F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

i like it when the bullets go anywhere *but* where im pointing the gun.

Alma wanted to eat my butt and get me pregnant!!!

I don't get the negative reviews.
Yes the AI is dumber and yes the horror feels undercooked but it's a super solid shooter with great level design, awesome gunplay, non-stop action and perfect use of bullet time.
Highly recommended.

Its so meh its an insult to call it mid,but still interesting story

an unnecessary sequel to an already unnecessary game, and one that I still love playing every so often. elements of the game's comabt, HUD systems, and overall vibe have definitely been polished up to a high degree so I'd say it was all worth it in the end.

awesome game!! would defintely recommend it

A nice game i would say. It isn't as good as fear 1, but the gameplay is great. Playing as a mech was badass, and the slow-mo is great as always. The enemy Ai wasn't as memorable and good compared to fear 1, but it was satisfying enough. Plot was a bit bizzare towards the end, but it wasn't difficult to understand.

I didn't get as much scared or unsettled compared to fear 1 though. Its also sad that extraction point and perseus mandate just aren't important anymore. Overall the game is enjoyable, and deserves a 7/10. Solid FPS with a few horror moments.

not bad and scary!

It's F.E.A.R. 2! I'm sure you already know why you can't pass on this one.

Despite the enemy AI being downgraded and a short campaign, this is a pretty stable experience

horrifying video game DO NOT PLAY IF UNDER 21 YEARS OF AGE!!!!

It's a good game had a lot of fun. not to say F.E.A.R. 1 wasn't good. It's a different kind of hellride.
The gameplay takes a little getting used to, but it's a thrilling first persons shooter. the submachine gun's not as iconic as the 1st game, but the assault rifle is decent with a accurate and moderate damage on enemies, the shotgun's not as awesome as the 1st game but it packs a punch at close range. Auto-Shotgun is definitely an upgrade. For me, the Sniper Rifle was the best part of the game, and parts where you control the Mech.
The visual effects are much more intense than the 1st game, creators invested a lot more on the horror and there's decent amount of gore in the game. So if you like FPS, Horror, and extreme amounts of gore. I highly recommend this game.
But I also recommend you play the 1st F.E.A.R. as well. It's a different story so you're not missing out but it's an awesome series. I'm a little sad to say this series only got a trilogy and nothing else after.

Short Summary: Buggy game rendered nigh-unplayable with a not very fun (bullet-sponge) hard difficulty and mediocre level design

just... no

this is not a good game when playing in 2025. I could get it to launch and played on hard all the way until halfway through the second to last level, but I finally had it with how many times entire areas just completely vanished on me. As in, the render of the map itself disappeared, leaving only objects, enemies, and background.

tried -dx, tried limiting the fps, etc. etc. etc. but i can't count how many times i had to load to last saved point to get an area to load in. sometimes it didn't even work: sometimes i just had to relaunch the game entirely, and even that had a 50/50 of not doing it properly.

I think the game itself is fine. Fear 1 is great (bullet sponge bosses aside), but this game just feels... worse? Enemy AI is worse, map design is worse (no flanking routes), hard just kinda cranks up how bullet spongey enemies get but not my damage. Do I really have to blow an entire half-clip of AR ammo into a Replica shotgunner's head to kill them? Really?

(I also think the mech segments suck balls but I also play armored core + gundam battle operation 2 so i'm a little spoiled there)

I will complain about insta-kill, but only for the stealth enemies. For normal enemies: fair enough, that's what I signed up for. But hard also increases the health for the stealth enemies, so it takes three(!) shotgun shots to kill them before they get into range to insta-kill you, which is just straight up dumb from a game balancing point?

This brings me to why I ragequit halfway through the second to last level: I finished the segment where you have to trigger platforms to chase after Keegan and get ran at by stealth replica from every direction. I think the enemies themselves were fine since you could kinda see them coming, but unlike the other areas, having such a large room where they can literally come at you from any direction, including from behind you (and sound in this game is bugged af) is also poor game design, especially when there's three of them coming at you. I finished that level through trial-and-error more than skill. But when I walked out of that area (killing that last ninja S.O.B who tries to shank you from behind after Keegan kicks out of the hallucination), the entire next area bugged out and disappeared. So I tried to walk forward, bumping into invisible objects, until I feel like I needed to vault over a box.

It was not a box. It was a railing, and I fell to my death, and it spawned me back at the beginning of the platform area.

So yeah. I'm done.

