Deals are deals

Are people still annoyed that Humble Bundle has expanded its scope to feature AAA games? I found the practice a little weird at first, but hey, if it means steep discounts on substantial games and the charity compo??nent is in there, I'm not going to object.

The new name-your-price bundle features titles from WB Games: Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, F.E.A.R. 3, and Lord of the Rings: War in the North. Paying above the average price includes two more games, Batman: Arkham City Game of the Year Edition and Scribblenauts Unlimited.

I've been meaning to pick up the first Arkham titles on PC now that Games for Windows Live has been removed. Can't think of a better way to do so.

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I hope you liked the multiplayer

Aeria Games has announced its plans to bring the Inplay Interactive-developed F.E.A.R. Online outside of Korea. My initial reaction was "So it's come to this," but, perhaps I'm discounting the game too early -- the main series' multiplayer is remembered fondly by ??some players. Truth be told, I never really bothered with anything other than single-player myself.

The free-to-play title has a range of modes, from co-op scenarios to the typical team-based competitive stuff to Soul King, where you get to possess your foes. A little something for everything, from the sound of it. If you were expecting a beta for F.E.A.R. Online, well, you'd be right to do so -- sign up?? for it? over here.

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From the community

A few months ago, we compiled a list of some of the toughest games to run on PC in honor of the release of Crysis 3. While each of the games lis?ted were certainly troublesome, plenty of additional titles were mentioned in the comments that were notably demanding. 

It's ??only right to give these games their proper due for being so damn difficult to run. I mean, if we don't preserve their legacy, people might eventually forget that these were all total pai??ns in the ass.

Metro 2033 (2010)

By far the most popularly acknowledged omission from the original list was Metro 2033. It seemed like no one could get it running properly, no matter how impressive their hardware was. The exact reason for this is unknown, but most chalk it up to a poorly-optimized engine. Regardless, Metro 2033 wasn't a game that many experienced at full ca??pacity.

System Shock 2 (1999)

Before its GOG.com release, System Shock 2 was one of the greatest offenders of this topic. A top-of-the-line computer wasn't necessarily enough to play it; it required the user to manually change the number of active processors within the game itself, which is a less-??than-ideal way to be able to play a game.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)

Morrowind was a technical achievement of the early 2000s, and the number of awards it won reflected that. The game's world was praised for being expansive and detailed. However, it's this same level of detail that caused it to run at a low fr?ame rate for many players. It was somewhat ironic that what was supposed to be a source of immersion was ?just a source of frustration for a lot of users.

F.E.A.R. (2005)

Before Crysis existed, F.E.A.R. was the go-to example for famously hard to run games. It was the first game created on Monolith's LithTech Jupiter EX engine. The engine was very advanced for its time with regard to physics and ?texture-rendering. However, it came at a price. Jupiter EX wreaked havoc on most PCs as it was extremely resource intensive.

EverQuest II (2004)

As an MMORPG, it's not surprising that EverQuest II featured a lot of player interac??tion. However, when the game came out, hardly any computer could handle it without a drop in performance when there was a lot of action on-screen. Far from optimal for a title that puts such an emphasis on group battles.

Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason (2009)

You can pretty much throw your specs out the window on this one. Cryostasis isn't just difficult to run; it's actually considered to be one of the most poorly-optimized games ever. It's a shame too, as the psychological horror game seemed to put a truly interesting narrative on display, but most peopl??e couldn't enjo?y it, as the technical issues were too much to overlook.

Half-Life 2 (2004)

Even Half-Life 2, a title that's included in every "best game ever" conversation, was tough to ?run on PC. However, th??is one wasn't the developers' fault. If you had a rig that was capable, this game worked nicely. It was just that it required some beefy specs at the time of release.

[Image courtesy of pixelwg]

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As many as 25 people have been let go

TimeGate Studios, one of the development teams that worked on the poorly received Aliens: Colonial Marines, has had some of its staff laid off according to Polygon. The development of the game, its reception, and the story of just what the hell happened has all been quite the mess, and this is? definitely more sad news.

