some areas of the visuals hold up great but i have to disagree about the bland enviroments. even if they wanted to go for the corporate and industrial areas they could have made them look better
No it does"nt have great graphics and was even criticized even back then for using slightly dated graphics;its the effects that were and still are cool including the AI where enemies will try to flank you if they can and move in often unpredictable patterns
The action sequences really hold up. The particle system still looks great when everything is poppin off. This was like the Control of its era in some ways
I was literally thinking about this game yesterday. It has held up so well even after all of these years. The AI was ahead of its time and Alma is still scarier than most horror games released today.
I was using an audigy2 with 7:1 surround speakers & 1st time playing the game the buckets that get pushed off the shelf by the ghost had the misses running in the kitchen shouting at the dog for messing in the cupboard . I was both amazed & in stitches at the same time . 30 mins later she made me switch to headphones as the sounds were freaking her out the " eax effects were so so cool with damn good positional sound even with just headphone using the cards cmss
F.E.A.R. is not scary at all if we bring in Condemned. It was full of cliche that you quickly get used to, while Condemned is just one of the most horrifying games I've ever played. It can be demoralizing and even traumatizing in the right conditions. It was banned in several countries.
@@coreclassic FEAR has it's moments and is ultimately a better game just because its...one of the best FPS of all time but you're mostly right. Very rarely scary. Condemned on the other hand is a total nightmare from beginning to end. Such amazing sound design.
The fact that he's still having so much fun simply playing this game fort the video shows just how damn good this feels to play. Also, guys do a Killzone 2 video. That game was sick.
Now would be a better time than ever to remake/remaster the original FEAR with the next gen consoles on the horizon. The stuff they could do with ray traced lighting, and taking the still impressive AI and physics to the next level with CPUs that aren’t complete dog shit is a very exciting idea.
actually, this game needs a remake / reboot, not just a simple remaster. level design and animation are so outdated; putting high res textures won't save the day.
I don't know, man. Playing it at 8k is good enough, as long as the HUD can be scaled up. Perhaps some Reshade tweaks can add nifty tricks here and there, but it still looks great today.
Finally someone else who wants NOLF back.The amount of gadgets, weapons, and ammo types. Wow. Plus finding those hilarious notes and the conversations from enemies.
@@EndlessFunctionality Nightdive tried to re-release them, had an advertising setup ready to go. But because the companies that own the various parts are too lazy to look in their paper filing cabinets to find out who owns what, NOLF will never see a legal re-release.
I came up on games from the Doom era and the first game I remember looking down and being like “woah I can see me!!” was Trespasser, the Jurassic Park FPS. Game was a disaster overall but really tried to push tech. It was like an attempt to make HL2 way before the tech was ready for it
It more than ruins the immersion, often times those kind of games have more.... Primative more simple hit detection rather than projectile based hit detection. It's like the engine doesn't factor in yoi body for physics and collision.
@@mrnelsonius5631 Is that the game where you also have an awesome pair of tits? I think that game was made by the same creative head behind the first Xbox console.
Gentlemen, I highly recommend playing this on modern hardware. With an i7 7700k and GTX 1080 Ti, I get Maximum settings (no AA or Soft Shadows), 5120x2880 (4xDSR on a 1440p monitor), 144hz, 16x Anisotropic Filtering and a lovely FOV increase to the config files oh and a flashlight mod that makes it cast shadows. The game is GORGEOUS and still holds up to this day. Also, and this is CRITICAL, make sure to use Creative Alchemy tools to reenable all the EAX sound effects! It makes a significant difference in this game, and this is one of the last games to get true hardware accelerated audio support. It's such a shame to see that market die off, but it is what it is.
Jens S this game’s AI was a bit exaggerated. They basically just defined bits of cover in the environment and then just programmed the AI to wander between them while shouting stuff like “flank em”.
PrezidentTrump right, they used a complex, weighted goal and action tree to get the AI to wander between pieces of cover yelling “flank em”. It’s basically as though there’s a bunch of roombas trying to kill you. They can do such complex squad actions as take cover... but see it’s really different from if the AI decided on its own to take cover because it’s a squad action.
