The FEAR franchise has taken a long, winding road since the release of the original title in 2005 (2006 for consoles). The original game dealt with one powderkeg of a psychic little girl, Alma, whose creepy psychic visions haunted your horrific trek through a well-crafted shooter. The subsequent expansion packs built out the story but were developed by different teams and went in totally different directions. Fans of the original title will be pleased to know that Monolith Studios is back in the driver's seat, and that FEAR 2 continues the story where FEAR left off, ignoring the expansions and maintaining the same creepy vibe that we enjoyed from the original.

It's especially interesting to watch what the team is doing to address some of the industry's critiques of the original game. FEAR was a blast to play, but felt like an endless maze of indoor office environments with a story told almost entirely through telephone voicemails. One thing that impressed us during our hands-on time with the sequel was how much the team managed to address these problems while still keeping the action-horror vibe we enjoyed so much from the first game.

The Real and the Surreal

Part of the original game's effectiveness centered around mixing realistic, mundane environments with military action and supernatural activities. We were pleased to discover that although the sequel offers many more environments, most of these are rooted in realistic locations that help you connect with the action.

The sequel kicks off around twenty minutes before the explosion that rocks the city at the climax of the first game. You're stepping into the shoes of a new character -- soldier Michael Beckett -- but interacting with some of the principal characters from the first game. The first level has you and your team breaking into the penthouse apartment of Armacham's rogue CEO Genevieve Aristide. The environments here should be familiar to players: plush surroundings, plate glass, leather couches... but that all changes when Alma's psychic explosion lays waste to much of the city.

A second level had us rushing through a warren of demolished buildings in the wake of the disaster. Snipers crouched all over the landscape, taking us out from across a ruined courtyard. This level really came alive when we worked our way across the ruins and stepped into the cockpit of one of FEAR 2's new features: EPA Power Armor. This enormous mechanical monstrosity resembles the mechanized suits from the Matrix movies, with unlimited vulcan gun ammo and rockets. EPAs even self-repair, although if they're too damaged they'll kick the pilot out while repairing, forced you to defend it on foot for a couple anxious minutes. Having all that firepower at our disposal was sick: we could tear apart the environment with machineguns alone. Cement pillars would explode into showers of debris, walls would crumble, and hordes of soldiers fell before our might. The carnage was a nice change of pace from the normally tense action.