FEAR Combat Review - First Impression

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My initial impression unfortunately was pretty maligned by the fact that for some reason, Combat sent my firewall crazy and then crashed my machine the first time I ran it.  It was fine once I'd restarted it, but don't be surprised if the same thing happens to you. Looking at some forums it seems that people have also had problems with downloads and with certain servers, but I guess this could be said for any online multiplayer game. Apart from this however, I was fairly impressed with the game; the graphics are very good, and very smooth, as is the game play.  I ran this game on a rather dated AMD Athlon XP 3200+ based machine with an ATI 9600 256Mb graphics card and 1.5 GB of RAM for reference, and it plays pretty well.

                   

The game interface is exactly the same as the single-player version and is intuitive enough for anyone who hasn't played the original. The server screen is also well presented and easy to use, and includes everything that you expect from being able to filter the server results on game type, password protection, platform, and so forth, and to add good servers to your favorites list, or comrades to your friends list.  here are already a large number of servers and a good few thousand players that form a growing community. There is also a good selection of different game types, so whether you're a die hard death match commando, or a team playing capture the flag enthusiast, you shouldn't have any difficulty finding something to satisfy your gaming itch. 

                

There are a good number of default maps -- 12 in all. Most of these are taken from the original single player game, with just a few subtle tweaks. There are also a growing number of custom maps designed by enthusiasts. All of the maps are a good size too; none are so big that capture the flag style missions are impossible, and none are so small that death matches with more than two players seem overcrowded. You get a well presented scores screen at the end of each map if this is switched on in the server.

Next: Game Play Compared to Original >>
 

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