TL;DR Wait for a remaster/remake that fixes all these fucking bugs, but even then consider if you want to play a game where hard requires you to put 15 assault rifle-caliber bullets in a head to kill an enemy.

not as good as the first game, but still great. feels much more like a "console" shooter. very interesting storyline that goes deep into disturbing matters.

first game was a masterpiece. this game is really great. and we do not talk about the third game, since there is no third game.

It's fine if you completely ignore the first game, but with this being a sequel, I'm not going to look at in a vacuum. No meaningful improvements are made over F.E.A.R. 1 here. Actually, the gameplay of the two games is very similar, only here everything is done worse. Environments are more linear, the AI is worse, and the leaning is gone, replaced with a pseudo cover mechanic that I never used a single time. Not even the arsenal is improved. Many of the guns feel worse, especially the shotgun, which has been severely neutered.

Even visually this is a downgrade. Despite having "better" graphics, F.E.A.R. 2 looks worse than 1 thanks to an ugly color palette and worse lighting.

There are several sections of the game where you are in a mech or manning a turret that bring the action to a screeching halt. These are effectively shooting galleries that go on for far too long, and I was always left thinking that I would have rather just fought on foot.

All that said, this isn't a terrible game, at least not as bad as the next in the series. This was just a step too far away from what made 1 so good, while not really doing anything to set itself apart at the same time.

Great FPS horror game with fun gameplay and great lore

It’s just a really generic FPS with a slow-mo mechanic. It’s not scary enough to be a good horror game, and it’s not fun enough to be a good action game. Also the story is genuinely terrible. You’re telling me thata highly trained military operative doesn’t draw their weapon or at least attempt to disarm a decrepit old lady who’s pointing a gun at them for a solid 20 seconds and clearly intends to shoot them, and then dies to a single 9mm shot directly into their heavy armor? And because of that, everything you did over the course of the game is for nothing and the final battle is literally meaningless. They could have completely cut it out and the game would have ended exactly the same. Who writes this garbage. If you want a paranormal FPS with slo-mo, play Trepang2 instead; it’s kinda like this game if it was actually good

its so mediocre compared to the first game.
if you removed fear from the name, and characters like alma were reskinned. I never could have guessed it was a fear title.

The environments, combat, gunplay, and somehow sluggish movement is just bleh. do yourself a favor: play the original and stop there.

Kill clone troopers again while being haunted then SA'd by a ghost

It is not a bad game, it is an ok shooter, better than most from the era, but it is not a good FEAR game.

Damn... I used to like this game and I have finished it previously multiple times. But when I'm replaying it now, years later, after I became somewhat good in boomer shooters, and after I've spent countless hours playing them on harder difficulty levels, I must say...FEAR 2 is simpy not a good shooter. Encounters with enemies are unbredictible, scripted in a way that limits your tactical options, they are sponges for bullets, in the heat of battle you can sustain a lot of damage in the most annoying ways. After playing Doom: Eternal or Turbo Overdrive this is SIMPLY. NOT. FUN.

Just not as good as the first game in many ways. Its not a bad game but sequels should be an improvement not a downgrade. Gunplay feels worse and the guns kinda sound boring. The graphics and the style of the game just feel off to me somehow and everything feels smaller and ''Zoomed in'' compared to the first one its kinda odd. I didn't hate it in the end but i was disappointed coming from the first game which was just better. i will say tho that i think the horror wasn't done bad. There are some unnerving moments that caught me off guard. To this day i don't know how to feel about the story tho.. I loved it in the first game and here im not sure if i love the direction they went with... however i have to say.. they got balls for doing what they did. Can't remember any other game doing something like THAT.... jesus.

Great game, action packed, no fluff just all fun...Needs controller support though.

THIS IS A GOOD OLD SHOOTER. WHAT CAN BE WRONG WITH THAT? On hard it can test your patience but the save sequences are properly spaced to mitigate the fall back when you die. For an old game it looks pretty good. I'm not really a fan of the intense graphics of newer games over the game play itself but that's where we're going Playing an older game tends to suggest maybe we should make better game on forget the graphics awhile. DOOM Eternal has designed a good shooter AND the graphics as an example.

Really enjoyed this and it played well on the steam deck.

Amazing graphics and enemy AI. Alma makes for an interesting and somewhat sympathetic antagonist despite not speaking.

My favorite sequence is in the school where the most prominent light source becomes the muzzle flash from your gun, A+ stuff.

