f13.net

I'd imagine some of you have already heard about this, but on August 17th, the entire multiplayer part of Monolith's shooter, F.E.A.R., will be released online for free to anyone who wants it. I'm not sure what their motivations are, perhaps just to get some more people interested in the game before their expansion comes out. Either way, it's a free FPS for anyone who wants it.

http://www.fearfans.com/newsitems/103/

Um..wow....

Is that sarcasm, Sprazos? If not.. we should rock that something fierce.

No, that is not sarcasm. At all. I played the hell out of the demo before the game went gold.

This is awesome. I want my stake gun back.

The only thing I question is why. Were game sales poor?

Dunno, but this is awesome, I'm in the same boat in that I stopped playing after the demo ended.

Like I said, i've got no idea why they chose to do it, perhaps to just invigorate their online community. I suppose it doesn't really hurt their sales of the game, as by now, pretty much anyone who would buy it for the multiplayer probably has, and this way they can generate some more potential sales of their expansions. Either way, I quite enjoyed the game during it's MP beta and it's demo, but just never got around to picking it up. So i'm quite eager to get my hands on it again.

Any chance of a F13 server? I seem to remember I quite enjoyed having my ass blown up by you people in UT. And the times when I got lucky with the flack cannon were glorious.

I doubt it...too much crying and gnashing of teeth on that UT server.

I never really liked the Multiplayer demo. I donno what it was, but I just didnt feel it.

You must have missed out on the stake rifle.

Mmmm...steak...

I wonder if F.E.A.R. combat will include any game modes that weren't in the release.  F.E.A.R. counterstrike might be interesting.

You shut your filthy mouth.

While there's no "counterstrike" mode, they did add two game modes in the 1.05 patch.

Control mode: Two teams compete for three Control Points. Teams earn points for each Control Point they hold. To win, one team must reach the score limit before their opposition or have the highest score when the time limit expires.
Capture All mode: Two teams compete for five Control Points. Team points are earned for neutralizing or capturing a Control Point as well as killing enemy players. To win, one team must capture all five Control Points, reach the score limit before opposing team does, or have the highest score when the time limit expires.

from http://www.fearfans.com/newsitems/96/

So that means you'd have a total of 5 gamemodes, and their respective slo-mo variants.

I still don't know how they got slo-mo to work in a MP game.

Current server doesn't have enough RAM to run a game server on top of everything else.

I'll check with Ivo to see if Game Angst can get a FEAR Combat server up.

They want more people to play FEAR before they shove the sequel down our throats. Everyone that played FEAR did the single player then stopped. At least I did. I thought the multiplayer was crap, frankly. Now I guess they have fixed the crappiness (hopefully) and the $free tag will get people playing it. I expect the sequel announcement will follow soon.

FEAR didn't sell terribly well, which is a goddamn shame since it was a very good single player game.

I think they figured out that most PC gamers are now too dumb to like anything that doesn't have a good multiplayer component, so they're appealing to the wtfpwnz0r crowd to drive sales.

Game seemed rather "blah" to me.  It wasn't very remarkable, just another shooter with bullet time except with a creepy little girl.

I liked the enemy AI a lot, and the ringu-style scares are a nice change from the alien/beast/monster type scares a lot of other games with horror elements have, especially FPS titles. I think people would've liked the single player better had they kept with their original designs and not scaled back so much on the character development.

Originally the black guy (can't remember his damn name) from the special ops was supposed to be the empath, and the dumb asian chick was supposed to be the sniper and have a more crucial role in the game outside of just being conveiniently absent 90% of the time.

The AI was great - but the bad guys had no character whatsoever.

Wave after wave of soldiers dressed in black.


woo.   hoo.

At least their personality fit the story, being that those soldiers were clones under telepathic control of Paxton.

F.E.A.R. wasnt quite as scary as System Shock 2 for me.  Never could finish SS2 (got about as far as the level 5 recreation center) and even contimplating trying gives me the willies, but I spent most of F.E.A.R. pitying Alma more than being afraid of her. 

I wonder what ever happened to that promo cutscene where Alma is walking on the ceiling blowing people up?  Never ran across it in F.E.A.R.

One of the things left on the cutting room floor.

Alma used to instantly dice people up in cool looking jump-cuts with psychic powers or something, but instead they went with the insanely lame killing method of dissolving people or whatever.

** Moderate spoily **

From what I gather, the phantoms of her nightmares (demonized versions of the scientists that prodded her) come out and claw her victums to shreds.  They're too fast to be seen with the naked eye, but the protagonist is able to spot them with his bullet-time reflexes and banish them with a hail of bullets.  That's how the end game goes anyway.

But yes, the jump-cuts leading to people's innards exploding were much cooler looking.  Pity they cut those.

To anyone who didn't know, this is out now.

Been playing it on and off for the last two weeks. Its fun, but the maps are rather drab and there's some balance issues. The unarmed attack with the combination jump or crouch means a 1-shot kill, which is wtf territory.

Nah, they don't claw anyone. They just kind of grab you and dissolve you. You see this in perfect slow motion right at the end of the game before the disappointing end-run.

It's decent but unspectacular. The weapons seem to lack a bit of punch, and the maps could certainly be better.

You have to just use the Stake Rifle. I actually caught a guy jumping down from a balcony, so I ended up staking him to the bottom of the balcony as I killed him in midair...hanging by his legs. It's classic.

That sounds cool. Wasn't there another game where you could pin guys to the wall? NOLF2? Thief?

Possibly NOLF2, though I'd have to run through the game again to be sure.

I was thinking about NOLF2 last night while playing Half Life 2, which I just reinstalled. I forgot how bland and boring of a traditional shooter HL2 is. *yawn* Oh yeah, cool physics...wasted on a boring shooter ;)

Hm. I can't generate a "CD-Key" on their homepage, it just takes me back to step 1 of 3 after I complete step 2 of 3. I tried Firefox and Internet Explorer, no luck.

Any ideas ? Any keys to spare ?

Check your pm, i sent you mine.

I will try it out as soon as I get home from work. Thanks a lot.