Line #53 YMMV/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon


1	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
2	** "Four Rusted Horses" by Music/MarilynManson was used in the launch trailer for ''F.E.A.R. 3.'' Here is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV7iPeY3YCw&feature=related launch trailer]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmAc7UVv0vw&feature=mh_lolz&list=HL1310256194 the song itself]].
3	** But even more awesome is the song that plays during the credits, if only for its thematic significance: [[spoiler: "Mother" by Danzig]].
4	** Also a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome for the developers, considering Manson hates licensing his songs, and prefers to just make new ones for stuff instead (like the one in ''Film/JohnWick''), since he'd rather it be designed for the work.
5	* AntiClimaxBoss: When you finally catch up to Paxton Fettel after chasing after him for the entire game, he goes down without a fight. After one last vision and revelation, during which he makes no attempt to attack other than sending a few ghosts that die in one shot, the Point Man walks into a dream version of Fettel's cell and just puts a bullet in his head.
6	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In ''Project Origin'', we learn Genevieve Aristide kept Alma's music box and a text log mentions the tune from it was stuck in her head. Did she keep the music box as a reminder of her guilt or was it a sign that Alma was telepathically influencing her actions? We know Alma was capable of doing so and it would explain why Aristide was so doggedly determined to reopen the Origin facility, something that every single one of her advisors told her was a bad idea.
7	* ContestedSequel: ''Project Origin'' is perhaps the most divisive game in the series, what with most debates revolving around how [[ToughActToFollow it lives up to the first game.]] Fans of the game say it's a worthy follow up primarily for its dark story and how the gameplay manages to capture the energetic feel of the first game. Detractors on the other hand dislike the changes made to the gameplay that made the game feel too similar to [[ItsTheSameSoItSucks other FPS games at the time]] as well as how the [[ActionizedSequel increase in action]] (such as the addition of sections where you take control of a mech suit) takes away from the horror. Most do agree however that it is a better game than F.3.A.R.
8	* CreepyAwesome:
9	** Paxton Fettel, the cannibalistic, oedipal psychic from the first game. He's disturbing to watch all right, but also smooth and effortlessly badass, not to mention having a [[FreudianExcuse very solid motive to go after Armacham.]]
10	** Alma Wade, the creepy, stringy-haired little girl. Not only is she already dead, she only exists in spectre form due to her incredible power. Her backstory is incredibly tragic, and she carves a swath through every single foe sent after her with no effort.
11	** Hell, the Point Man himself is oftentimes labeled as ''extremely'' intimidating, with a KubrickStare that could rival his mother's. His stone-cold demeanor seems to shine through even in his softer moments.
12	* CriticalDissonance: ''F.3.A.R.'' received a fairly positive reception by critics, with some even declaring it one of the best shooters of the year, but players were not nearly as pleased, and let's not talk about fans of the franchise. A look at the [[http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fear-3 Metacritic page]] shows a critic score of 74 and a user rating of ''5.8''.
13	* ComplacentGamingSyndrome:
14	** In the multiplayer of the original ''F.E.A.R.'' and ''F.E.A.R. Combat'', there is only the [[BoringButPractical G2A2 assault rifle]] and nothing else. The fact that most of the maps are close-quarters type didn't help.
15	** In the single player, you'll rarely find anyone who doesn't always carry the shotgun in one of their three weapon slots. There are a few reasons: one, it's useful in just about every situation, as it has decent range, can be useful for suppressing fire (which enemies do respond to) and is deadly up close; two, it's the loudest thing on earth (and thus very satisfying to use); three, it's almost impossible to run out of ammo for it, since extra shotguns are everywhere once you have access to it and it has the one of the best ammo-pickup rates in the game (it's the only gun which gives you one full magazine when you pick it up off of an enemy, and you get two mags from pre-placed copies); and four, when you're wandering around a dark, spooky hallway with scary noises all about, perhaps the best thing to keep you safe is the knowledge that whatever's coming for you, it'll have to deal with a few dozen pellets coming straight at their face from what is probably the most powerful video-game shotgun of the 2000s before it can get to you.
16	** It's also rare to find someone who doesn't hold onto the pistols for as long as possible for several reasons: they're [[PunchPackingPistol powerful]] and accurate enough for the vast majority of situations, with [[GunsAkimbo finding a second one]] granting no downsides other than a slightly slower reload, it has ''the'' best ammo-pickup rate (giving you three magazines for every one you pick up) in return for not being dropped by enemies (which ''Perseus Mandate'' fixes by having pre-placed ones absolutely everywhere), and as a semi-auto weapon its fire rate increases when you use it during Slow-Mo, which makes it capable of incredibly quick damage per-second.