Typically insane keyboard layout for a game of that time e.g. melee on the right click with ADS on the left shift.

For a 2009 game its OK i mean you fight in a nuclear city literal fallout lol with psychic enemies and the crazy Asian girl that you do kinky stuff cuff cuff

This is my favorite horror game to date. I played it when I was a wee young lad, and was mesmerized by the details and story line. All should give it a go lol

This is just a bog-standard military shooter with some even more uninspired ghosties sprinkled in. It also runs like diarrhea, but you probably knew that already if you're reading this review.

some of the most boring shit i ever played and i regret the brain stem of mine that was chopped down like da oak tree to play it. cod clone with slow mo is a travesty. dlc is aight tho

Has next to nothing in common with the original classic. Story is basically a repeat of the first game. Aesthetically, tonally and gameplay wise the game is an absolute downgrade. On top of it all some sequences are absolutely broken and i couldn't be bothered to reset the game 15x in order to get them running. Avoid.

It's just ok gameplay wise and abyssmal as a sequel.

The game runs terribly on my pc.

There is a crash fix that you can easily find on the Steam help forums. I used the advice. It did help me get further in the game but eventually in interval 06 I could go any further due to technical problems.

The game would crash, freeze, and not load game assets needed to draw the levels. I restarted the game dozens of times to get around these problems. In interval 06 i hit an area where the game assets didn't load and I could go no further, reloading didn't help.

It's too bad I was about an hour away from completing the game. I looked up a YouTube play-through so I know for sure.

My machine is a 13th gen Intel Laptop chip with Iris Xe graphics 80EUs.

It's too bad because I was enjoying myself. Fear 2 is not as good Fear 1. The slow mo combat isn't as satisfying and the gun enemies aren't as interesting to fight.

Fear 2 does same strengths though: more spacious levels, more enemies to fight at one time, better melee enemies and more of Alma's backstory.

But be warned: if you buy it then it might run terribly on your machine.

Gunplay is so bad, level design is confusing, just mid like fear 3.

Despite the degradation of bot behavior, it is a worthy continuation of the franchise.

8/10

This was the beginning of intelligent enemy AI. It went on to inspire games like Selaco. It's the perfect balance of action and storyline.

FEAR 2 is a buggy mess... maps not loading, random crashes, and having to replay certain sections because of it is frustrating af. Some moments were completely ruined by technical issues, like getting immersed in a firefight or in a more horror moment only for the game to crash, or having to redo entire sequences because the map just wouldn't render.

That said, I still had a good time with it. The atmosphere is creepy, the gunplay feels great, and the horror elements are wonderful. Jumped in my chair more than just a few times while playing.
Story is engaging, and the narration makes it so that it does not feel slow. You have some dialogues, but most of them are during exploration or movement or during gunplay, leaving only very brief moments of idleness. Gunplay also feels fast and brutal.
If not for the technical problems, this would have been an easy recommendation. I still reccomend the game, but do keep in mind it's very flawed.

4/10

reasons for reduction

- no dual wielding
- illogical story
- you need to do jump kick to kill enemy instantly during slow motion and sometimes this dont even want to work
- hard difficulty is not even balanced at all
- health management and armor managment is so baby not like the part 1 at all
- this is a horror game not a COD
- game texture and graphics are too straight and bland they dont want to be depress at all like the first game
- enemy are way too jelly they dont die like part 1

Ignore all reviews that say anything like "FEAR 1 WAS PERFECT AND THEY RUINED IT".
These people are tragic souls who are also lying through their teeth, FEAR 1 has many flaws.

FEAR 2 is an outstanding game, and between the two, it's the much better HORROR game.

FEAR 3 is the awful one.

Not as good as the first game but still a fun time none the less with solid shooting, great atmosphere and sound design, plenty of spooky moments and a pretty entertaining story. It took me about 4 hours to get through the base game and an hour to get through the Reborn DLC. I recommend getting F.E.A.R 2 on a decent sale.