@@Phos9 compared to modern "AI" coding techniques FEAR has been surpassed but pretending that it's just a "they do stuff!" script is goddamn reductive. You can't come here, shit on someone's work and then when people call you out for it you play dumb and pretend we're the crazy ones for caring. For example this part here: "but see it’s really different from if the AI decided on its own to take cover because it’s a squad action" - yes it is different. You may joke, but it is. If an AI decides by itself to take cover, it can make a decision that could make sense in isolation but makes no sense within context, making the enemy look like a bunch of roombas trying to kill you. By having a "squad director" that issues commands to every actor things feel more coherent and the roomba feels alive and dangerous.
I think AI is the one aspect of videogames that has been neglected the most. Perhaps due to the growth of multiplayer, but still. It's most evident in stealth games, where Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is still ahead of anything made now.
AI has gone backwards because the base CPUs didn't advance as quickly as GPUs and RAM, game devs prefer to spend the resources on visuals, cinematics and performance than AI. Hope this changes next gen when we have good base CPUs.
It's one of those games where the short comings were intrinsically linked with the highlights. The boxy environments were key to allowing the AI to navigate them successfully and appear intelligent. These days people complain that AI hasn't moved on but they wouldn't accept those sorts of compromises either.
@@HondaAccordPerformance The second game had much more varied environments and a few interesting enemies. I'm not saying that the sequel was better, but people should learn to look at a few aspects more objectively.
HOLY CRAP they heard! Damn I loved this game so much back then. It's sad to see there are no remastered editions or texture packs we could use. The shooting is still so damn solid, I'm surprised. I remember so many things out of this game.... "He's too fast!" "Go there! > "FUCK YOU!" Also, the aftermath of each gunfight. Btw, Shadow of Mordor uses the "same" engine as FEAR. Of course, much improved.
Love the level design in the first game & the 2 expansions after, going down a corridor & turning around when the door was locked to a totally different new corridor was insane back then. Such a legendary game.
Because now its basically 100% just business. Creativity took a back seat to the bean counters once big conglomerates realized how profitable the gaming industry could be.
What I want to know is why FPS games today have bigger guns but completely lack a satisfying feel when you shoot someone. Been playing Serious Sam and shooting people feels great but then when you play Halo, Gears of War or Quake Champions the guns don't do crap.
The powers that be would rather make a fast buck than a great game these days that why they all lack the " Feel of a great F.P.S LIKE F.E A R. Pretty & profitable are more important to the big bosses than making a quality game
Played through this again a few months ago for the first time in like 15 or 16 years, applied some community fixes for the resolution and mouse fix.. and darn it really still plays great. It feels good
I remember the glory of some of the office battles when I would throw two grenades into a group of 5 enemies, then watch as bodies fly through the flames in slow motion amidst sparks and mayhem. Also, the final scene with the massive whirlwind/explosion down the city street had some of the BEST sound design of any game I can recall. It was so awesome.
Ahh, F.E.A.R. and Condemned, Monolith at its finest, two of the best games I've ever played and two of the scariest too, really ahead of their time. I miss those days.
First time playing this, Alma crawling at you under the floor scared the crap outta me making my hair stand up on my neck. Actually had to pause the game and take a break. It was awesome👍 On a side note, I played it first after playing Left 4 Dead. FEAR always reminded me of a Source game. Seriously gave me a dark Half Life vibe. Left 4 Dead has a very similar look and feel to its environments as well. I'm thinking there was some cross pollination regards inspiration between Half Life 2 -> FEAR -> Left 4 Dead.
DUDE! I had the same reaction in the second game! I was entering a large underground pipe when I saw Alma cross at the other end, and I had to stop playing for days because I was so freaked out.
What doesn't get mentioned about this game enough is its sound design. It has to be among the best in gaming history, if not the best. This game is underrated in so many ways, but no one ever mentions just how epic the sound is in this franchise.
This game was one of the last of an era that I think we never quite got back. In the span of a few years, we got: Far Cry, Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Quake 4, Prey (the original, not the new one), Battlefield 2 (the original, not the new one), Call of Duty (and 2, and 4), Crysis. Each of these games: Was developed for PC FIRST (so all gameplay design, engine features, memory envelopes etc were PC centric), pushed boundaries in their own way in gameplay, graphics, scale, physics and audio, and are still remembered today. After that era, staring with Bioshock, Mass Effect, F.E.A.R. 2, Crysis 2 etc., all started to show signs of stagnation/regressions that were part of console first development. PC gamers were now getting lower technical quality and many left over issues. Menus were awkward and not designed for mouse and keyboard, gameplay (AI, level design) regressed badly, graphics had low resolution textures despite some better shaders (lack of RAM in consoles), innovation was being constrained by what a controller could do (or not do) and just generally the industry became more casual and simplistic. What was the last new PC FPS that really wowed you, aside from maybe Planetside 2 due to scale alone?
