F.3.A.R. Announced: Should you care?

F.3.A.R. has officially been announced. As you can see developer Day 1 Studios has put in a lot of effort behind the name by wittily infusing 3 instead of the E. I only hope they added in that much effort into gameplay.

The reason I say this is because F.E.A.R. 2 was a huge letdown for the series even though it was developed by Monolith, the very same guys behind the first game. Now that development has passed onto Day 1 Studios – the guys behind the mediocre expansions – I really don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel for this franchise. Here’s a quick exerpt from our review :

__STARTQUOTE__F.E.A.R. 2 is an above average shooter at the end of the day but if you’re a fan of the first game, you’ll definitely be a bit disappointed. It’s a solid shooter that offers some pretty intense shootouts and spooky moments but at the same time it’s too easy, painfully linear and somewhat of an underwhelming experience.__ENDQUOTE__What’s worse is that the announcement trailer looks absolutely terrible. For one it uses the annoying shaky camera cum speedy editing you’ve probably overdosed on now thanks to all the Saw movies. The trailer felt like it was really trying too hard implementing real actors lifted straight from a C grade horror flick. There was like maybe 5 seconds of gameplay throughout the entire trailer and Alma just isn’t scary anymore.

On the plus side F.3.A.R. will have a co-operative mode for the entire single player in which you play as either the Point Man or Paxton Fettel, both of which as you know are Alma’s sons. Now a co-op mode is something that’s capable of salvaging the most mediocre of games so if implemented well I think it could do the game franchise good. But then again playing with a buddy won’t be as scary as it was the first time when you saw Alma crawling towards you on all fours.

Either way we’ll get to know soon enough as E3 2010 is rapidly approaching us.