f13.net

Learn What is F.E.A.R. (http://learn.whatisfear.com)

F.E.A.R. appears to be a new horror-style FPS, and this site is giving away beta codes. I know many of you don't like Flash sites, but this one is pretty cool. Make sure you look at it with headphones and sound on. It's worth it, IMO.

The game? May suck, may not, who knows. Looks decent, though.

The best use of Flash I have seen in a long time.

Also, the combat engine seems interesting.

Standard FPS fare, but with Bullet Time(tm) and also melee/martial arts.

Goddamn that's freaky.

"Not open to people outside of Europe"?  Boo.

Go to EBGames. Buy a $5 preorder. Get into the beta and get 5 extra passes for friends (in the same box).

Speaking of EB...Apparently they now allow you to trade in PC games?

Am I the only person who finds this to be odd?

Just fall off the turnip truck?

I don't find it odd at all.  My nephew used to trade in his games at shops years ago.  He also worked at a comic shop ages ago that sold used PC games.

Same here. At least the EB I've been going to has been doing it since they've opened.

The alternative is b.s. if you ask me. They should be worth something to someone. It's not like I'm trying to sell a half-eaten hamburger or something.

It's odd if they resell games that have multiplayer account keys or games that otherwise validate your key over the Internet.

Well, duh.

There was a F.E.A.R beta demo available on FilePlanet a month or so ago, which I was able to check out.

I think the single player game will be freaky as hell! Just the cut-scene it used to test your video card settings had me freaked out the first 3-4 times I saw it. (So I won't be buying it, I have a hard time forcing my character to go into Known Scariness).

The demo was a MP single level, which I played a bit. The ragdoll + physics stuff was cool (sweet graphics), but all in all it was just another shooter.

I usually shop at GameStop.

I imagine that my EB buys PC games, otherwise they would have to hire a drooling idiot specifically to rough up the boxes, eat the intructions and scratch the discs.

Neat flash. I made it to the picture book, and then I guess the girl killed me.

Yea, the picture book triggers the girl. I thought this was brilliant (http://learn.whatisfear.com/html/news_site_uk.htm).

The shaking window annoyed me.

I had the window maxxed and it looked more like wiggling.

I don't like it... they scared me.



but hey, even crappy horror like Doom 3 scare me somewhat... part of the reason is, that I never play before the house is dark and silent and with headphones on.

Apparently, they are releasing a single-player demo this Friday, Aug. 5th around 10 a.m. CST. It'll have 1 level. I plan to try it out.

I kept expecting something scary to pop up in the game window as soon as I closed that window.  I was slightly let down that nothing happened.

How do you make a "scarey" multiplayer game?

Show RL pictures of the people you are playing against?

The chills won't stop going up and down my spine now.

Natural Selection had the right general idea, I think.

Yum....Stealthed Aliens ATTACK!!

Natural Selection is impressive, I think everybody who hasn't tried it should give it a shot, original stuff. http:/natural-selection.org (http://http:/natural-selection.org) but they seem to be having problems atm. Alien vs Marines, both sides plays totaly diffrent. Add in RTS elements such as base building and resource controlling and you have a winner.

Back in the days of the internet cafe I had a hell of allot of fun playing AvP after hours when most of the place was shut down.  There is something about shouting across a dark room about alien positions then hearing the scream of that heatseeking machine gun thingy that will always put a smile on my face.

When Natural Selection was first available, seeing an Onos barrel down a hallway towards your squad was pure terror, since the damn thing didn't even seem to fit inside the map corridors.  Seeing two come towards your base felt like accepting defeat.  Of course, they seemed to have been pretty nerfed last time I played.

Great game, though, needs a good game engine(doom3 or another equally adept at handling light and shadow).

There's a new version of Natural Selection in the works, but I dunno what engine it's going to use. HL2 seems likely.

They've been talking for a long time about doing a Source version of NS.  Not quite as good as an engine with real dynamic lighting (Doom 3, Unreal 3, Quake 4), but it'd still be a big step up from HL1.

It can do Doom 3 style dynamic lighting, but Valve decided against using it in the main game.

Edit: Also, who can forget Alien Swarm?

http://www.blackcatgames.com/alienswarm-infested.html

If it was too buggy to use in the main game, it doesn't count.  (It's a shame, because there were a few graphical glitches in HL2 where the shadow fakery was really obvious, stuff like peoples' shadows inexplicably floating in midair.)

If only Doom 3 did multiplayer well.  Supposedly Quake 4 and/or UT 2007 will have the best of both worlds.

The Source engine can't do Doom 3-style lighting and shadowing where all lighting and shadowing on all objects and all surfaces are calculated in real time (no precomputed "light maps"). Like any moden 3D engine the Source engine can do dynamic lighting but only with a limited number of objects. Source does support the more traditional precomputed light maps including radiosity (global illumination) effects which Doom 3 doesn't. Given how much of Half-Life 2 took place in outdoor areas or areas that were at least partially lit by the "sun" it wouldn't have made sense to use the full-blown Doom 3 lighting model since it just would've looked wrong. Doom 3-style lighting only looks right in enclosed spaces with a limited number of light sources. Anything else would make it look too artifical with no soft shadowing and no reflected lighting (which takes too many CPU cycles to do in real-time at the moment).

(e.g. every Natural Selection map in existence  :wink:)

Yup I played NS a lot back when it first came out and the Doom 3 engine would work great for it assuming it can handle that many players without getting bogged down.

Just played through the demo - not bad, but not amazing.  The AI was somewhat impressive in that it actually stayed back instead of charging around blind corners like most games, and you couldn't just charge into a group of three guys and expect to surive.  I also liked how you could only carry three weapons at a time.  The 'bullet time' felt a little silly, as did the 'YOU HAVE SUPER FAST REFLEXES OMG' rationale for it. 

-5 points for stupid cutscene introduction. 

Considering buying it when comes out.  Has a nicely different feel than Doom 3 or HL2.  Anyone else played the demo? 

Yea I also started playing NS around the time it arrived, and I liked the old way of hives worked. If aliens had 3 hives then they could morph into everything ( if they had the resources ), and if they had 2 hives then onos wasn't possible, and with 1 hive both onos and fade was unavailable. Nowdays alien can become onos with only 1 hive. It's still pretty solid though.