The president of the studio, Adel Chaveleh, had this to say to Polygon:

"Today, we had to make the difficult decision to let g?o of some great game developers. This is never easy, and we're doing all we can to assist those developers affected. ??TimeGate is preparing, as is the entire industry, for the transition to next-generation consoles and new business models. As part of this reinvention, all projects and strategic initiatives continue to move forward at?? the studio."

TimeGate also worked on the Section 8 and the F.E.A.R. series, so we can easily say that there are definitely a talented lot out t??here that no longer have a job. Sources told Polygon that as many as 25 people have been let go. I hope they can all find work s??omewhere else soon.

Layoffs hit one of?? the Aliens: Colonial Marines dev??elopment studios [Polygon]

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Amazon has a new batch of promotions this week that they're using to sap the very last dollars out of our wallets. But what values! As if to point out the alternative to this week's release of Battlefield 3, we have a number of Call of Duty deals offering discounts on Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 all week and Black Ops marked down 42% today only. You know, just in case you need a CoD fix before next month.

There are a few other notable deals this week, however. F.E.A.R. 3 is priced at $27.99 and Trion's Rift is 70% off at $8.99. And, if you're in the market for Kinect, now is a decent time. You can save $20 on a Kinect Sensor bundled with either Kinect Adventures or Kinect Adventures and a download code for Child of Eden. I know which one I would choose.

Video Games Deal of the Day [Amazon]

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The "online pass" system was designed to combat used sales and make money from those who buy secondhand games. Except in the case of F.E.A.R 3, in which Warner Bros. apparently got so excited and giddy o?ver th??e idea of the system that it forgot one important detail -- giving players the ability to buy a pass if they get a used copy.

Warner Bros. appears to have overlooked the PlayStation Store when it comes to offering a downloadable pass. It's on Xbox Live as an 800 Point "First Purchasers Maps and Modes Pack" but those who got the PS3 version are locked out of half the multiplayer. Warner Bros. says that it's working on solving the issue, but reminds consumers that the codes are included in bran?d new copies. 

I love stories like this, because I hate online passes and I revel in more evidence that publishers are t?oo busy thinking about short-term gains to have their shit together. And they wonder why more gamers aren't supporting them l?oyally at launch with $60 in hand? Pathetic.

PS3 Fear 3 suffering from online pass problems [Eurogamer]

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The F.E.A.R.? series has always been a polarizing one. It's earned itself a dedicated cult following but for every fan, there's at least one vocal detractor. Personally, I've always been an admirer of the series, well aware of its faults but respectful of the atmosphere and twisted narrative it's become known for. 

My anticipation for F.E.A.R. 3 was very high and?? I'm pleased to announce that this is quite possibly the best game in the series so far.

Unfortunately, it's also the worst.

F.E.A.R 3 (PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [reviewed])
Developer: Day 1 Studios
Publisher: Warner Bros.
Released: June 21, 2011
MSRP: $59.99

If this is your first F.E.A.R. game, you'll need some Wikipedia pages handy, because Day 1 Studios simply does not care. Taking place months after the events of the first game, F.E.A.R. 3 continues the Point Man's story as he finds himself imprisoned by Armacham and tortured for information. He is re?scued by an unlikely accomplice -- his cannibal b??rother Paxton Fettel, who was killed by the Point Man in the first game.

If you're not with me so far, I wouldn't recommend jumping into this game, because you'll be lost for the entirety of ?the game. 

Back to the story, it turns out that Fettel's psychic ties to Alma (scary girl, human test subject, telekinetic rapist) and the Point Man was too strong for him to die, so now he exists as a wraith-like spirit, bound to his brother and harboring his own twisted agenda concerning his brother and Alma's upcoming baby. Thus the stage is set for a new co-op take on the F.E.A.R. series.

It's clear from the outset that F.E.A.R. 3 is intended as a purely co-op situation. The battles are designed for two players to distract and flank enemies, with odds that can sometimes prove overwhelming for solo combatants. While you can play single-player, you miss out on a vast proportion of the game -- the secondary? player character, be it Point Man or Fettel, will be removed from gameplay, not even available as an A.I. partner. It's a strange decision, so be warned that if you choose to go it alone, you won't get the? full game. 

