The Fear Effect series

Just recently found these again when I was going through my old PS1 games, and thought if anyone else on here had played or heard of them?

For anyone who doesn't know, Fear Effect and it's prequel, Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix were PS1 games released in 2000 and 2001 respectively.

Here's links to their wiki pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_Effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_Effect_2:_Retro_Helix

They were survival-horror games with Resident Evil style gameplay and controls, with a few differences, the graphics were in a Manga style, and instead of static pre-rendered backgrounds like the Resident Evil games, they were full motion video backgrounds that looped over and over.

The gameplay was mostly in the style of the original Resident Evil games, however often you would come across situations and puzzles that were instant death situations, something as simple as stepping the wrong direction would cause instant death, this was sometimes frustrating mainly because of, in the original, long load times and no auto-save checkpoints in both games, when you died you simply had the option to load your last saved game, no matter how how far back that may be, it was slightly improved in the second due to the lack of load times.

The puzzles were also incredibly complex at times, easily rivaling anything the likes of Resident Evil & Silent Hill had at the time.

Your health bar was what the game was named after, instead of a traditional health bar, your "health" decreased and increased depending of how scared the characters were, simply seeing enemies would decrease it, it only being brought back up again by killing the enemies, messing up puzzles would also decrease it.

The game environments ranged over the 4 disc game, from a Triad ran skyscraper in futuristic Hong Kong, to a Zombie infested fishing village, to a whore house/restaurant, to eventually, "Hell" itself!

The storyline of the original followed three mercenaries who you controlled at various intervals, Hana, a French-Chinese femme-fatale, Glas, an ex US Army Special Forces soldier and Deke, a New-Zealander sociopath.

The story starts out in the near future, approximately 2048, with the three of them planning to capture a run-away Triad bosses daughter, in order to ransom her back to him for the modest fee of $90 Million, but it all goes wrong when them, along with their triad contact Jin, are ambushed by the Triad bosses men, without giving spoilers for anyone who may want to check the games out, a series of events occurs that eventually leads all three of them to the depths of hell in order to confront Yim Lau Wong, the King of Hell.

The second game was actually a prequel to the first, and also introduced a new character, Rain Qin, Hana's partner and rumored, by the marketing campaign for the game, lesbian lover, it is eventually revealed though that Hana is actually bisexual though and the two of them are not in an actual relationship although the two of them clearly care very much for each other.

The gameplay was virtually identical to the first, just with simple improvements, the controls were slightly more responsive and nearly all load times were eliminated.

The story of the prequel focused on how Hana, Glas and Deke met, you start the game with Hana & Rain being hired by their Triad contact from the original, Jin, trying to break into a science facility in order to steal a genetic sample, it is later revealed that Glas and Deke were also, in different hired to steal two other items, when combined with the Genetic Marker would create a cure for a terminal disease that had infected half the world population, however, none of them are aware of this, or each others identities at the beginning.

Eventually though, like in the original, things don't go fully according to plan, and they are all eventually drawn through many quests including through the haunted Chinese city of Xi'an, a tower of eight immortal beings, and a place known as the genomic void.

In closing, I do recommend that anyone who hasn't played these game to check them out, especially if you played and liked the original Resident Evil games or the Silent Hill series, you can most likely find cheap copies of the games on Ebay.

Here are a couple of gameplay videos from both games:

Fear Effect: The Lam Building & Fishing Village

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcQy5FCVkvg

Fear Effect 2: The 80th & 86th floor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzl_dFnHW7M&feature=related



Edited by Ministry Hunter - 27/January/2010 at 03:36