17	* DemonicSpiders: The drones in ''F.E.A.R.'' are the most infamous enemies in the game. They are [[LightningBruiser fast, tanky, and do a lot of damage]]. Unless you abuse your slow-mo abilities, they will absolutely shred you, especially on higher difficulties. Thankfully, they don't appear quite often, but when they do, they are always deadly.
18	* EvilIsCool:
19	** The first game brings us Paxton Fettel and the Replica Forces. Between the smart AI and badass designs of the Replica Forces, and Fettel's general extent of CreepyAwesome, they make for interesting and cool villains. Fettel returns in ''Extraction Point'', ''F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn'', and ''F.3.A.R.''
20	** Alma, obviously. As the developers themselves put it, "When a little girl tears her way through Delta Force, what are you supposed to think?" She may be a child, but her tragic backstory and power alone make her an intimidating threat. [[spoiler: Averted in the sequels. In ''2'', her actions are simply sickening, and in ''3'', she's more pitiful and sad than badass.]]
21	* FanonDiscontinuity: There's a group of fans that don't consider ''Project Origin'' and ''F.3.A.R'' canonical and only count the first game and ''Extraction Point'' as canon, mostly for tonal, style and themes consistency, even though ''Extraction Point'' ends in a huge SuddenDownerEnding (which was one of the many reasons it was not considered canon by Monolith, the other being rights issues with the first game's publisher).
22	* FirstInstallmentWins: The first game remains the most respected in the series by both fans and critics. ''Project Origin'' is more divisive but has a dedicated fanbase for its dark themes and storytelling. The third game, is the least well regarded but does receive praise from some for its multiplayer.
23	* GoodBadBugs: Due to how the physics engine is coded in, playing the first game on a computer with a monitor that refreshes with a framerate above the usual can cause [[https://youtu.be/ONdQRX2uuO8?t=6s some... funny effects on corpses you disturb]].
24	* HarsherInHindsight: Stokes asks Snake Fist who Alma is. Snake Fist replies "She's the mother of the apocalypse!", an amusingly unhelpful description that becomes somewhat less amusing in light of the game's ending.
25	* HilariousInHindsight: One of the meanings players gave ''F.E.A.R.'' was "Fuck Everything And Run" (although that one is an old A.A. saying, its counterpart on the other side of sobriety being "Face Everything And Recover"). In ''F.E.A.R. 3'', one of the multiplayer modes involves doing mostly this and is called "F**king Run".
26	* ItWasHisSled: ''F.3.A.R.'' is built off the twist endings of both games prior: [[spoiler:Paxton Fettel being the Point Man's brother and Alma being their mother, and Alma raping Beckett]].
27	* MoralEventHorizon:
28	** Genevieve Aristide and Harlan Wade. Which of these two is worse is up to you. For your consideration: [[spoiler:Harlan was responsible for Alma's forced impregnation -- ''and'' was the sperm donor, basically knocking up his own daughter, ''twice''. Then he took both of Alma's children away from her before locking her up in the vault, raised them from birth to be psychic killers, sabotaged the friendship between the two brothers to further the aforementioned goal, and as far as we know, threw one (the Point Man) out to fend for himself when he wasn't successful, while locking the other (Fettel) in essentially a private jail after he went berserk from Alma's influence and killed about a dozen people. Aristide, meanwhile, is your typical PointyHairedBoss taken to sociopathic extremes, completely refusing to accept the blame for any fallout from her boneheaded decisions, listen to more reasonable alternatives (no matter how often she claims to do both) or even learn from previous mistakes, and in fact actively accelerates most of the bad things that happen in the second game in her zeal to recapture Alma just to save her job, no matter how much people much smarter than her insist ''the plan will not work, '''period'''''. And to top it off, she signed off on all of Armacham's atrocities!]]
29	** Paxton Fettel crosses this if you win ''F.3.A.R.'s'' campaign as him. [[spoiler:For someone obsessed with talking about his mother with his brother, it's horrifying to see Fettel absorbing Point Man's body to eat his mother. It's easy to lose any sympathy for him after seeing this ending.]]
30	** Alma may be a TragicVillain, but that flies right out the window when she [[spoiler:rapes Becket]]. However, ''F.3.A.R.'' may bring a player back to sympathy. ''May.''
31	* {{Narm}}:
32	** Stokes' line: "What the FUCK is going on? FUCK!"
