The Fear series is one of the last few horror games in existence. I hesitate to call it “survival horror” because the player has more than enough firepower to fend off enemies, and the controls are much too good. The first game in the series was welcomed with a decent amount of praise, but there were plenty of nay-sayers as well. And rightfully so. The game was certainly not without its flaws; especially in terms of controls. Fortunately, the mildly-anticipated sequel is here and with it comes revamped, intuitive controls as well as an improvement in environments.

The first thing that should be noted is that the graphics are fairly unimpressive. Many surfaces and edges suffer from jags and lack of detail. The areas themselves are impressive, unfortunately the graphics don’t fully execute that.

A big issue with the first FEAR was the horrid framerate in the PS3 version. Fortunately the framerate in FEAR 2 is noticeably improved. One issue that did carry over was the less-than-smart AI most of the enemies seem to possess. You’ll often find them needlessly jumping through windows or basically moving spastically all over the place without much of an apparent method. 

If the demo for FEAR 2 is any indication, the creators have taken note of the flaws within the first game, and moved the series in the right direction. The game isn’t destined to be perfect, but it’s definitely a worthy way for fans of the horror genre to spend their time.