the stories three main characters at pre-selected intervals during gameplay and each character has his/her strong points to take advantage of. The other neat thing is that when you take control over another character, it is usually during the same timeline as the character you previously controlled so you don't miss any of the action, you now get to view the story from a different perspective! As I started playing my way through the game I began to notice that I was only picking up weapons or ammo. I figured I had gotten plugged a few times with bullets and probably needed some health power-ups so I looked for the menu that would display my current health status and couldn't find it….how strange. Now I had noticed that during a battle a little line graph would appear on the upper left of my screen and occasionally go from green to yellow to red. Hmmm, maybe my characters just healed themselves as the game went on. Sounded good to me until my next battle came up and all I had was a knife to defend myself. I noticed something strange at this point…the line graph immediately shot into the red and I died after getting hit with one shot…WTF?!? Oh well, it was time to drag the damn instruction book out (errr). Seems that the graph I was seeing is called a Fear Meter and it gages and reacts to Hana's (and the other characters) surroundings. You must try to keep the characters confidence high by pulling off some nice surprise attacks, solving puzzles or being accurate with your shooting. As soon as the Fear Meter turns red you can be killed with a single shot…ah, so that explains things. There are also certain story milestones that when achieved will send your characters confidence into the stratosphere for a bit of playing time. Okay, so bottom line…you don't need no stinking health power-ups…cool! Now for the not so good stuff…you die a lot in Fear Effect…and I don't mean just a lot, but A LOT! So much so in fact that it seemed to me that for every minute or so of gameplay, I was treated to 25 seconds or so of loading up the last save spot and starting over again. The actions you perform to accomplish a specific task almost play out in a "Dragons Lair" style of gameplay. You must learn what needs to be done, press the appropriate buttons to get your character to pull it off, save the game and then proceed to the next bit. As you might suspect, until you figure out the proper way to execute a sequence you are gonna die…while that kinda sucks in its own right, waiting 25 seconds for the last saved game to reload is just download mind-numbing. Maybe they should have put a little side-game in there to play while the actual game loads up…or include a mini-book to read to pass the time. Character control, while superb 99% of the time seems to flake out at the worst possible moments. For instance, to climb or descend a ladder you have to walk up to it, wait for the screen to show "climb" then press the "triangle" button and control your character up or down the ladder. Sounds easy right? Well actually it is, but sometimes you have to run your ass off while under fire, grab the ladder and climb or descend like a bat out of hell. It seems that at these times the control let me down the most…it just didn't consistently respond to my button presses. I had the same issue with picking up objects during a fight…it didn't always engage and allow me to pick up the item (say a knife) quickly enough. I often found myself doing the same move over and over until I (or the game) finally hit it right. While this happened rarely in the actual game the time you can spend on these particular sequences when it does occur is almost enough to make you nuts. The puzzles for the most part are good honest ones. What I mean to say by honest is that they are not cheap or impossible to figure out, they tend to make sense and are pretty logical. Unfortunately, many of the puzzles in Fear Effect are also quite deadly meaning if you don't figure it out correctly the first time you could get blown into a million little chunks of meat for your poor efforts…and then wait 25 seconds to get blown to bits again. Now please don't get me wrong here…I actually really liked Fear Effect. Yes, the long load times sucked and the cheap deaths pissed me off but the story is superbly written and unfolds wonderfully. It has mature themes, interesting characters, a great weapon targeting system, above average control and superb visuals and sound. All this compelled me to continue playing through the game and come to grips with the shortcomings. It's just a shame that they exist at all though, because Fear Effect has all the makings of a triple "A" title, but a few surprisingly basic but annoying oversights mire an almost perfect game. Game Options: This is a 1 disk game for 1 Player. It is compatible with the standard (digital) joypad and the analog stick controls of the dual shock joypad. Games can be saved via memory card (1 block per save). |
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