If you can get it working, it's not a bad game, it's just not a good F.E.A.R game. I love that the game delves more into the psychological aspect of horror, but there are some massive downsides and reasons I couldnt recommend the game. The cons are more important so they're first

CONS:
You cant bind keys to mouse side buttons
The game feels like it was made exclusively for console, and then just ported over to PC last second.
By default, mouse sensitivity is busted. Downloading a mod to fix that requires capping your FPS to 60 otherwise it's even worse
The QTEs take a lot of suspense out of the game because as long as you can complete a QTE you wont die
Sometimes entire rooms just dont load in and you have to restart your entire game
can't tab out otherwise the game crashes, forced fullscreen exclusive

Pros:
Graphically very impressive
Nice psychological horror
It takes a very long time but once you've finished it, you realise it was a pretty good game
Answers some questions about the predecessors, even if it does remove a couple from canon

Not as innovative or scary as the first F.E.A.R. or its expansions, but a more polished, better looking game with a... slightly more straightforward story. Still a good albeit short time. Can be a bit buggy, but nothing a reload from last checkpoint doesn't fix.

DLC is even shorter and more combat heavy than the main campaign, don't buy separately, get the bundle.

not as good as the first game but still enjoyable. May you rest peacefully Monolith

Solid 8/10 shooter and horror game.

My only gripes are:
Difficulty. Normal feels a little too easy and hard feels a little too hard (enemies do 3.75x damage compared to normal lol), like snipers start one shotting you. I feel like there should have been an option inbetween two.
The other one is that movement feels like it regressed a little compared to the first entry. No more leaning, no more walking, jumping feels less responsive.
The armor and HP are no longer numbers but a fancy little bars that are layered on top each other, which is harder to read imo.

Improvements over first game:
No more time restriction for flashlight, thank god!
Squad members feel more fleshed out, and you spend more time with them in person as opposed them being on the other side of a radio ALL the time.
3 Medkits instead of 3-10 feels more balanced.
Better graphics and particularly the gun models. The character can finally use the sights properly.

All in all, nice little game. It took me about 12 hours to complete the campaigns of the main game and the Reborn DLC.

This game really isn't as bad as some fans claim it is, and is nowhere near as janky as the third game in the series.

Unlike the first game it runs out of the box on Windows 10, though I highly recommend using PC Gaming Wiki to download a DLL that fixes the atrocious mouse acceleration. You *can* technically play the game without the DLL, but it makes the mouse look feel extremely squirrelly so I would advice against that. Apart from that the game runs just fine and even supports higher resolutions, which is pretty great.

One of the things that really bogged down the first game were the visuals and settings, which were incredibly repetitive; You were basically limited to office interiors and industrial complexes. Seeing any color besides gray and brown was a rarity, and I'm happy to say that FEAR 2 fixes this problem by adding lots of different types of scenery. In general the graphics in FEAR 2 look great, and the environments have a lot of detail in them.

Hardcore FEAR 1 fans would argue that FEAR 2 is "too colourful" and that this somehow ruins the "realism", but I honestly never understood this reasoning; The story is basically a sci-fi horror retelling of Akira, the famous Japanese anime/manga, and I don't think anyone ever complained about Akira being "unrealistic". My point is that this series is firmly rooted in science-fiction with lots of supernatural elements, which makes the whole "realism" argument feel pointless.

That's not to say that the game doesn't take itself seriously, or that it's high fantasy nonsense without any stakes; FEAR 2 dials up the horror elements, similarly to FEAR 1's Extraction Point, which is much appreciated and creates an interesting contrast to the action. Another thing that reminded me of the FEAR 1 expansions is the fact that it spices up the enemy variety some more, instead of having you fight the same replica goons over and over again like in the first game. Remnants are a good example of a new enemy type that keep you on your toes.

One critique that FEAR 1 purists bring up that I do agree with is the fact that the AI is a little bit more simplistic this time around. I don't think it's necessarily the AI that has been down-scaled, but that many of the levels just aren't designed like in the first game; The first game relied heavily on large rooms with lots of obstacles that the replica soldiers can use to ambush you, which created a really cool sense of intelligence. You always felt like you're facing a well-coordinated squad in the first game, even if a large part of that is smoke and mirrors accomplished with clever programming.

I too am sad to say that FEAR 2 doesn't really have this type of combat anymore, even if it tries to make up for it by giving enemies the ability to flip certain objects over for cover (which admittedly looks cool whenever they react to your presence). The player can now also flip tables and such to use for cover, but I rarely used it since a more aggressive approach is almost always more effective in my experience.

That being said, the combat is still very fun, and the addition of proper iron sights is much appreciated even if the purists will argue that this is too "COD-like". While the shotgun has been nerfed, the weapons in general still feel good and impactful, and they even bring back the laser rifle from Extraction Point, which I thought was a nice homage. You can also still karate kick enemies to death, which is just as fun as in the original, though getting the opportunity to use it is a rarity.

