How quickly the tables have turned and done a full 180. Developer Kronos has become notorious for creating some of the worst fighting titles to ever grace the Sony PlayStation platform. And even though it seemed like they had something promising on the horizon with their last fighter, Cardinal Syn (published by SCEA), the end result was a game that didn't quite go above and beyond the expectations of players. Since Cardinal Syn's release, however, Kronos seemingly crawled into a shell, not to heard from - until now. Kronos has emerged from its fighting past and crafted an incredible Resident Evil-like adventure.
There are numerous titles on the PlayStation that are decidedly more adult-natured than most mass market titles, but Fear Effect pushes the envelope a bit farther with an intense, mature plot that twists and turns itself all about. Hana, the main character who starts off this chain of events, is tipped off by one of her friends from the past because he requires her services to find the daughter of his employer. To make sure things go as smoothly as possible, Hana enlists the help of two men for needed assistance, Royce Glad and Jakob Decourt. What starts out to be a simple tip off, transpires itself into a sinister plot that wraps itself around the globe, and even into the very depths of Hell.
From start to finish, Fear Effect always had me continuing to play the game because of the engrossing story. There was almost never a dull moment and that kept things exciting and tense the whole way through, something that's been missing from some of the copycat adventure titles that have hit the PlayStation recently. As far as having more mature themes, this includes the use of obscenities (nothing like the "f" word, but there are a few less tasteful phrases used throughout the voiced dialog), scenes where Hana reveals herself - to an extent, and the nude and graphic images full of blood splashing all over the place. All of the aforementioned more mature-oriented themes, are used at the right moments and never for the blatant use of having it there "just because they could". It's because of that, the story flows together nicely and always had me waiting to find out what was going to happen to the trio of characters next.
Kronos' fighting titles had some pretty graphics, but their artists have gone all out with the visuals extravaganza that is Fear Effect. The most interesting innovation that the developers have implemented are that all of the backgrounds are completely comprised of FMV. Most games nowadays utilize FMV, either in-game or used during the cinematic sequences, but Fear Effect uses them in place of what usually are still, pre-rendered backdrops. This equates to some beautiful moving scenery that has tons going on while you're walking around. For the most part the FMV backgrounds work synonymous with the game, but there are two problems that do not necessarily detract from the awesome gameplay, but are annoyances nonetheless. Firstly, the FMV is slightly blurry due to all the movement (how bad it is depends on the particular scene), and the FMV animation has to constantly restart itself every few seconds. Around every three or four seconds there will be a slight skip in the FMV as it loops itself.
As good as Fear Effect is, I felt there were places that could have been paid a bit more attention to before the game was actually shipped. We'll begin with the game's difficulty. It is a bit strange really; the door swings both ways with Fear Effect. On one hand, the game is overall a short and relatively easy title; I was able to blow through the first three discs (out of a total of four) within a day and half of playing the game. However, on the other hand, there are certain trouble spots that are way too difficult. It's a bit hard to describe many of the situations later in the story without ruining part of the plot, so we'll use the first boss as an example. In order to defeat him you have to move into his field of vision so that he fires at you. After firing his machine gun for a few moments he'll take a few moments to reload, which is the moment that you have to fire at him. The downfall to this is that the window of opportunity to hurt the boss is so short that it becomes almost luck that you can nail him without being killed or severely hurt. Not only this, but for some reason the boss was able to fire through walls and nail me, but I was unable to, giving him a distinct advantage over me.
One of the annoyances with games similar to Fear Effect are the "claimed to be logical" puzzles, when in fact, they are clearly illogical. Fear Effect has its share of puzzles that don't make all that much sense, but the developers have cleverly hidden clues throughout the FMV environments and items close by. Without ever glancing at a walkthrough, I was able to find all the clues I needed through what was shown to me in the environments. Some were more obvious than others (i.e. a passcode being displayed on a huge, flashing neon sign compared to hard to make out scribble on a notepad), but I found the clever use of puzzle hints to be a break from what I was use to.
It's amazing to see a developer make such a turnaround when switching from one genre to another, and we can only hope that Kronos is able to follow up Fear Effect with an equally impressive sequel (or prequel, as is rumored). Despite the fact that the FMV backgrounds aren't prefect, the game is not particularly long (the four CDs can be worked through in a couple of days if concentrated on) and there are spots of difficulty that could have been managed better, Fear Effect is terrific. I can honestly say that this is the first US released PlayStation title that I have truly enjoyed so far this year.
-- Patrick Klepek
