Introduction
Haven't played FEAR? the LP archive has you covered.Click Here to be taken to a haunted YouTube playlist of the LP
Note: Degree of haunting will vary from person to person
Table of Contents
Part 1: Penthouse
YouTube
Part 2: Hospital
YouTube
Part 3: More Hospital
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Part 4: Deeper
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Part 5: Arena Fight
YouTube
Part 6: The Streets
YouTube
Part 7: Basically Shogo
YouTube
Part 8: School's Out
YouTube
Part 9: Hammerhead
YouTube
YouTube
Part 11: Escape
YouTube
Part 12: Alternate Route
YouTube
Part 13: MechWarrior V2
YouTube
Part 14: Tram Ride Fun
YouTube
Part 15: Still Island
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What is F.E.A.R. 2?
FEAR 2 (dropping the dots from here on out), like the previous game, is a first person psychological horror shooter. While most of the game is all about shooting or slide kicking anyone foolish enough to get in your way, the game is frequently punctuated by supernatural events orchestrated by Alma Wade, the little girl who followed the player character around causing similar events in the first game. Alma is more a force of nature than an enemy that you can fight, so you are often at her mercy when you encounter her, but so are your enemies and allies. The story in FEAR 2 concerns a team of Delta Force operators (not a FEAR squad, weirdly enough) called to rescue Genevieve Aristide, president of Armacham, the local friendly evil megacorp that had held and experimented on Alma most of her life.
This being a video game and all things go pear-shaped pretty quickly and there's some fighting and some wanton property destruction. Most of this is done by or against the player character, Michael Beckett, one of the Delta Force operators who has drawn the attention of Alma.
My favorite part was when...
Spoilertag everything until it appears in a video, please. Part of the reason I'm doing this is the bonkers story the game throws you into. That doesn't necessarily mean the story is good, but it has some really neat points. You'll notice I mention a few things like Slow-mo and Alma before we see them in the videos; these points were well known before release and I'm hazarding a guess they are the first two things most people think of when they hear "FEAR."
Why FEAR 2?
There's a lot to recommend this game. The story I've already mentioned, but the atmosphere is really good, the environments are really well designed and it's a solid overall shooter that had some really unique elements like slightly destructible environments, non-stupid AI and special melee moves. There's some things that count against it, like long drawn out sections that are supposed to make the player feel afraid, but the game never quite masters the tension needed to spook players when the inevitable jump scare goes off. I'll probably get more concerned with enemy soldiers moving in these sections than anything the game intends to be scary.
What else can you tell me about this LP?
I'm going to shoot for a pretty aggressive update schedule, probably three times a week. This will keep us moving through the game fairly quickly, but will make the very long opening segments of the game breeze by (thankfully). I'll be doing this solo for the most part. If someone makes a convincing argument for having guests I may do a couple episodes with other people. Solo commentary seems to work best for the game, though. If you want to talk about game mechanics and weapons and such feel free, I have some thoughts on the latter I'll be freely sharing. Please remember to spoilertag or just not mention story details until they happen, though.
Intel Items
Thanks to Kadorhal for pulling these together
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Art
MShadowy posted:
I've been waiting for one of the enemies to say it so I could do this; my siblings and I always wondered how it was that Beckett could be "too fast" while holding still. We eventually realised there was only one possible answer.
Cast
Alma Wade
One of the few returning characters from the first game, Alma had a pretty horrific life. First, she sort of had the ability to light things with her mind when she was young, which apparently didn't get much better and eventually her father, Harlan Wade, accepted the opinions of those around him and put his daughter in an isolation chamber. Alma was heavily sedated and her telepathic powers were dampened by the chamber itself, essentially killing her. Armacham isn't a nice company, though, and insisted on experimenting on her. One of these experiments was to see if Alma could be used to produce more powerful psychics and so she was impregnated at 14 with a clone of herself. Yeah, FEAR is fucked up like that. Anyways, the first "prototype" would be deemed a failure and get his memories erased and put into the army. No, that's actually the story. The clone would grow up to become the Point Man, the player character from the first game. Alma was again impregnated with a clone of herself, this one deemed successful. Ten years later Alma and her second son/self synced their psychic waves or something which caused the ten year old to freak out and murder seven of his handlers. He was forced into isolation and Alma was taken off life support and died. Even 20 years later, when Armacham Technology Corporation (ATC) re-opened the Origin Facility to scavenge what they could from it, Alma's psychic signal was still strong enough to kill two teams of private security people and connect with her younger son, Paxton Fettle. This sequence kicks off the first FEAR game.
Alma attempts to connect to the Point Man for much of the game, but because his psychic ability lags behind his brother's he experiences freaky visions, but not much more. Eventually the Point Man meets up with his grandfather at the Origin Facility as a repentant Harlan Wade opens up Alma's chamber, allowing her to "escape." The Point Man kills Paxton Fettle and then shoots a bunch of ghosts (seriously) and detonates the nuclear reactor that powered the Origin facility in hopes of eliminating Alma. It doesn't quite work out.
Genevieve Aristide
Genevieve "Baby Doc" Aristide is the person most responsible for the current situation. She made the call to re-open the Origin Facility that kicked off the events of the first game, and she handled the situation so badly that Paxton Fettle got his mind-hands on some clone troopers that massacred most of her employees. She was mentioned in a number of the data pads in the first game, but never appeared in person. It's suggested she has heavily invested herself in the psychic and paranormal research her company does rather than the practical side of the business, which seems like a really bad business decision over the long term considering that ATC seems to have fielded zero psychics but has plenty of guns and private security to use them.
Stokes
I like Stokes. She's sort of the Delta Force team's information officer and the highest ranking person in the group, though she is actually outside of the chain of command and often defers to Griffin on decisions about what to do next and so on. Stokes isn't afraid to use her weapon either, as we see in the first episode, and can handle herself in most situations. I at once applaud Monolith for not treating Stokes differently because she's a woman and need to un-applaud them because Stokes somehow found a shirt and body armor combination that doesn't quite cover her entire torso while her male counterparts wear giant flak jackets. Come on, game developers, you can do better. Also, watch Stokes during the briefing in the APC, there are a lot of really great details on display with her and Jankowski's movement in that scene that most games would leave out.
Jankowski
Redd Jankowski is the older brother of the Jankowski that died at the start of the first FEAR game. He's kind of a dick and a joker and lazy and that's about it. Thanks for being in the game, Redd, I needed to see some really dead eyes as my first human interaction.
Griffin
We're in familiar territory, Phil LaMarr has arrived!. Griffin is the leader of the Delta Force team sent to rescue Aristide from her former employers and don't take no shit from nobody, particularly Jankowski whom he seems to really dislike.
Keegan
Keegan sits next to us on the APC and has an episode right before he gets shot. We had something similar going on. Maybe bad allergies?
Red
For years there have been rumors of another member of the Delta Force team, all we have are these blurry photos and a short video showing...something that lives inside the APC. Will we ever know what it is? Possibly, world's a big place, time keeps on ticking, etc.
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SnakeFist's F.I.S.T.
The Terror of Bloody SnakeFist
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Report from FistCon 2014
Blind Sally's morning routine
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