low resolution textures was not because of RAM in consoles but storage limitations of DVDs which Xbox 360 used along with having games runs without installation on HDD. As having high res textures in Xbox 360 would have mean having games that came in 3 or 4 DVDs with installation on HDD. Crysis 2 came in 1 DVD on Xbox 360 and runs without installation HDD. Like how N64 despite having more RAM than PS1, it has worse textures due for storage limitations of Cartridges. As having better textures doesn't just require more VRAM, but also better GPU and bigger file size
@@DDT-lr3zz Surely also a factor, but VRAM is very much a constraint on texture storage available for the active scene. System RAM was also fairly paltry on 360 and PS3, which constrains other aspects. Also texture resolution is an input factor on some algorithms relating to shadows and lighting, which means textures that you may have VRAM for could still be too slow for the GPU to render.
Back on that time, developers used to design games first and hardware companies had to figure out how to make something capable of handling that software. I used to play this game with a Pentium 4 HT Prescott with an ATI Sapphire x1600 pro, great memories.
Fear had some of the best gunfights I have ever played in gaming. I loved that even with the slo-mo the game was still hard thanks to the AI. I also remember the manual that said playing anything higher than 1024 x 768 would really hamper performance. I think it was the first game that I played that used modern technology as lore (emails, voicemails). It is the best of the Fear games I've played (I've never played Fear 3) and needs a remaster. I loved going in close with slo-mo and blasting someone with the shotgun and seeing the blood, but I also remember being on the roof where some soldiers are standing guard, firing the grenade launcher at their feet, activating slo-mo and watching them fly over the edge.
Alex I'd love to see a tech focus on MFAA I've always wondered how it performs on games that actually use the tech considering when Nvidia released it, everyone stopped using MSAA lol
It had equivalent IQ with slightly better performance. It's irelevant anyway given MSAA never helped with transparencies and it's better to use downsampling w/ FXAA/MLAA anyway
@@raresmacovei8382 you said it, I used to use MSAA a lot but then I discovered downsampling and never went back. Also MSAA always has compatibility problems while downsampling works in 99% of games, at least as long as the game supports the higher resolution, and with DSR / VSR it's as easy as it goes.
With all the things the next gen consoles are going to be capable of from a a sheer game design perspective with the Zen 2 CPUs and SSDs, FEAR would be the perfect game to reboot/remake. I can only imagine how much FEAR’s still impressive AI and physics would really be brought to the next level with how much technology has advanced since 2005.
@@user-og6hl6lv7p Of course, because we got games in PS3 and Xbox 360 that has superior physics over current games. Far Cry 2 came out in 2008, still has better physics than modern games
I played it on an Xbox 360 bc my Mom gave my brother money to build me a PC so he gave me his old parts and built himself a PC with a beasty GPU. I hated my childhood, did you know that?
Currently playing this on a 2070 super and 240hz monitor. I am blown away how good it looks at 1080p. It's locked 237fps without a single bit of aliasing. Just using in game MSAA and Nvidia MFAA. I also could not believe it when off screen reflections showed up in puddles. I had to pause and wonder if RTX reflections had been patched in. @digital foundry you should totally explore more old games but running on current gen hardware.
I used to play this game professionally, and that was definitely one of the most memorable times in my life. I always wondered what happened to the people I used to know in this game 15 years later lol I'd love to ignite some old friendships here! I think my name back then was Kickass if anyone remembers 😂
20:42 I’ll be honest, I like the aesthetic for the levels. It gives off this eerie, liminal space-like atmosphere to see such mundane office-y environments abandoned and empty. It almost feels like these places were never inhabited.. always empty and alone If the levels were more lively or colorful then it would detract from the atmosphere
One of the best shooters ever made on my opinion. I played it again just 6 months ago and was still blown away by the gun play, physics and lighting. The music was top notch too. I was able to play it on my gtx1070ti at 1440p - 8xMsaa at blazing fast fps. Thumbs up DF for choosing this game.
i remember showing this to my mate, after i'd got a new pc which had roughly those specs. remember him shitting himself when one of the psychic ghosts appeared. it was a great game.
