For the redneck, film-noir sausage imbecile in all of us

Eidos has had some really good and really bad PSX games in it's lifespan. On one hand there's trash like Soul Reaver, and on the other hand there's great stuff like the first 2 Tomb Raider games and Magical Racing Disney something something. As to which of those categories FE fits into, Xeno3998 said that her only comment at this time was "no comment eh". That's exactly it, one cannot comment on whether the amazing visuals and spectacular presentation make a good game, or whether they're just the icing on the dogsh!t cake that is Fear Effect's gameplay. All this reporter can say, is that if you're a fan of Survival Horror games, this will probably be right up your zombie and dino infested alley.

Graphically, no one PSX game can claim to be superior (not even any of Square's games). The inspired blend of CGI backgrounds and luscious polygonal characters makes this game look like it should have been done on the Dreamcast. Characters are made with enough polygons to make them look like real anime people, this is almost Tokimeki Memorial caliber! Everything here *graphically* is done with pizzazz. The lighting is perfect, the CGI backgrounds never decrease loading speed too much and there's enough in here to inspire the further creation of cinematic wonders (already, In Cold Blood is ape-ing this design style). Though none of this would matter if the gameplay wasn't any good. It does matter because of how graphically revolutionary this game is, but the gameplay still sucks (and I just killed myself if you can make anything of that:)

Gameplay consists of running around at a lethargic pace, shooting bullets into enemies blocked by the scenery and solving stupid puzzles that are about as welcome in this game as a pihrana in a martini. This game also takes it upon itself to annoy and frustrate with a sky-high difficulty level that is mainly difficult because of the crappy aiming and slow character movement. Does Eidos, Core, Thanos, Thermos or whoever developed this game honestly think that a run button is used to make the characters lightly jog while they're hunched forward like they were looking for a hairpin?

The running isn't the worst part of it, aiming is also made difficult by the lack of a lock-on feature or something similar to help mow down the enemies. This was done in Dino Crisis 2 where you could do a quick turn and blast away, but anything to help lock on to the characters or ease the aiming is absent here, thus killing the enjoyability and waves that this cinematic masterpiece could have made.

Sound is nothing special, that's suprising because most cinematic games like this have great music and very realistic sounds. Not Fear Effect, this game has nothing going for it aurally, but that doesn't detract from the experience as much it could have.

Overall this is a dissapointing game that had the developmental budget to truly shine. This game seems like another case of style over substance, and the developers should have made a solid game before they went on to work the graphics and script (both of which are excellent, but this isn't a movie, it's a videogame). Rent it if you're interested, but I doubt you'll like it at all unless you're a big survival horror nut, in which case I still recommend you RBB *Rent Before Buy*.