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| Games,
Richard Young,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F5
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Pitching itself as a mixture of Resident Evil and Blade Runner, with perhaps a pinch of Metal Gear Solid, hi-tech adventurer Fear Effect finds itself as the current teacher’s pet in the School of Playstation. And rightly so, methinks. Playing the part(s) of three hip n’ hard mercenaries, your mission is to track down the missing daughter of Triad leader Mr. Lam, set against the backdrop of a sweaty, neon-lit Hong Kong of a not-too-distant future. Utilising the tried and trusted R.E. format of pre-rendered static backgrounds in which polygonal characters can roam, leads you to think "well, what’s new?". But look closer and you will see that these backgrounds are not so static. Shadows flicker, air ducts whirr, flashing signs erÂ…flash, all helping to create a truly believable environment.
To further distance itself from any R.E. comparisons, the actual characters themselves are rendered in a cartoony style, re-creating the "hard shadow" look of so many Japanese Manga and Anime. Other nice touches include smooth transitions of camera POV’s: Instead of a straight cut, some views are revealed with a slow pan or dramatic zoom out, all amazingly in real time, i.e. no hanging around watching doors slowly opening while the next room loads. Gameplay is intuitive and fluid despite following the conventional find key to open door, shoot bad guy routines. The baddies in question do have a bit more intelligence than, say, the zombies in Resident Evil, quelle surprise, in that if you make too much noise on approaching them, they react (minus the comedy floating question marks of Metal Gear), and turn to trace the source of the sound.
A lot of work has gone into Fear Effect, which comes on four discs, and the blend of adventure, strategy and wall-to-wall (and bloody) shooting action is just right. Minor niggles include a slightly fiddly inventory system and the occasional background which is too gloomy to see properly, neither of which are enough to justify giving Fear Effect anything less than a spooky F5 rating.
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