FEAR: Combat - Full Free MP Download

Download - Install - And Play

Sierra and Monolith have made the complete multiplayer portion of FEAR Combat available for free.
http://www.joinfear.com/

Here's what you get in the complete (1.8 gigabytes)download

F.E.A.R. Combat features:
- 10 Multiplayer Game modes.
- 19 Multiplayer Maps.
- 12 different weapons.
- Punkbuster support for anti cheat support.
- The capability to download user generated content.

OK - How Does This Play?

In a nutshell - FEAR Combat is fun. Or can be fun.

FEAR is not a pretentious FPS simulation by any stretch of the imagination. A may look like Rainbow 6, but is far from it. Anyone looking for realism had better look elsewhere.

What FEAR does offer is a straight forward "gun and run" fun. That's right - Gun and Run. That's right - There's little penalty for being at full sprint or strafing and firing of multiple rounds. This is more like Counter Strike on Steroids. There are conventional weapons and then there are sci-fi weapons like the Plasma gun which will remind many of the Quake 2 Rail gun. The Penetrator is more like a souped up Nail gun that shoots steel bolts that pin the target to nearby walls like poster art.

Although I was not able to figure out how, there are hand or better foot to head combat moves that I received more than once. Pretty lethal in close quarters.

Although my mind is more into crouching and iron site my target, it tends to leave you vulnerable to a strafing combatant that's firing and can lob a grenade. Its better to keep your mind open to bolt/strafe and grenade an area with your team mates.
Yes, team mates. One of the shining graces that makes FEAR stand out is its encouragement of team play.

Team Combat

Fear excels in allowing the player to review where his team mates are and what condition they are in. Well - when they are alive and dead. You see floating icons on the screen. These are the positions of your team relative to you. When you men go down you will see Skull and Crossbone icon giving you the warning to proceed with caution.

So FEAR may be less realistic but it offers very useful simple icons to aid in team play. To be sure, there were plenty of times I faced large groups of combatants. Its hard to argue the effectiveness of this icon system to weed out fractured units and lone gunmen. The barrage of bullets sparking and splintering wood along with grenade shockwaves are enough to make you fall back and find some others. You can easily give a command and pinpoint the enemy position which will show a red marker on all your teams screen.

Looks Good and Looks Can Kill

FEAR is for the most part balanced. An action game with unique multiple weaponry and varied game modes, and it doesn't skimp in the visual department. Now here is where FEAR might strike fear into potential players. It as pretty high system requirements. Not as steep as the single player demo but High none the less. I tested the MP on a OC'd AMD @ 2.2 with 1 Gig of 3200 Ram - Radeon 9800 XT and Audigy 2. I was able to get smooth play in 800x600 with medium settings. Using an AMD64 FX53 Radeon X800PRO Audigy 2 ZS with settings just above my OC'd unit.

So if your running anything under 2.0 GHz and a lower range video card you may need to forego many of the nice effects FEAR MP offers. I know I didn't even consider buying FEAR after playing the SP demo simply because it brought my highest end system to its knees.

It was a bold move by Sierra in deciding to offer MP for free. A game I and others had otherwise written off. I am sure there are thousands of first time players like myself that are impressed with this offering. Now many may consider buying the full game now to give the SP a run.


MP Maps

In closing I thought I'd comment on the MP maps. Better put, the TDM maps as I played more TDM than anything else. The maps look nice but may be more winding than is necessary. You really have to play the maps allot to get your bearings. Most are indoors with multiple levels. Getting to where your guys are can get tricky. This uneeded complexity in corridors minimizes skirmish or choke points that can make TDM so much fun. Only one or two maps are designed to bring on a focused firefight on multiple levels.

It's up to the modders and mappers to build complimentary maps that highlight FEARs strategic team potential. With this free offering, theres a real good chance that will happen now.


I give the FEAR Free download a solid 4 of 5 stars