About 60% of the new games at this year's GDC were brought by Vivendi Universal, and leading the charge, the sparkling diamond among the zirconias was Monolith's F.E.A.R., a spooky first person shooter that promises to plunge us into a bloody intense survival horror experience. After playing the single player campaign for thirty minutes and actually enjoying getting torn to shreds, I have a good feeling that this promise will be kept.

Going in I was expecting Monolith to be showcasing F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer component because the game's developers aren't talking about the single player adventure, so you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that Vivendi was seriously pimping the first level, and oh man...what a $#^#%^# awesome shooter. I'm a little disappointed that Monolith decided to scrap the sci-fi element (the game was originally to take place on another planet) and go with a more domestic setting, but the creepiness factor as well as the mind-blowing graphics and physics engine makes that small gripe a non-issue.

In case you've never heard of this game, F.E.A.R. is a horror-themed first person shooter where you play as a member of an elite squad of soldiers, a clean-up crew of sorts that's called upon to defuse situations no one wants to deal with. In this extremely special case, a group of soldiers at this complex have gone crazy and all contact with them has been lost, so you're sent in to investigate, and what a ##$%@&# mess this job is. Almost as soon as you're dropped from a chopper your fellow squad mates are mysteriously vaporized, and once you get inside the site, you're attacked by these well-armed and trained commandos, and to make matters worse there's this creepy little girl walking about that appears to be deader than the Atari Jaguar, but you don't know any of this going in.

Personally, based on what I played, there's nothing about F.E.A.R.'s gameplay structure that screams innovative. What I experienced is the typical press button to open door stuff, but this game has three extremely well-polished strengths: its gunplay, its artificial intelligence, and its visuals (particularly its character models). Combat wise, F.E.A.R. is one of the most intense shooters that I have ever played. Monolith really nailed the gunplay, and the audio is superb. Hearing nails (there's a nail gun and it rocks) puncture flesh and bullets pelt bodies instantly put me on this awesome adrenaline high, especially when I was interacting with the environment. Like many PC first person shooters, F.E.A.R. has this amazing physics system where you can shoot out windows and shred boxes, and there's this slick effect where bullets kick up dust that hangs in the air and obscures your vision.

Because of time constraints I didn't finish the single player demo (though I still saw it all the way through), but not because I wasn't trying. Both myself and freelancer Rich Brown kept getting slaughtered by the AI, which is without a doubt among the most intelligent that I've ever experienced. The enemy soldiers behave in unpredictable ways, and aside from the first guy five minutes into the game that always has his back to you, the others evaluate each and every situation. Sometimes they'll rush you, other times they'll sneak up from behind. Then they'll perform evasive maneuvers, electing to vault over oil drums or dive through windows. The reason why I had trouble dealing with these possessed bozos was clear to me. I was doing the same thing I always do in first person shooters, hide behind something, pop out, and take a few shots, then retreat. Problem is, doing that in F.E.A.R. will get you killed real quick, because after a few seconds of playing hide and seek the NPCs get pissed and come after you.
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