FEAR 2: Project Origin

The first part of the FEAR game was made by Monolith Productions , but after a series of scandals, the brand passed into the hands of Vivendi Universal . Vivendi, in the wake of the success of the first part, has released two additions Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate . These add-ons were coolly greeted by players and the press. Monolith Productions decided to rectify the situation and release a real sequel to the game, but ran into a problem with the name of the game. Monolith could not release the game under the title FEAR 2 typical of sequels, so a contest was created on the game’s official page where anyone could offer their name for the new game.

On August 3, 2007, voting for the finalists began: Dead Echo , Project Origin, and Dark Signal .

September 6, it was officially announced that the new name of the game Project Origin.

In Russia, the publication and localization of the game FEAR 2: Project Origin is carried out by the multimedia publishing house New Disc , the Russian version of the game requires activation via the Internet in the Steam system, and it is activated only from IP addresses belonging to Russia or the CIS countries. In the publication from the "New Disk" there are both Russian language files and English.

Shortly before the Reborn add-on, access from Russia to the game page on the Steam website was blocked. This did not affect the ability to launch the game, but limited access to additional content (including the ability to buy the Reborn add-on). After the add-on was released, access was never unblocked, which caused a negative reaction on the publisher’s forums ^[5] . The supplement FEAR 2: Reborn itself was not published in Russia. However, it was published with FEAR 2: Project Origin as an additional publication.

The FEAR sequel continues the paranormal story of Alma’s supernatural being - dead (or partially dead, just frozen in the Sarcophagus) many years before the game, a girl with incredible extrasensory abilities, who is full of hatred for those who tortured her, deprived children and eventually killed . However, Alma, while still alive, when she was only a weak, exhausted and frightened girl with the strongest paranormal abilities, suffered from a mental disorder, because of which she begins to hate everyone in a row and avenge them for other people's atrocities. This leads to the beginning of an expanding and paranormal crisis, which threatens to absorb and replace objective reality with Alma’s sick imagination. This time, the protagonist of the game is Michael Becket, an operative in the Delta squad, whose team was sent to arrest Genevieve Aristide about thirty minutes before the end of the original FEAR game

At the very beginning of the game, Beckett experiences a hallucination showing a ruined city where he sees Alma walking nearby. As soon as he returns to reality, Becket's team gets to the complex of penthouses where Aristide lives. It turns out that the complex was attacked by the cleaners sent by the Board of Directors of Armachem Technology. After saving Aristide, Becket reveals the purpose of the project, known as the “Harbinger,” in which he and several of his teammates are involved. Aristide claims that Becket and his team are the only way to stop Alma, but before she has time to realize the idea, an operative from the first part of the FEAR game blows up the Sarcophagus reactor. Beckett is struck by a blast and loses consciousness .

Recovering, Becket discovers that he is undergoing surgery on a team of doctors led by Aristide and begins to see more visions of Alma. As soon as the main character regains consciousness, he finds himself in a hospital located deep underground along with the rest of his team. The hospital is being attacked by the Armaham cleanup team, led by Colonel Richard Weneck, and Becket must fight with her to make her way out. During the escape, Beckett receives advice on the walkie-talkie from a man who calls himself "Serpent's Fist." He says that Alma is "the mother of the apocalypse." As you move through the hospital, two members of your team sequentially die: Jankowski and Fox. After leaving the hospital and confronting the squad leader Venek, Becket fights with the newly activated clones . While he makes his way to the surface, Alma also repeatedly tries to carry out physical violence against him, but he is defeated in hand-to-hand combat. This "Serpent Fist" explains how an attempt to "absorb" Becket, who, after an operation on him, emits a powerful telepathic aura that attracts Alma.

Having climbed to the surface, Beckett meets with those who remained from his team, as many of the detachment were successively killed by Alma (moreover, before meeting with the detachment, Alma will devour your commander Senior Sergeant Griffin). Now the detachment consists only of Beckett himself, Senior Lieutenant Stokes, Sergeants Morales and Keegan. The team is advancing in the vicinity of the Wade School, taken under control by the forces of Armachem Technology and where the Serpent Fist and Aristide are hiding, trying to take away data from him to configure the installation on Still Island to hold Alma. Having reached the basement, Beckett discovers that the next research center, Armachem Technology, is hidden under the school for a project known as Paragon. There Beckett finds evidence that the Harbinger project was an attempt to create even more telepath commanders like Paxton Vettel. At the same time, Beckett and Keegan were the most promising candidates. At the same time, the Paragon project is designed to prepare telepathically gifted children who will be working for Armachem in the future.

At the base of the research center, Snake Fist calls himself by his real name Terry Halford, he introduces himself as a researcher working for Armachem Technology and explains that the only way to defeat Alma is to go to the Armachem base, located in the nuclear Still Island reactor. This is where the telesthetic amplifier is located. With his help, Beckett must defeat Alma, further enhancing his own telepathic abilities, revealed as a result of the operation in the "Armachem" hospital. And only Beckett and Halford are preparing to return to the surface, as the researcher decapitates the assassin clone.