18:50 Probably my favorite thing about FEAR and Half-Life. The AI work together, and communicate their actions so you won't constantly die to an ambush, making the game more fair. FEAR definitely did it a little better though. I think I remember being the most terrified when the AI were radio silent while I had low health. The lack of ambience definitely help set the tone in those situations. Just me versus whoever, or whatever is around the corner.
I play this game religiously, at least once a year, every year. Maxed out on modern resolutions, it still holds up very well and one thing that is second to none is this game’s ambience and overall *atmosphere.* The story is still far superior to any of this half-hearted, modern garbage these days. The gameplay (especially AI) puts modern games TO SHAME. For me personally, FEAR is the greatest first person shooter ever made.
Not gonna lie, I completely lost it when Alex mentioned the room at 28:14 as the "windowless-hell hole" and it's "wrench o' clock" oh man... much laughs were had from my side :D - Love these types of videos.
I really want Monolith to completely remake Blood II: The Chosen using their latest engine technology. It would be amazing if the Blood II remake was the high-quality type like Resident Evil 2: Remake. Monolith should be given as much time and funding as they need to finish it this time with no publisher interference. The way GT Interactive just pulled the plug halfway through development of Blood II and released an unfinished product without informing the developers beforehand was a tragedy and a disgraceful way to treat Monolith. I would crowdfund the hell out of that remake, who else would throw money at that project as well?
man i love this game. its my all time fav shooter. i still play it! i own all fears on steam and GOG just incase i need a non steam version that can run on older hardware
@@jackshiels3239 Yup agree, Halo's AI has always been a piece of work also in Reach i would say, but i remember enemies in Fear was absolute challenging to me.
Man, this is one that I bought on release and put into my nascent backlog because my PC wasn't up to the task. Years later I'd play it on a GTX 660 and it blew my mind. The physics and horror were so good. I miss PC era Monolith. AvP2 is still the best AvP ever made.
Fear, along with Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (late 2004) just blew my mind with their visuals. This was the era where I couldn't wait to upgrade my GPU and play these games again.
Ray Tracers on PS1 was amazing. Loved that game! I'm sure John discovered it after replaying Raystorm so much recently :P. That game and its soundtrack have been all over the last few DF videos XD. The 1st level boss from Raystorm is also the first level boss in Ray Tracers. (or at least they look similar in design)
My first experience of F.E.A.R. in Fall of 2005 was on my family's Emachine. It had a 2.4ghz Celeron D, 512mb ram, and an added PCI (Not even AGP XD) Nvidia FX 5500 128mb. I remember I wanted to see how good it looked maxed out. So I cranked it all the way up. It froze, and then I smelled a burning smell and pc turned off XD It blew the PSU. Next time I played it was January 2016 on an AMD Athlon 3700+, 1gb ram, and an Nvidia Geforce 7800GT. It ran quite well maxed at 1440x900. I had so much playing this game. Thanks for the great vid!
Wish Tron 2.0 got a mention in the Lithtech games mention, it was a good match an old favorite. More importantly, shocked no-one has mentioned the completely insane ending to this game. They sure used their R rating!
I like these videos a lot but I think that using modern hardware so that we can see ALL the bells and whistles of the games is a better idea. I love older games, they are our art form. I respect older hardware, but it is not something I think we need to hold in as high of a regard as the actual games and their accomplishments. Also, do STALKER.
Well my i7 8700k and gtx 1080 Ti can run this game at 300+ fps with dips to 190 at 1440p on extreme settings only took 13 years to get the game stable at higher refresh rates Haha
All of the weapons in this game sound incredible, they're all really satisfying to use, and - as mentioned - the AI is challenging and fun. So many fond memories of this game!
@@wile123456 it actually worked surprisingly well for me, I am really enjoying the game. But I just want to see what settings to turn on/off for best performance. Im running the RX580 paired with ryzen 5 2600 and im getting a framerate in the 50s. Was lucky with the download aswell lol. Downloaded it twice actually. But the tutorials were a little bit buggy for me. But ive heard a lot of people have had issues running the game and downloading it. Guess I was lucky!
@@shafaatoo9328 first tutorial doesn't even work. Setting radio chatter to auto makes the game freeze up for 2 seconds everytime the game needs to make a response. Tons of gripes like that. It's an early access game that costs 70 dollars and it circumvents steams refund policy. I only recommend people play it if they have Xbox game pass. The game is not worth buying in this state
@@wile123456 Yeah I got games pass, heard the steam version is rife with issues. No wonder you are experiencing that many problems. Definetly not worth a buy on steam yet.