As I said earlier, the horror elements are back in full force, and the ghost enemies now actually look like apparitions instead of floating guys that disappear when you shoot them, which is much scarier and at times allows them to sneak up at you when you least expect it, like in the infamous Elementary School level. I'm not someone who is easily scared by video games, but I do appreciate the effort they put into it this time.

There's also a couple of mech sections in which you control a giant robot, and while they're fun distractions (and a clever nod to Monolith's old mech FPS Shogo) they are for the most part very easy since you have a ton of firepower at your disposal. Near the end you fight a couple of other mechs, which raises the difficult a little bit, but it never becomes as challenging as FEAR 1 could be at times.

In fact, I would say that the overall lack of difficulty is my only big gripe with this game. Normal difficulty feels too weak and feels more akin to "easy", and they really should have tweaked this some more for the final release. I reckon that this was done to make it easier for console players, which I can understand, but I can't shake the feeling that a FEAR game needs to feel a bit more punishing than this. The included add-on Reborn does increase the difficulty a little bit, which is nice, but it ends rather abruptly after maybe an hour and a half or so.

FEAR 2 is definitely not a flawless game, and neither was the first game for that matter. Unfortunately, the quality doesn't always reach the same heights as the first game's, but it still provided some small but noticeable improvements on the action-horror formula here and there that make it worth playing through. I certainly enjoyed my time with it.

Rest in peace, Monolith Productions.

65%

"FEAR 2: Project Origin" is a first-person shooter with a mysterious horror framework. The graphics provide a substantive world where glass windows can be shattered with the butt of your guns and tables can be thrown over as cover. But the realism isn't quite there yet at the time this game launched.

"Project Origin" has a terrible habit of making the way forward a backtrack the way you've come, and the gunplay while satisfying, is brief, overly simplified, and overly convoluted all at once. I almost wish the spaces were larger, while at the same time they feel too large. It's a strange game of contradictions. Perhaps, it was all built by an earlier generation testing out new gaming engine capabilities, with an earlier sensibility. Genuinely fun, nonetheless, "Project Origin" offers up a number of jump-scares and creepy visual distortions that are hard to ignore as elements of exceptional design and storytelling.

Honestly, the 3rd game in this series "FEAR 3" truly perfects this series' gunplay, including enemy counts and level design. Grab that installment of the game for the most fleshed out experience in this world.

R.I.P Monolith
Ya'll deserved better.
I completed this a few months ago.
F.E.A.R 2 is your average FPS shooter of the late 2000s. It wasn't as revolutionary as the first F.E.A.R, crysis or COD:MW1.
It just felt average, nothing stood out about this game but it wasn't that bad either. In my opinion, the DLC for FEAR 2 is actually better than the base game although it's only about 40-50 minutes.
The worst downgrade I noticed in F.E.A.R 2 was the level design and the peek option being removed. The armour suit was fun to use but it wasn't some mindblowing addition to the game. It's definitely better than F.E.A.R 3 but it's not as good as the first part. The only new weapon in the game was the napalm cannon and it was just horrible to use.
There are some memorable parts in the game and the gunplay is decent,
The only reason I am not giving it a negative review is because it's not a bad game, it's just average.
Would I recommend this game? Probably not, there are much better FPS games to play. Although I would suggest you to just buy the bundle during sales because the price difference between F.E.A.R 1 and FEAR complete pack isn't that huge and if you wanna play it for the story then you will have the option to do so if you get the bundle.

Cool game, but it feels like im playing a child of F.E.A.R., HALO and Bioshok for some reason

fun game (SOMETIMES) but an absolute dogwater sequel to the first game bro ts fr pmo :skull:

Easily, when you go into a sequel- you're expected the game will be good. In the case of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, this game basically becomes the worst sequel in existence. Nothing of this game screams good, and honestly compared to what F.3.A.R. is, this game becomes the sad downfall of the franchise. Not only is this game shorter, but the level design screams "Well now we must be on console, and somehow make an abysmal story". And the expansion Reborn is EASILY the most "Giving a Fuck Challenge" ever. It's an hour of just shooter gallery weakly setting up the basic plot for F.3.A.R. which shocker, *It does NOTHING*. But yes, F.3.A.R. somehow is worse, I wish I was joking.

Better than the original game F.E.A.R , but less horror. Overral i enjoyed the atmosphere and the ambience. The story-line is a bit confusing but it was nice. Totally recommend it if u played the original one.