On the way to Still Island, Becket's team is ambushed by the clone army, and Sergeant Keegan leaves the squad in a state similar to hypnosis . Beckett goes after him and tries to return Keegan, but the main character is detained by numerous forces of elite clone troopers, and Keegan himself is moving further and further away from him. Fending off Alma’s enemies and attacks, Becket eventually reunites with the rest of the team on Still Island and infiltrates the Armachem Technology base. Sergeant Beckett enters the telesthetic amplifier, and as soon as Stokes prepares to operate the mechanism, Aristide Genevieve suddenly appears and shoots her, either by killing or seriously injuring him. Aristide explains this by the fact that Becket served as a bait for Alma. Instead of killing Alma, Aristide plans to seal Becket and Alma in the device together, so Aristide will be able to use Alma as a lever of influence on Armaham.

Alma attacks again, and Aristide seals Becket with Alma. Alma approaches Becket, and he falls into another hallucination, where he fights off the irritated ghost of Sergeant Keegan, while trying to activate the amplifier to destroy Alma. The battle is interspersed with the images of Alma having sex with Becket. Finally, after activating the last switch, Becket returns to reality to be sealed in an amplifier and see Alma burning in the fire. Beckett soon regains consciousness, but no longer sees his arms and legs. Suddenly, he again goes into hallucinations and sees that his arms and legs are no longer shackled in an amplifier chair, and Alma stands in the middle of a devilish landscape, holding her pregnant belly with her hands. The game ends with Alma approaching Becket, gently placing his hand on her stomach, and Becket hears a child saying “Mom”.

The game is a first-person shooter and borrows most of the gameplay from the first game in the series. The game has removed the ability to peek around the corner (however, clone troopers of the army of replicants can still do this), which is replaced by a shelter system - the player can use some objects to create an impromptu shelter - for example, knock over a table or open the car door. In addition to the usual movement, the player has an indicator of "fatigue" and the ability to make a short run in a straight line (sprint).

In the aiming mode, the player directly uses fixed sights (unlike the first game in the series, where only the viewing angle was changed). When using the sight, the effect of depth of field is turned on - if the player looks through the sight at an object located close to him, it will be difficult for him to see objects at a great distance and vice versa.

The Head-Up Display in the game is special glasses equipped with a display on which the player’s health level, ammunition is displayed, and objects with which you can interact are highlighted. The main character has a handheld computer built into glasses, which collects data from various media during the game. PDA is also used for interactive training - gradually among the available topics all the basic actions of the player appear (moving, flashlight, weapons, and so on). PDA is not available while piloting an exoskafandra. A flashlight with an infinite battery is built into the glasses (unlike the first game in the series, where the battery had to be recharged by turning off the flashlight for a while).

For treatment, the player can carry first-aid kits with him, as well as use medical syringes with a special solution that soldiers of the army of replicants carry with them (before medical syringes were present only in FEAR multiplayer)

There is hand-to-hand combat in the game - in the event of a close collision or when there is no time to reload the weapon, the player can punch (if the weapon is removed) or the butt. Unlike the first game in the series, where the player’s hand-to-hand combat was a very powerful weapon (one punch killed a man without armor), some enemies can withstand several blows with the butt. Also, the melee opponent now deals the same damage as the player. The game also has two combo kicks - a kick in a jump and a “bicycle kick” (on the run), which inflict fatal damage to the enemy.

The use of Quick Time Events has appeared in the game - for example, when a player is grabbed by an abomination or Alma, he must quickly repel the attack with a few kicks.

The game has the following modes of multiplayer games:

• Fight and Team Fight - deathmatch and team deathmatch ;
• Blitz - the team of replicants should capture two cans with the FLAG phosphorus-luminescent agent (PHLAG; direct reference to “ Capture the flag ”) and bring at least one to the base, and the ATC team should prevent the replicants from doing this. After a certain time, the ATC teams and the replicants will change roles - the ATC team will win if they manage to return one more canister with the FLAG in the same time than the replicants stole. In the event of a tie in regular time, an additional five-minute period is automatically activated, in which the ATC team is given a chance to capture and convey to the base one missing canister with the FLAG. If the ATC team was unable to win in the stoppage time, the victory in the match is awarded to the team of replicants.
• Sabotage - the ATC team must set the bomb on one of two special locations (where containers with substance are located that allow replicants to communicate with telepath commanders in the underground complex) and prevent replicants from clearing it. The team of replicants should interfere with the ATC team. For the duration of the round, players will not respawn - if all members of one of the teams die, the other team automatically wins the round;
• Control - two teams must capture control points and hold them to get points.
• Heavy metal - sequential capture of five control points using heavy armored vehicles. The team that captured and held all the control points wins.

The player has three "sets", which consist of two types of weapons, a set of grenades, armor and first-aid kits. Before the start of the game, you can edit your “kit”, and during the game switch between them (only before respawn ). There is no way to remove weapons in the game in order to get a constant increase in running speed - this practice was condemned by many players in the first FEAR and was even banned on some servers.

The game continues the idea of ​​"visualization" of hearing, which was used in the first part of the game. The player using the first-aid kit emits red "waves" around him, and the sound of a shot is accompanied by the appearance of even an enemy invisible to the player on the minimap.

Monolith’s multi-player policy was criticized by the players - no protection against cheaters was released (despite the fact that the game uses Steamworks , which implies the possibility of integrating Valve Anti-Cheat ), no SDK was released (which would allow third-party protection from cheating) and a dedicated server for the game was not released (in connection with which there are no permanent playgrounds). ^[14]

Since the release of the game, a free set of levels “Toy Soldiers” (“toy soldiers” - giant kitchens, a sandbox and a pinball machine) and “Armored Front” has been released.