33	** While the underlying context behind the line isn't funny at all, there's the line: "You're like free pizza at an anime convention. She can smell you. And she wants to consume you."
34	** Just the premise of [[spoiler:having sex with a ghost girl, especially within the context of a darker-then-average FPS. While some people find it still horrifying, there is barely anyone on the internet who takes it seriously, either for it being a giggle-inducing idea or for the sake of the "doesn't matter had sex" meme. Some just wonder whether the game's developers had [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrophilia spectrophilia]].]]
35	** The trailers for ''F.E.A.R. 3'' -- especially the lines "Mother is expecting again" and "It's not every day we get to meet... a new member of the family", accentuated by the fact that the [[LargeHam voice]] [[ChewingTheScenery over]] sounds like something out of a grindhouse film.
36	** F.E.A.R. 2's Napalm Cannon's death animation ruins any atmosphere due to the way the enemies just either flail around like a Monty Python sketch or awkwardly stumble around like a drunkard. Then again, this falls into NarmCharm. As awkward and difficult it is to use the Napalm Cannon, some folks use it ''because'' of its unintentional hilarity. Just light a few enemies on fire and watch as a FPS Horror game turns into a Three Stooges circus clown show. The Napalm Cannon may also fall under LethalJokeItem.
37	* NightmareRetardant: At the morgue in ''Extraction Point'', [[DarkestHour when you are fully trapped in Alma's realm as it takes the shape of a prison/asylum holding the ghosts of people she felt vengeful against]], you can enter an empty cell, and the door closes behind you. By a combination of TheWallsAreClosingIn and DescendingCeiling, you are forced to stand near the locked door and look through the peephole at her on the other side... [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments at least until you glitch through one of the moving walls]].
38	* ParanoiaFuel:
39	** This is brought in full with Jankowski's ghost; at various points across the game (and some of the expansions), you'll hear his voice echo, "Is someone there?".
40	** There's a scene in ''F.E.A.R.'' where you enter a security office to turn off a fire alarm that's locked down the floor you're on. Then you look up out the window towards where you came from and Alma is standing there, waiting for you to exit the office again.
41	** The Assassins and their cloaked nature makes this inevitable, because there are several points in the game where you either spot an Assassin out the corner of your eye as they run into a duct or over a wall, or can hear the distinct electronic whirring sound of their cloaks activating or deactivating.
42	** In the same vein as Assassins, there are the Shades in the first game's expansion packs.
43	* PortingDisaster: ''F.E.A.R.'' for the Platform/PlayStation3 got a better exclusive weapon than the Platform/Xbox360 version (an automatic shotgun that didn't sacrifice any of the existing weapon's range or power, rather than a dinky machine pistol that sacrificed power and accuracy for fire rate and capacity, and took over half the spawns of the more useful RPL), but was otherwise an incredibly unrefined and choppy rushjob of a port even compared to the 360 version, which itself had problems compared to the PC original, and was pretty much abandoned after release (the [=PS3=] never even got either expansion). It may have even been partially responsible for the [=PS3=]'s early bad reputation, with several review sites blaming the poor performance of the port on the [=PS3=]'s "inferior" hardware, when in fact the [=PS3=] was the most technically-capable console of that generation and the problem was more in anyone being able to figure out ''how'' to properly take advantage of all that power.
44	* SequelDifficultyDrop[=/=]SequelDifficultySpike: ''F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin'' is noticeably easier than the first game; health and armor pickups restore 100% instead of just a partial amount, enemies can survive less damage and are more easily staggered for longer periods, and the developers have admitted that the A.I. was dumbed down to compensate for the slower aiming of a console controller compared to mouse aiming. Conversely, ''F.E.A.R. 3'' brings the difficulty level back up, with dramatically improved A.I. that's noticeably faster, smarter, and more mobile than in ''Project Origin''. Also, while you have regenerating health, you no longer have armor, and can survive less damage in one go.
45	* {{Sequelitis}}:
46	** The sequels aren't held in as high regard as the original ''F.E.A.R.'' for a variety of reasons, with the primary concern being how they were made with consoles in mind first, but ''F.3.A.R.'' in particular was derided for being a generic cover-shooter with a neat gimmick in the asymmetrical co-op.
47	** The Vivendi expansion packs are also polarizing. ''Extraction Point'' is generally considered the better of the two -- it's buggier, has less subtle scares, a fairly vague and incoherent plot, and is quite short, but does benefit from improved A.I, tighter pacing, more level variety, and some fun new weapons. ''Perseus Mandate'', however, is considered outright bad due to having almost no scares (outside of a few sections later on), a dull enemy faction with [[GenericDoomsdayVillain little personality]], poor level design, and almost no lighting effects, causing what was once a stunning TechDemoGame just a few years prior to wind up looking downright awful.
