Recent reviews by Junkman Cicero

Dario Casali needs to play this mod.

But where's Kim Swift?

I found it a bit unintuitive but once I got the hang of the new gameplay elements it was a blast. Great stuff.

This game needs no introduction, no glowing review, no praise of any kind. Its existence speaks for itself. Just go check it out. What have you got to lose? It's free!

Perseus Mandate is a flawed gem. While functional, just as fun to play and even more expansive than Extraction Point, and telling a rather compelling side-story about a secondary F.E.A.R. team sent to investigate Project Perseus in response to ATC's betrayal, the trade-off of that is the game lacks the lustre of Extraction Point - the lighting was clearly rushed, ranging from misaligned light sources to an entire section of the game having a jarring lack of light and dark. It doesn't detract from the gameplay at all but it's noticeable and annoying, release schedules or not.

The new enemies I found a little bullet spongey. Maybe I've falling into the Doom Eternal trap of getting too used to playing a certain way and now that I'm faced with having the game telling me I ought to be playing it the other way and it's throwing me off. I used the penetrator on what I assume was medium difficulty on one of these suckers and he came out looking like a human pin cushion before he finally relented - and I didn't fare much better. I suppose I can at least give TimeGate points for consistency.

TimeGate also continues its trend of killing off characters as soon as they run out of ideas for what to do with them next, even when it would serve the plot to keep them alive a bit longer, and it just seems wasteful and lazy in both cases, though as with Extraction Point I really must praise the memorable and - for the most part - effective execution.

Same with the story, which in this there is significantly more direction to than the previous entry, in part thanks to it being essentially a re-telling of the same events of the previous two releases from a different angle, and unlike Extraction Point there's a much more prevalent sense that all of this is building up towards something. I do think it's a shame the storyline involving the senator was never picked up by Monolith, as the narrative possibilities raised by this account were most intriguing. But that's the way the cinderblock crumbles, I guess. I blame lack of communication, it certainly seems that's a running theme throughout the Vivendi entries.

Unpolished but fun if considerably more challenging, Extraction Point is in essence a rush-job extension to the narrative of the original F.E.A.R. with no clear road map for the future of the series.

Following up on the success of F.E.A.R. was never going to be an easy task, and it was that task that fell to the venerated lords of quickly-made and functional expansion packs, TimeGate Studios, and they rose to the challenge, taking wholesale the atmosphere and pacing of the base game and adding their own spin, providing more challenging AIs and even more weapons to choose from.

There's not a whole lot going on story-wise as it's clear Vivendi had no idea what direction to go in but TimeGate does the best they can with it. It's also obvious that they were working to a deadline, as evidenced by the significantly higher ratio of Doors That Can't Be Opened But Don't Have Visible Obstacles Obstructing Them, and I can't help shake the Garry's Mod horror map feeling of some of the fright segments where apparitions blink out of existence without so much as a screen flare or a fade-out. All your favourite characters return (even some of the dead ones), some for longer than others, and some certainly used to better effect, but don't go in expecting too much buddy-cop activity.

The long and the short of it is, if you want more of the F.E.A.R. experience and aren't put off by a more substantial challenge, then this is what you've been looking for. By all accounts, it's closer to the original experience than any of Monolith's subsequent contributions, but that's neither here nor there.

My only regret is that there's not more of it.

Sleek, atmospheric, and with complete mastery of audio and visual design, Dagon captures the essence of Lovecraft's otherworldly terrors with near-perfect accuracy and attention to detail. A masterclass in the transposition of prose into the visual medium.

Great soundtrack, beautiful scenery, absolutely abysmal in every other aspect. First game I've uninstalled within the first 15 minutes of playing.

Visually stunning but complete garbage story-wise. 4/10.