Inject F.E.A.R. into your opponents, online.

While I was searching for a suitable program to stress test my graphics card, I stumbled onto the F.E.A.R. Multiplayer demo.

Needless to say, since I enjoyed the single player quite a bit, I downloaded and played it for about half an hour every day, before lunch after I returned from school.

Well, it was pretty interesting, to say the least.

After installing and configuring the settings, you simply click on the multiplayer option, before choosing a server of your choice. On joining the server, you will be given a choice of weapons to select, namely a dual piston, a submachine gun, an assault rifle, a Sniper type rifle, and a penetrator.

However, anyone who has played the single player demo will know that this isn't your normal FPS multiplayer.

Reason: Slow-mo

Slow mo is a way to slow down everyone around you, except yourself, who is able to move in perfectly normal speed.

Initially, I feared that everyone would have slow mo, and hence, the game will be played...pretty much in slow mo.

Thankfully, I was wrong. There's a booster found in every map, which allows the one who carries it to have the slow-mo ability, after roughly 20 seconds of charge.

The catch? Everyone knows that you have it, and your location is displayed on everyone's HUD.

Expected to be hunted down, especially in Slow-mo DM map types.

However, the Slow-mo, once you have successfully allowed it to charge, can be devasting. See a bunch of dudes duking it out in the center of the map? Activate slow mo, and pump lead right into their heads, as they are almost defenseless against the slow mo.

Another plus point for this game is the melee attack. No, I'm not talking about the crowbar or the knife in CS. I'm talking about slide kicking, bicycle kick, round house kick, or simply punches type of melee. While holding a weapon, you can humliliate your opponent by slide kicking him, dealing 100 global damage (i.e., if you haev 35 armor and 100 health, you will be left with 35 health) to him instantly because you are supposed to be some sort of hyper juiced up soldier. The beauty of this is the lack of a need to backstab the guy by shooting at him, which may result in him turning around and somehow getting a headshot on you. Simply stalk him until you are in range, then slide him to death. The results are truely satisfying when you can do it properly. Even better is the ability to holster your weapon, allowing you move at almost 2 times the speed then you would have had with a weapon. This allows you to perform melee attacks much more easily. So, if you are planning to go on a full melee round (like what I usually do), simply holster your weapon, and slide kick everyone. You'll be surprised as to how many frags you can get this way, if you can get close enough. This is due to people usually aiming higher than chest level, in order to get a headshot, and is hence unable to go against you hopping towards them, before slide kicking them. If you are on a Slow-mo server, that's even better, activate it, and see them doing absolutely nothing as you jump kick right into their faces.

However, the multiplayer does have a few draw backs. First of all, a few weapons are grossly overpowered. For example, the 10mm penetrator is a favourite among almost everyone, due to it's high damage output. While everyone is complaining that the 10mm is too strong, it actually isn't. In my opinion, the assault rifle (G2AS) is much stronger, due to the fact that it's all rounded. Sure, the 10mm can work great in long distances, but, in short range, it's slow Rate of Fire (ROF) is what kills it. Sure, in the short range, the Shotgun is king, but the shotgun is close to useless when you are fighting it at long distances. Hence, the G2AS is the one which is overpowered, since it works rather well in short distance, as you can jump all over the place, and all your bullets can still hit the enemy. In medium distance, it's the best, and at long, it can still grab a few frags here and there. The incredibily high recoil which was in the Single player is no where to be seen in the multiplayer. In fact, the slight recoil is the one which helps you to get the headshots when shooting.

While some guns are overpowered, some are incredibily underpowered, The dual pistols are cool to use, but they are close to useless, with their weak damage, and their insanely high recoil. The submachine gun is nice, but with the rifle, you should be using the rifle instead, since the rifle does not have an insanely high recoil.

Also, this game does not have a balance for servers with lesser people. The Type-7 particle beam, isn't great in maps with a lot of people, because no one likes anyone who uses that 1hit kill weapon. However, as the weapon has roughly 1.5x the firing rate of the rail guns in the Quake Series, it is incredibily deadly in small servers, like those with roughly 5 people playing in it. All someone need to do is to hog the slow-mo booster (as there isn't a lot of people to hunt you down), and carry the Type 7. Once you see someone, activate the Slow-mo, and fire. Insanely overpowered.

The game modes themselves isn't that great either. CTF, DM and team elimination (Think Counter strike without the objectives). CTF is boring as hell, because flag runners simply holster their weapon, before running the flag, moving at insane speed. The map chosen in the demo isn't that fantastic either, as it's cramped on the second level, allowing the melee fighters to have quite a nice chance with their melee attacks, since the slide kick is so powerful. Team elimination isn't my type of game, especially since they have it a little to realistic (you usually die if you are spotted first)

The last part of the downside of this multiplayer is that they use Gamespy's servers, which to be honest, sucks. Anyone creating a server that uses a firewall won't be sending full information to the Gamespy servers, and hence, their ping isn't shown. Hence, their servers will be bumped all the way to the end of the list if you sort the servers by ping. So, there's a decent server which hosts a melee only game, but you probably won't see it. Also, the lack of a favourites part in the server means that you have to refresh the whole list everytime.

But still, so far, it's a great game, inspite of all its flaws. It is still high on my "To-buy" list.

Demo review, 8.5/10