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When I laid into the game I was expecting something on average with the rest of the FPS genre of today. Crysis has set the bar for visual candy in any given scenario, while not to mention, also requesting large amounts of processing power to do it. Call of Duty set the bar for delivering a multiplayer experience that lasts years, while giving a very strong visual presentation to boot.Fallout 3 set the bar for expansive world FPS gaming once again. The thing is all 3 of these titles arrived last Fall. With these titles out it make things challenging for F.E.A.R 2 to find a niche that hasn't yet been exploited in the crowded genre. 

What Project Origin does bring to the table though isn’t a game of lush tropics, or accurately rendered faces of WW2 vets, or even a vast post nuclear age world. F.E.A.R. brings out a very cinematic experience in how players experience the game. It changes the depth of field ,and uses motion blur in addition to particle systems for ambiance, and to make the game feel like it’s a story. An ongoing explosion of events that you are confronted with constantly, through the eyes of Becket, pulls the player into the game. Small details like like veining of the eyes, the sound of your pulse beating, and other touches stimulate the idea that you are living this nightmare of a time from the start to the finish. You are given so little time to really think that there’s no time to sit and ponder the mechanics of the story that you’re tied up in. (Which might be the mark of a good story!)

The visual systems are quite effective. The game creates what it needs to for delivering ghosts / ghouls, nightmares and visions of Alma in all too freakish ways. The game spends no time setting up a strange visual entrance into things, it just shoves it into the face of anyone playing and essentially tells them to deal with it with a very respectable level of hyper-realism, as the game depicts moisture on the lens, fire, electrocution and so many other aspects in a wide variety of ways with a distinct cinematic feel.

If Project Origin accomplished one thing quite well, that was total sensory overload. The game pushes the eyes and ears to new extents making these worlds that come up seem all too real. Situations and soldiers are almost too much in any given moment. And the soundtrack itself is a huge section of this game -- without it much of the experience that comes would be absolutely lost since so much of it relies on capitalizing on the link between the heard, and the seen. For those who do play through this game, notice how the music and just the environmental sounds make each moment a bit more intense. Perhaps there didn’t need to be such a focus on any heightened level of interactivity with in-game objects, because the game's effective rendering of the scary setting and atmosphere was enough to immerse the player.

F.E.A.R 2 delivers a solid entertainment experience for the game-loving masses. The only catch is that having a capable  video card is really recommended to in order to take full advantage of the entire experience this title offers. With the right hardware, only an android would not be startled by certain ambushes, and spooky shocks, the game sets up, across all the acts, with a big, flesh-eating, bloody grin on its face.