At about this point I'd be describing the plot to you, but you know what? I really can't remember exact names or why I just controlled my character through a massive killing spree of armed soldiers. The game begins with a cutscene that tries to give an explanation as to what you're doing, but from there on out you have to listen to messages left on the phones in the building and upload data from stray laptops to continue the plot. I really didn't follow it though.

Maybe I wasn't excited enough to stand still and listen to messages left by someone I don't know to someone else I don't know about their response to a conversation they had which I hadn't heard. Maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough. Either way it has something to do with a creepy little dead girl and some government cover-up. Heck, I really don't know.

I won't go into details about how you run around buildings shooting people with guns. That's pretty standard FPS structure. What sets this game apart from others is how they try to scare you. Periodically throughout the gameplay, something will absolutely freak you out. It could be a ghostly sighting, tiles mysteriously crumbling off of walls, a haunting image flashing right in front of your face, or even a creepy nightmarish scenes of falling into a pool of blood and having to swim towards a hospital room. What better than to top it off with a creepy twelve year old dead girl?

The game starts off with lots of strange freaky things happening, making you unsure of exactly what is about to happen and you walk around in constant fear of any sounds that you might hear. After the first level or so, they start to tone their scare-tactics way down, and eventually they're only used sparingly. This is good and bad.

Bullet-Time from The Matrix forever changed our video games.
(click for a huge image)

These cloaking freaks scared the heck out of me
the first time we met.
(click for a larger image)

The good news is that they never happen as much as you expect them to. When you start getting used to them, you're not quite as surprised when the same sort of "boo!" tactic is used over and over again. So when they finally do happen again, they really freak you out since you weren't expecting them anymore.

The bad news is that you find yourself waiting for these kinds of events to happen, and unfortunately, there becomes an obvious divide between normal gameplay (killing soldiers) and getting spooked. Since the scare tactics are only done to scare you and never impose any real danger of hurting you, worrying about them stops.

Most areas are very dark, and you're required to use your flashlight pretty much all the time. But since it doesn't keep you away from firing your weapon, and the battery recharges within three seconds, there's no real reason to not use it. I think they missed an opportunity to make this game really scary through limiting the use of your flashlight by having a scarce number of batteries so rare, that you don't want to waste them. Forcing you to slowly walk through incredibly dark environments.

Did I mention this game is really violent? Yeah, I probably forgot to mention about the obviously Mature rating before you finished looking at these four screenshots. It is incredibly graphic. Using a shotgun on your enemies tends to blow limbs completely off of them and the blood splatter on walls are gross but magnificently done. One gun in particular is like a rapid fire nail gun, which can pin your enemies against the walls by the various body parts you had hit. There's just something really disturbing about seeing someone hanging from the wall by the nails through their head.

Bullet-Time (or whatever they refer to it in this game) is done really well, but over-used. The sound of slowing down time curves the pitch of their screams down an octive and back up when you're done. The way everything floats in slow motion and the trails from each bullet warp the air is pretty awesome to see. They needed to tone back on the use of it though, your meter recharges too quickly which allows you to hide behind a structure and wait a few moments to recharge before you jump back out and massacre everyone in sight.

The shadows really add a mood to the environment.
(click for a very large image)

This game was certainly fun to play - but I can't say they had the formula down perfectly. The end left a little more to be desired (perhaps the expansion will solve that issue) but its generally freaky nature made up for any confusion about the plot.

Verdict: Scary and fun. A good play.

(note: I played the PC version of this title)