The Point Man's style of play remains largely unchanged from pr?evious titles ??in the series. As the more corporeal of the two characters, he can access any gun that's lying around and he can also make use of Reflexes -- a fancy way of saying he can slow down time temporarily. Being human, the Point Man offers a more traditional approach to combat. 

Meanwhile, Fettel is the choice for true sadists. With the former antagonist, players c??an possess enemies, gaining control of their physical form and being able to essentiall??y fight like the Point Man (sans Reflexes). As well as possession, he can suspend opponents in the air via a ghostly thread, shoot energy projectiles, telekinetically fling grenades, and make unfortunate victims explode. With all this power at his disposal, one can expect a fair few fights between friends over who gets to play the ghastlier brother. 

Day 1 Studios did a tremendous job of building upon previous games and adding a new level of speed and intensity to the combat. Although F.E.A.R. 3 is considerably less scary than its predecessors due to the co-op gameplay and an increased level of action, there is still a healthy dose of foreboding atmosphere, and there's a level of quality in the shooting mechanics and overall presentation that past entries lacked. In many ways, it takes elements of modern military shooters such as Call of Duty and drapes a horror v?ibe over the framework. The results are quite pleasant to behold.

F.E.A.R. 3 has a greater focus on story, better visuals, and a more thrilling execution than the series has ever seen, yet while I want to call it the best F.E.A.R. yet, I'm very sad to say that for everyt?hing done right, th??ere are two things that have been done atrociously wrong. 

For a start, F.E.A.R. 3 is so focused on multiplayer that the campaign has been clearly compromise?d??. At a generous guess, I will say the story took me five hours to complete, but I am certain it was shorter than that. In fact, the game's story really ramps up in the last thirty minutes, to the point where the game is over before it felt that things got properly started. 

The co-op itself is also incredibly stunted. You can't choose characters freely or swap them between levels. The host always starts as Point Man and whoever joins gets to be Fettel. To make matters more obnoxious, there's no drop-in/drop-out feature, something I consider a crime for any narrative-driven co-op game. F.E.A.R. 3 tries to make things more interesting by adding a level of competition, with players able to complete objectives in order to become Alma's "favorite son." F.E.A.R. 3 is so bad at player feedback, however, that it's never really explained how best to earn points and become the winner. Not to ment??ion, Fettel has more skills at his disposal and it's far easier for him to win every?? time. 

The lacking amount of feedback is also evident in the rather poor level design, which fails to be intuitive despite the game's linearity. If co-op is useful for one thing, it's that you get to have two people testing all of the identical doors to see which one is the actual exit. 

All of this could be easily forgiven, though, had the campaign not been so thoroughly shafted in order for perhaps the sloppiest, most miserable multiplayer system I have had the displeasure of suffering in a long while. That F.E.A.R. -- a series that made its mark with excellent narrative campaigns -- chose to cut its campaign short for a buggy, crimped, broken multiplayer delivery fills me with a disgust so stro?ng it could almost gain a physical form. 

Let's ignore the galling online pass feature that refuses to download half the multiplayer features unless you exit the entire game,? and focus on just how awful the netcode is. For instance, the Quick Match option doesn't work. At all. It simply sits with a perpetual loading animation that cannot be backed out of until the player gets bored and exits the game. 

Then there's the matchmaking. While some players have reported being able to get into games, I was among the many others that could not. The most irritating part of this is that when you get an inevitable "No Available Slots" or "Unable To Join Game" message, you're booted out of the entire matchmaking menu and have to get back into it from the main menu. The reason for such backward design lies outside of my cle?arly limited grasp of human logic, but someone saw fit to make it this way. 

I was finally able to get into games by hosting them myself, although there don't seem to be many players online so full games were rather rare. So far, hosting has proven to be my only way into an online game, with Quick Match trapping players in Loading Lim??bo and game searching leading to failed join attempts and menu booting. 

