F.E.A.R. 2 is a game that has fans so divided on its qualities. Some say it's a competent shooter for its time, others say it's a mockery of the first game with dumbed-down mechanics, story, and visuals in favor catering to consoles and the growing community of CoD players. For little me when this game dropped, it was very much still a Monolith game at heart and an enjoyable one at that despite its flaws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMM51KlOh2o
The development of the game was not simple though, as it originally being worked as two separate versions for consoles and PC games not involving the namesake under the fan-chosen title of Project Origin. But due to underwhelming results with F.E.A.R. 1's porting to the 7th gen consoles handled by Day 1 Studios, Monolith believed that the effort of making separate experiences for the platforms wasn't worth the effort and combined all ports into one; resulting in having to work the game design and visuals around being optimized for consoles while having [i]some[/i] options to make PC stand out. In terms of game design, the team took the first game's aspects and separated them into three categories: the good (combat mechanics, atmosphere, AI, graphics), the bad (too many interiors), and the ugly (a monochrome palette, lack of enemy variety, repetitive environments). With these examples, Monolith stived to refine the original experience and add more variety to every aspect of the sequel. Film inspirations for the sequel would take after those releasing during the early to mid-2000's including the Saw franchise, Nightwatch, and High Tension; wanting to build a sense of anticipation of horrible things or even having to do them yourself. The aspects of action and horror would be balanced out in order to not take away from the game's focus on being action-based than an "unrelenting terror". All resulted in a game that feels somewhat still F.E.A.R. by nature, but watered down to meet demands with the console audience in comparison to the first game, pulling high to average reviews by the game's launch in 2009.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrcB2Eam9xc
During the events of F.E.A.R. 1, it is revealed through voice mails that the president of Armacham Technology Corporation, Genevieve Aristide, may have links to the conflict at Armacham HQ and the revival of a "Project Origin" that resulted in the Replica uprising led by Paxton Fettel. SFOD-D, who works the joint-op with F.E.A.R., sends the squad "Dark Signal" to apprehend Aristide at her condo building for protective custody with the ATC board sending mercs to kill Aristide and erase their involvement. A ghostly little girl known as Alma looms over Dark Signal's Sgt. Michael Becket as he then witnesses the abandoned Auburn district engulfed nuclear fire as the underground Project Origin facility explodes. The team is MIA in the explosion as Aristide's group recovers them to an unknown location for experimentation. Becket awakes as he attempts to regroup with his team, escape the ensuing nightmare against ATC mercs and a world ravaged by the explosion all while Alma's attachment to Becket concerningly grows into question of what her motives are.
The game also features one story-based DLC called Reborn. This short but very polished experience in line with F.E.A.R. 1 sees the player take on the role of Replica Foxtrot-813 as he battles ATC forces to investigate a mysterious signal only to find out Paxton Fettel is reaching out from the grave to take back control. With a new directive, 813 betrays his clone allies and works his way through a war-torn city to bring Paxton back to life. But not without resistance from his mother, Alma, who wants nothing more to do with her unruly son.
People who bash this game's story for not living up to the first don't seem to realize how amateur Monolith were for the time with story-telling and overall sense of accomplishment in general. F.E.A.R. 1 was already silly with the team not realizing how out of their league they were with the situation. Once you take away the aspects of corporate espionage, screwed up family matters, and a paranormal division, you're left with a goofy chase sequence of picking up the bread crumbs of a silly cannibal that turns to dust at close proximity. Nobody plays F.E.A.R. solely for plot than they do for the gameplay against solid AI design. The plot itself merely coincides with the experience of the game. At least with Project Origin, the story telling is more cohesive coming off of the first game's design flaws next to Condemned.
The game still utilizes the original game's Lithtech Jupiter EX engine, but with some new features that up the visual fidelity such as better post-processing effects (HDR rendering, motion blur, depth of field), a better lighting and volumetrics system, ambient occlusion (albeit a primitive implementation vs SSAO), and more detailed texture, modelling, and mapping limits. However, other nice graphical features like parallax mapping for walls and bullet holes as well as soft shadows had been removed for lacking normal maps and hard stencil shadows. Havok Physics still plays a part in delivering great ragdoll physics and full-body awareness to the player character, but the particle system seems toned down in comparison to the first game to keep up with console hardware; with blood feeling cheap and combat debris less dense. While the game does feel two steps ahead of the first game's somewhat low res nature, it's one step backwards in its immersion just to stay optimal. Monolith's powerful AI return with this game along with the in-depth communication between enemy squads. However, because Monolith's scope of level design with plenty of detail now available to levels, they somewhat forgot about how such interferes with the AI's pathfinding and decision-making. Resulting in some awkward moments of the AI making poor choices against the player, whether they're trying to hide in cover that's completely exposed or being stuck in place. Monolith still stay on top in terms of sound design, mostly though for recycling much of what made F.E.A.R. 1 so good. A personal gripe being there's no more EAX support, opting instead of XAudio3D for software audio effects and surround sound which does support Windows' virtual surround settings as well as this XAudio mod that includes HTRF you can get here: https://github.com/ThreeDeeJay/x3daudio1_7_hrtf/releases (Requires personally chosen HTRF tables to work properly)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc0VK5HsVS4
Unlike F.E.A.R. 1, there's quite a bit of replayability to the game. Lore exposition is delivered through documents the player can find across levels as well as achievements for performing a number of kills or tough feats (not linked to your Steam account however than they are to a saved game). Multiplayer also had a big focus for some time, involving ATC vs Replicas across different maps based on the campaign and sometimes goofy maps like Toy Soldiers update that included 3 massive maps players could battle on right down to being inside a pinball machine as well as Armored Fronts that features EPA combat that allows big mech battles between players. Multiplayer functionality can be restored with a patched exe provided here. https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/3555-fear-2-multiplayer-fix/
The game has no real modding scene sadly, largely due to it the version of Lithtech and no modding tools with compatibility to it. Notable loose mods include a mouse fix, trainers, ReShade presets, and a console unlocker to see the inner workings of the engine and make manual tweaks.
The game might not be everyone's cup of tea if they really liked the first game, but I personally enjoyed it with the fun it still offers compared to the next sequel. Not to mention it being Monolith's last involvement with F.E.A.R. before the IP would nose-dive into oblivion and the studio itself dissolved by WB Games over corporate restructuring.