48	* SpiritualLicensee:
49	** Ever wondered what a First-Person Shooter take on ''Manga/ElfenLied'' would be? Look no further than this series.
50	** Some people call this series, more so the first game, the best FirstPersonShooter version of ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'', ''Literature/TheRing'', and ''Film/TheGrudge'' ever made. Especially since ''The Ring''[='=]s actual game adaptation on the Dreamcast [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames wasn't very good]].
51	* ThatOneBoss:
52	** The Heavy Armor fought in ''Extraction Point''[='=]s Interval 03 -- Terminus is the single most frustrating enemy in the entire game. The high health it has as a Heavy Armor would be bad enough even if he were equipped with a regular weapon like the Penetrator most other Heavy Armors use -- no, this one decides to come at you with a MOD-3 multi rocket launcher. Not just any MOD-3, either, but one [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard artificially overpowered]] to the point you're not surviving even the ''splash damage'' of more than a single rocket unless you are at full health and armor. And depending on your weapons, you may be set for a long fight if you try to engage at a safe distance.
53	** In ''F.E.A.R. 3'', the REV powered armor in Interval 05 that appears in the plaza. Most such units in previous games were weaker, to the point that all it took was a few assault rifle magazines to destroy. This one eats bullets and explosives and ''laughs'', and then returns the favor with lasers and automatic grenades.
54	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Though ostensibly set in 2025, the first game is readily identifiable as a 2005 game by several background details. As it tends to be, chief among these is that, in a game where the overwhelming majority of levels are set in the offices and super-secret underground laboratories of a highly-advanced MegaCorp that has created everything from advanced weapon systems and satellites to a psychically-imbued super soldier and a battalion of clones to follow said psychic soldier's commands, exposition is primarily delivered through listening to voicemail messages left on land-line phones or downloading what appear to be text files from very bulky [[ProductPlacement Alienware laptops]], while actual desktop computers are all universally set up with big bulky CRT monitors or flatscreens that are visibly only capable of similar resolutions to those [=CRTs=]. Another big detail is in one of the voicemails left on [[FatBastard Norton Mapes']] phone specifically, where a coworker asks him to tone down the innuendo around another female coworker, but outright claims to not personally care outside of the possibility of said coworker dropping a sexual harassment case that would bring unwanted attention on a secret task force all three of them are part of -- a far cry from the 2020s in reality, where it's a near-daily occurrence of someone losing their job precisely because they either sexually harassed a coworker, or knew about sexual harassment going on but chose not to speak up against it.
55	* UnintentionalUncannyValley: One review of the first game noted that, while the graphics were impressive, the characters more closely resembled plastic dolls than real people.
56	* TheWoobie:
57	** You can't learn about Alma's background without feeling at least somewhat sorry for the girl.
58	** And let's face it, Becket at the end of ''F.E.A.R. 2''. He's been fighting for two days straight, got horrifically operated on, is having horrible hallucinations, is being attacked by endless numbers of enemies for no discernible reason, is stalked by an insane psychic ghost, [[spoiler: gets raped]] and [[spoiler: becomes the "father" of the apocalypse]]. [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse]] for him in ''F.E.A.R. 3'', as he's escaped only to be captured and held by Armacham for nine months, then gets [[spoiler: his mind invaded by Fettel before ''exploding''.]]
59	** Then there are the Replicas, [[FridgeHorror if you think about it]]. Do they actually want to be shooting at you, or are they just being forced to do so by Fettel?
60	** And then there's Fettel himself, who is being driven insane by Alma.
61	** Sergeant Keegan in ''Project Origin''. There's every indication he was the NiceGuy of his squad only to become literally madly in love with Alma, who doesn't even notice him. In the the end he's so badly twisted that killing him [[MercyKill is a mercy]].
62	** Alice Wade. She has no idea of the horrors of her family, but ends up [[spoiler:getting murdered by her own nephew at the behest of the sister she didn't know she had.]]
63	* {{Woolseyism}}: In Spain, the in-game meaning of F.E.A.R. was changed from "First Encounter Assault Recon" to the Spanish language translation of "Assault and Reconnaissance Elite Force"[[note]]Fuerza de Élite de Asalto y Reconocimiento[[/note]] in order to keep the acronym. In Russia, it was changed to their translation of "Federal Aggressive Reaction Unit" for the same reason.

Context YMMV / FirstEncounterAssaultRecon