The truly upsetting part is that there is a truly great multiplayer game hiding behind the wall of bullshit. F.E.A.R. 3??'s multiplayer eschews traditional deathmatch gametypes for a range of interesting and unique modes, with each one proving to be in??credibly fun in its own right. 

Contractions is the most traditional mode, being a "horde" style aff??air where four players team up against waves of increasingly difficult enemies. Between rounds, team members can find supply crates to bring back to base and repair defensive barricades to keep enemies out. Alma will also wander the map, with a stiff penalty paid to anybody unfortunate enough to look at her. 

Soul Survivor is perhaps the weakest of the four modes, being an elimination game in which one player is a wraith and has to "corrupt" downed players in order to boost his own side. Enemy soldiers flood the map, which wraiths can p?ossess at any time. While it's a decent idea, the game can get pretty dull, especially for the lone wraith player until he can win some team members.

F**king Run is a panic-inducing game in which four players have to keep moving and shooting at opponents, chased all the while by a wall of darkness. Staying in the darkness for too long causes a player to be consumed, and if just one player falls, the whole team loses. It's a frantic and particularly engaging experience, although I feel it would last a bit longer if the game r??elied on elimination rather than ending if one player falls. That said, I can see how it encourages team work rather than having players abandon their allies and run ahead.

Finally, we have my favorite mode, Soul King. In this match, all players are wraiths and they face off against A.I. enemies, all of which can be possessed. Killing an enemy causes them to drop a soul which is collect?ed for points. Players can also kill each other to steal vast quantities of souls, and therein lies the true trick of the game. The better you do, the greater your losses upon death. It's a fascinating game with a great risk/reward dynamic that keeps winners unpredictable until the very end. It's helped along by the amusingly cheesy wraith voice acting, too. 

Every single mode has merit and F.E.A.R. 3 boasts one of the most unique online offerings I've ever seen, yet all of it is pissed on by the aforementioned connection trouble, broken matchmaking and poorly designed menu system. When one can get into a game, it's great fun, but the fact that getting there is such a hassle is simply inexcusable. It's clear that Day 1 Studios intended this game to rely heavily on the multiplayer component, couldn't meet even basic standards and has wrecked what is, at its core, a superb game. Even if the connection issues and infinite loading bugs are patched, so few are playing now a?nd the menu is so badly put together that any matchmaking experience is destined to remain unpleasant.

I don't often talk about review scores within the text of a review, but I want to make this abundantly clear -- I think F.E.A.R. 3 is a 9/10 game at heart. The quality of gameplay is on par with some of the best games that the first-person shooter genre has to offer, and I feel that this is the game that should have put the series on the map. Unfortunately, I cannot in good faith give this game the score it should get due to how badly the developers screwed it up. It deserves merit for the gameplay that's offered while it lasts and while it works, but turning that "9" upside d??own is the best I can do. 

Thanks to its pathetically short campaign, dodgy co-op setup and broken multiplayer matchmaking, F.E.A.R. 3 is one of the best shooters I've played presented in the worst possible way. It pains me to have to be so harsh, but there's simply no justification for how this game's excellence has been squandered and ultimately ruined. If you can't get your online shit together, don't give me a compromised narrative, because right now, F.E.A.R 3 feels like half a game and one that?'s simply not worth paying anywhere near full price for. 

Never has s??uch a f??antastic experience been ruined so tragically. 

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We have an official F.E.A.R 3 review coming soon (I had to buy it at launch because reviewers don't?? get all their games for free, folks!) but before that gets finished, I just had to share with you the dazzling beauty that is the game's manual. 

Manuals are a lost art these days. They used to be beautiful -- almost collectible -- but nobody cares about them anymore. Luckily, Warner Brothers and Day 1 Studios pushed the boat out and brought the romance of the videogame manual back into play. Check out the luxury in the above video.

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I do so enjoy being the whispering voice in the back of your head, urging you to buy videogames because they're slightly cheaper than normal. Heck, you aren't going to play most of them anyway, but just think -- one day, you might! It's the same justification used by moms everywhere to buy clothes no one in the fam??ily actually needs.