I played FEAR plus all of its expansions in 2020 and was blown away by the AI and its graphics. The game was a lot of fun which helped me overlook and sometimes praise its level design where it was evident that the game was built around a system, rather than a story (looking at you, TLoU) But then FEAR 2 released... I was presented with a prime example of why consoles are holding video games back from materializing their true potential.
Coincidence right ? In crysis only the first one is a masterpiece and same goes for FEAR as well, halo and cod were the only one which actually had a better sequel in terms of story
Around the 10 minute mark Alex said he thought FEAR was the first games he saw with volumetric light sources that your character could obscure and interact with. Didn't the first Splinter Cell game in 2002 also have some volumetric light sources in it for things like certain vehicle headlights and NPC flashlights once you got to the first Chinese Embassy level? Awesome video at any rate. Glad to see one of my favorite games explored in depth by DF 👍Maybe fingers crossed for a Splinter Cell video in the future since it was mentioned, too? 😁
I feel like you guys underestimate how far we were in the 2000's. It was definitely THE most rapidly-changing period in graphics history though. Specular lighting in non-pixel-shader forward rendering has been around since probably the late 90's. NVidia showed a more advanced per-pixel shader version of this effect in their lightning demo in 2000 for the GeForce 2. Render targets were present in the Source engine and Unreal Engine 2. I want to say there were some obscure games that used them before this. Post-processing effects required render targets as a prerequisite, if I recall. You would render the current frame to a texture, modify the texture, and plant the texture on a 2d overlay. I do know that games with effects like bloom were pretty old. Though the fill rate usage was stupid, so it makes sense the PS2 used it. I do remember this being the first game I ever saw to use Parrallax Occlusion Mapping. Doom3 had a mod that added Parallax Mapping (no occlusion) to all the textures and it looked cool only in very specific cases. POM had to use something like ray marching which is crazy intensive. But it was totally worth it in this game. The "soft shadow" effect, not so much. But the stencil shadow era was the best. Dynamic lights everywhere. Shadows everywhere. No pixellated shadows, either. Deferred rendering kinda flipped the table on all of this. But it was pretty cool.
I remember revisiting this game only two years later, with a X2 6000+ and Geforce 8800-series card and had a blast again. Games back then were still made to last and it's still fantastic to play today. RU-vid video _F.E.A.R. Is Ridiculous_ showcase this perfectly. I think Geforce 6800 GT were a midend 2004 card, the 7000-series cards launched months before F.E.A.R, with around 50% better performance. The Athelon X2 3800+ were also midend CPU, the X2 4800+ was available mid 2005. And while it is interesting to see tests with older PCs, recording the entire video with subpar hardware, kinda undermines the whole point of games back then.
@@paulwade4058 Fear isn't a particularly hard game too get running on older graphics cards when you turn down or turn off settings. I've run it on a dell inspiron with a integrated ati x300 chip overclocked & a 1.7 ghz single core heh. Also ran it in my at the time windows xp retro build with a overclocked ati 9550 256 mb sd ram 2.8 ghz pentium 4 ht & 1.5 gb ddr ram. At one point i was planning too make that into a windows 98 build before i picked up the dell inspiron laptop for free essentially & just patch the games too run in windows xp when needed.
28:11 "Like, what is this room supposed to be? A windowless hellhole?" I loved the commentary about how bizarre some of the rooms and level design are when you think about them as being actual spaces.
I really enjoyed the video, but Anandtech and all the sites of the time recommended a single way to play with maximum details: 7800 GTX You should have played it with max details on 2005 HW [7800 gtx], not 2004 [6800 gtx] (and not with medium details) at most you could remove soft shadows
Man these two guys need to do a play through of Brutal Doom V21 Gold. That shit is INSANE with detail and tech for an old game that’s modded REALLY WELL! Best mod I’ve ever seen! It deserves WAY more love and attention!
Similar to what Rich from RTU stated imagine this game on PS4, Xbox one, and PS5 and Xbox SX consoles have come along way and these games would run great on modern consoles
This was an amazing game. I played it on my ATI 2x x1800xt crossfire pc! Loved it! And in the online multi-player with my Medusa 5.1 headset in conjunction with my creative sound card, I had an advantage. I heard the opponents from behind who wanted to kill me with a jump or slip kick, turned me around and came before them. I was constantly called a cheater!
