Following its late 2005 release, Monolith's F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault and Recon) jumped straight to the head of the FPS pack with its exquisite graphics, spectacular firefights and legitimately scary plot. Acclaimed by gamers and critics alike, this brooding, close-quarters shooter has accelerated many a hair follicle's transformation from black to gray.

The game's allure lies as much in its paranormal creepiness as its over-the-top violence and gore. Add in some genuinely challenging AI enemies in the single-player game and a fast-paced multiplayer mode and it's easy to see why the title walked away with so many year-end gaming awards (including GameSpy's Gamers' Choice PC Action Game of the Year).

Surprisingly, the PC mod community hasn't exactly been pumping out new content for this A-list shooter, despite the release of some official mod tools and the even more generous F.E.A.R. Combat -- a free download of the game's entire multiplayer component -- by VU Games. A recent scan of FilePlanet's F.E.A.R. maps repository produced only eight hits (not counting some assorted map contest entries that we'll get to in a future column) and only one of these downloads works in the single-player game.

Fair enough. This week we'll slice open the most popular multiplayer map and the only single-player map on the site and leave it to you to decide whether those F.E.A.R.-mongering modders deserve a pat on the back or a kick up the backside.

Armacham Replicant Facility Multiplayer Map (F.E.A.R.)

It's not very big -- you can move from one end of the map to the other in only a few minutes -- and its conformist futuristic corridors aren't particularly distinctive, but this 11MB multiplayer map delivers some interesting wrinkles. Purportedly set in one of the Armacham Technology Corporation's several cloning bunkers, the mod's antiseptically modern environment features a lot of wide passageways and right-angled intersections -- not easy places to hide when several hard-assed fraggers are on the hunt.


You won't find power-ups littered around the facility willy-nilly. If you want to acquire med packs, guns and grenades you have to locate the appropriate cloning station and toast one up in a time-consuming operation that could force you to momentarily turn your back on potential foes. The d�cor is fittingly controversial for such a facility -- "fetus in a jar" style -- but thankfully not so busy that it kills the frame rate at key junctures (the last thing you need in a multiplayer map). If you and your running buddies don't mind the small scale -- and you can actually find some running buddies to play it with you -- Replicant supports all eight of F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer modes.