Here is what Steam is offering right now.

• F.E.A.R. Collection ($9.99)
• Left 4 Dead 2 ($6.80)
• Indie Variety Pack ($9.99): A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda, Atom Zombie Smasher, Capsized, Machinarium, Swords and Soldiers HD
• Indie Action Pack ($9.99):AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, Gridrunner Revolution, Metal Drift, Starscape, Zombie Driver

While I don't have personal experience with enough of the titles in the Action Pack to speak of it either way -- I'm sure it's a steal, at the price -- I?? can happily recommend the Variety Pack. Do it up.

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F.E.A.R 3 is almost upon us after ten thousand delays (two or three) and I'm pretty stoked. I like the F.E.A.R series and I'm intrigued to se??e if they've pulled off the rare feat ?of making a co-op game that preserves a sense of horror and atmosphere. We'll see. 

If that fails, at least the multiplayer looks pretty unique. 

Our review copies are yet to arrive so we're not sure how close to launch we'll get an article up. I know, I know ... you absolutely need us to decide your purchases for you.

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For some reason I have a hard time believing John Carpenter when he claims to be a big F.E.A.R. fan, but whatever. Here's a new trailer for F.E.A.R. 3, which should have been out ages ago, but is due to?? arrive on Jun??e 21. 

Oh wait, that's next week. I think I'm gonna have to chase up the review copy I requested literally months ago. 

I'll go do that now ??while you chaps watch the trailer!

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I can't say multiplayer in the F.E.A.R series has ever grabbed my attention, but it seems Monolith is going all out with F.E.A.R 3. The "F*cking Run" mode a??lready has be intrigued, and now we've got the treacherous elimin?ation mode, Soul Survivor. 

The game starts with one ?versus three, as a single player tries to corrupt an enemy squad and turn them into specters. Should he succeed, the match becomes two on two, and then three on one. Pretty simple stuff, though four players seems a little low for such a gametype. 

In any case, I'm glad t??o see Monolith trying to step away from the same old boring multiplayer and try to stand out more. That's multiplayer I can respect.

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This is a video describing "Soul King," one of the new multiplayer offerings in F.E.A.R. 3. Later this year, you'll move about as a spirit, possessing the bodies of people and using t??heir weapons to kill other p??eople. The video covers it pretty well.

What I find fascinating about this mode is that it's pretty much the gameplay found in Geist, a Nintendo-published game released in 2005. In that, you were a spirit and could move from body to body, using the skills and equipme??nt of each body t??o fight people. In multiplayer, that meant hopping bodies to take down other spirits. Soul King has taken the same gameplay, switched up the scoring a little and added a "King of the Hill" mechanic.

Here's the bit that amuses me: The early working title for Geist was "Fear," changed at some point about a year before Monolith first announced F.E.A.R. at E3 in 2004. F.E.A.R. went on to sell a ton of copies, spawning expansions and sequels. Geist wound up largely forgotten, its core gameplay mechanic now a multiplayer mode inside a?? game which bears its former name.

It's a funny old world.

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It would appear that the F.E.A.R 3's co-op mode is a? little more competitive than you might think. This new trailer details how the Pointman and Paxton Fettel will be able to attain scores and outdo each other. 

Things like this make me wonder just how much this game intends to stick to its original sense of atmosphere and horror. A competitive co-op mode doesn't strike me as particularly scary. It's going to have to be really good to make up for the inevitable atmospheric trade-off, as the creepiness was F.E.A.R's biggest selling point. 

We shall see how it goes.

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I can't say I've ever rated F.E.A.R's online offerings, only really caring about the story campaign. However, F.E.A.R 3 m??ay change all that, with a co-op mode called "F**KING RUN!"

You know it's got to be good wi?th a name like that. 

F**KING RUN mode clubs four players together and pits them against Armacham's and Alma's forces. Sounds simple enough, except for the Wall of Death that will cons??tantly chase the team. If even a single player fails ?to outrun the Wall, it's game over. 

Looks incredibly cool to me, bu??t what do you ??think?

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