If haven’t already had the chance to go play and/or try these two demos just yet, I highly recommend that you do so with all due haste. Till then though, here are my impressions on both:

First up: F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate

Despite the fallout between Vivendi and Monolith, Vivendi has continued with producing the second expansion for the original F.E.A.R. Series. Although Monolith has officially stated that the events in the two expansions (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate) don’t ‘actually happen’ in the full game, it hasn’t stopped Vivendi one bit. The demo was launched just a week ago, and has been making the rounds of the Internet.

In Perseus Mandate, you play as part of another F.E.A.R. Team that has been deployed along with the Point Man’s. At the start of the demo, the other members of the team have been all but separated save for you and your colleague, Chen. The events are set along the same timeline as the original F.E.A.R., moving parallel to it. It also seems that many of the original locations will be revisited from the looks of it. Whether or not we’ll get a chance to ‘see’ any of the effects by the original Pointman - like we did for Adrian Shepherd in Half-life: Opposing Force – remains to be seen. That aside, the demo was actually pretty okay to play, but overall wasn’t much different.

It plays pretty much the same as the old FEAR titles did – which is pretty fun, but at the same time seems a tad repetitive. Most of the scenery is the same, and the engine handles like the same monster it was then. What annoys me is that there’s really little difference in terms of the looks at all; it’s the same dark gloomy places underground, mixed with sewers and strange generator rooms that sorta make you wonder if there’s a race of rat-people that live beneath the streets of the city that have carved out such places – or worse yet, maybe enslaved to do the nefarious biddings of Armacham’s capitalistic might!

Apart from the level design though, the experience was just as creepy as ever. The battle with Alma’s apparitions returns near the beginning of the game and honestly, some of the sequences (especially with the continuous rooms) just pushes the scare factor even higher than the last game. However, there appears to be some confusion in the demo – especially when it comes to the ‘adult’ Alma that we see roaming around the corridors, heralding the scary experiences.

The Replicas are there (seriously, what’s FEAR without Replicas? It’s like the Matrix without Agent Smith) but later on the game it appears there’s a new ‘set’ of them, as indicated by the change of voice actors. However, appearance-wise there’s really little difference and the new voices – despite adding a touch of variety – really sound lackluster at best.

Still, blowing Replicas up – regardless of how they sound – is always a fun thing to do, and the tools that you use just makes the fun better and better. The demo only has a limited set of weapons but includes two new ones – a new scoped assault rifle and a Grenade Launcher. Despite having a lackluster performance with the former (everyone else seems to be doing well with it and like it, though), destroying everything with the Grenade Launcher was an absolute blast. I really like how it bounces off walls and around corners – gives a throwback to the old days of playing as a Demoman on TFC, save with prettier graphics, slow-mo and the enjoyment of seeing your opponent ragdoll his way across the room from the subsequent explosions. I’m actually sort of pissed that they gave only a limited amount of ammo and placed the thing towards the end of the demo where you could only really use it against a few opponents. It’d have been a fair bit more fun if they had placed the thing much earlier on and with tons of ammo.

But then, the entire demo was incredibly, incredibly short and quick – I was actually able to finish it within an hour, despite best attempts to just go through and have fun. The ending was not just a throwback to FEAR: Extraction Point, but had a scary twist that was completely unexpected. Still, the overall impression it gave me for Perseus Mandate wasn’t a good one, as it looks to be pretty much the same as Extraction Point and the original FEAR. At least Monolith’s Project Origin has deeper cosmetic changes (like the in-helmet view) and has a fair few different enemies. Still, one will have to wait and see.

Now, moving on to the Unreal Tournament 3 Demo. It took a while to download it, but once I did I fired it up and immediately began to play, starting off with a single duel against the bots to get the feel for the game. There were no problems from the onset, with performance being pretty smooth. Although the graphics were slightly dated, things still looked pretty good and I really liked the looks of the levels overall. The texturing work seemed top-notch while performance on the entire thing was surprisingly good!

The feel of the game was pretty much the same as the one I got for Unreal Tournament 2004; fast, incredibly well-paced and highly dependent on twitchy fingers. Its style is clearly similar to Quake 3’s and the speed of gameplay is almost identical – something which made me incredibly dizzy in the first few minutes alone.

Now, I really don’t like to complain about this one bit as I know there are folks out there with the reaction times and twitchy fingers who are able to play and enjoy such fast games; but this game seems to be entirely devoted to those kinds of players than the casual gamer. It’s really much too fast in Deathmatch mode and can lead to an extreme feeling of dizziness and/or nausea if one cannot keep up.

However, thankfully, this seems limited to Deathmatch. Vehicle CTF mode is where this really shines. Although not quite like TFC or TF2, the action in UT3’s CTF mode is incredibly fast and action-oriented, combining a different variety of vehicles. Despite the CTF map provided being unsuited (and really misrepresentative) of the actual mode in the demo, it’s still an absolute blast to play.

All the traditional UT2k4 weapons are there – the flak cannon, rocket launcher, etc. along with a new one to deal with vehicles (The longbow). Vehicles themselves are pretty fun to use and each has their own niche. The Scorpion, for example, is an excellent means of getting to any enemy base to reach the flag. Its primary weapon is pretty decent, but secondary weapon deploys these two scythes which you can use to run people down. The neat part is that the scythes actually break off if you collide against something – whenever you hit a wall or obstacle, the damage from it shows, which is a neat feature. Other vehicles include a tank, jeep, helicopter and artillery piece. So far, I’ve had the best luck with the arty piece – the reason for which is probably the demo’s worst side: lag.

The lag, while somewhat limited, is still incredibly annoying. In a fast-paced game such as UT, even the slightest bit of lag can mean the difference between victory or defeat – the fact that the lag is significant simply amplifies this. Deathmatch is nearly impossible to win since half the time people are just plopping everywhere and you can’t hit a thing. Team Deathmatch is only slightly better, while VCTF is barely playable, and then only in support roles like repairing, arty, maybe sniping as well if your lucky enough. Although at close quarters forget about being able to do all that much unless you have a superb connection. If you can get a good server though, as well as participants with no lag, online play is a lot of fun. Even if one can’t, the bots are competent enough to play against – even if they can’t use the vehicles all that well.

What I find most interesting though, is that they’ll be including a single player campaign into the game as well. This is very good news and I hope they’re going to put in a good story into it, much like they did in way back in Unreal 1. Remember that? The game was supposed to be a Quake killer when it came out – it had fantastic graphics for the time and a really scary and effective AI. Despite never finishing the game, I made it almost all the way through – but it took me a long, LONG while. While certainly not the best game I’ve ever played, the experience it gave was….dare I say it? Very hard to match by any other game of that era - not even Half Life or System Shock 2 came close to the raw, awesome fun, pace and reactions that the original Unreal had produced in a far younger and more innocent mind.

Although nothing spectacular, the story was a good thing to keep one busy and the gameplay was easily more than 24 hours long if one was a casual gamer and wanted to enjoy the experience. There were also a massive variety of environments, from jungles to temples, spaceships, high cliffs, underground areas, elevators – you name it, Unreal had it. While those environments now have to be made in the Unreal 3 Engine, I’m really, REALLY hoping the same love that was given to the Unreal environments is given here. For an example of how UT1 was, you can watch a Speedrun of it here.

That’s all from me now. Stay tuned till the next blog entry, when I (finally) get to review a few more demos that are out now, along with something for the Indie/Retro features that VJ’s been planning.

Until then, this is Singh, signing off.

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