Bullet time's useless, even Max Payne had it done better.Koki wrote:Bullet time, destructable environment, dynamic lighting, enemies working in groups, general eyecandy.
Destructable enviroment doesn't really matter, it's just eye candy. At least in Red Faction it had and effect on gameplay.
Nothing special about the lighting.
Since when have the enemies worked in groups? AFAIK they walk around until one of them sees you (to that point you're free to kill them without them noticing) and then they start hiding behind obstacles even if half of their body is completely uncovered. Then they left-strafe-shoot-right-strafe until you kill them.
Looking good doesn't make you good.
Besides those "magical obstacles" that make the immersion go down the well are fucking annoying. You can't kick down all the boarded spots, only those that you're *MEANT* to kick down. A weaker looking fence doesn't have a stance against the butt of your pistol but three wrist-thick boards are crushed to smithereens by your might. You can also kick/hit/shoot down the windows but oh jolly gosh if there were toothpick-thick pieces of wood going in between - you can't jump out of this window, because you can't kick these sticks down apparently because they're made from some strange stronger-than-anything substance that's ludricously spent on some old warehouse windows. Sometimes there are obstacles, like say a truck, that are half an inch lower than the lowest spot you can crouch under so you can't get past it. Hold on a minute, the guy's some sort of a spec-ops soldier and he can't crawl? God damn it where's the modern society going?!
The enemies are just stupid, they come running and want to get themselves killed. Getting hit by them doesn't affect your aim or gameplay in any way - getting your legs shot to hell with a heavy machine gun doesn't slow you down and losing (technically) both of your arms won't have any effect on your gun handling. Sometimes you don't even notice your health going down, because getting hit causes less distraction than trying to fire your gun which can't hit anything (apparently firearms training has been cut down in the spec-ops as well and martial arts courses have been increased since EVERYBODY knows that the best way to win a gunfight is to jump-kick) and which is so weak that it takes four to five straight hits to the head to kill anyone. Besides, FEAR seems to use some kind of magical sparkle bullets that make the battle ground look like a Marily Manson concert.
And I really, I really really do hate the way you enter a place with a team full of heavily armed thugs, then you're sent away and when you come back no one's alive. Then when another team finds you they send you on your way alone again and you come back just to find them dead again. SOME SORT OF MAGICAL VOODOO HINT HERE, FOLLOW THE MAIN CHARACTER AND YOU WON'T DIE DUMBASSES.
But no, that would be too much of a strain for the designers who've spent the whole developement time making eyecandy.