F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon

Tropes in this game and its expansions:

Abandoned Hospital:
- The final levels of Extraction Point take place inside a hospital. It's not so much abandoned as it is overrun with hostile Replicas and supernatural entities, decorated with numerous bodies of Special Forces soldiers and enough blood to make one think the blood bank had a recent withdrawal. The place is in disarray but the structure is very new and untouched rooms are pristine with modern equipment, implying the takeover was very recent.
Actionized Sequel: If an Expansion Pack counts as a sequel, Perseus Mandate qualifies. The game focuses a lot more on firefights with scary setpieces being few and far between. Its new enemies are even closer to upgrades to the Replica than they are new varieties of ghosts.
A.K.A.-47: The Rakow G2A2 is an H&K SL8 with a different rear sight and magazine, the "Vollmer VK-12" is basically an unmodified SPAS-12, and the "Baksha ASP" is a TAR-21 with a sci-fi scope and an apparent up-chambering to 7.62mm.
Airvent Passageway: The Point Man frequently has to use these to get past impassable routes, blocked doors, or other obstacles. They also are one of the most common places to find Reflex and Health boosters.
And I Must Scream: Alma spent most of her life locked inside of a vault underground. Even after death, she had no escape from there until her father made the mistake of letting her out.
Artificial Brilliance: The F.E.A.R. A.I. is actually a good example of emergent behavior, which is programmer-speak for "we didn't program it specifically to do that, but for some random reason it does it anyway, and it's really, really cool that it does!". In other words, a relatively simple set of rules intended for a limited set of functions actually provides for more complex behavior than intended. Specifically, the A.I. is programmed for a limited number of simple behaviors: moving in coordinated squads, providing covering fire, seeking cover, and repositioning itself based on the player's movement and position. The A.I. isn't actually programmed to flank or circle behind the player, but its tendency to seek cover and reposition itself based on the player's movements results in flanking and circling behaviors occurring naturally without "conscious" effort on the A.I.'s part (mostly due to the A.I.'s high mobility combined with its preference for seeking lateral cover rather than charging the player directly). In fact, the A.I. of the Replica Soldiers was toted as perhaps the best enemy A.I. seen in a FPS game to date, and it still holds up more than a decade later.
Artificial Stupidity: The AI's only failing is that it is not designed to fight one another (which only happens twice in the original game for this reason, between ATC security guards and a Replica squad or a single Powered Armor, plus one occasion in Perseus Mandate where friendly Delta Force soldiers assist you in fighting the Replicas — where the enemy performs much more admirably than in a pure AI-vs-AI fight because they're mostly fighting you rather than the Deltas); that, in spite of their ability to recognize and actively avoid regular grenades, they are completely blind to mines or remote bombs set by the player, even if you plant them in full view of the entire squad; they have no concept of physical barriers when throwing their own grenades, so those will bounce off of walls and either explode harmlessly off in a corner or kill their own numbers; and they don't consistently know how to deal with transparent but bulletproof surfaces, often causing them to simply stare you down through them if there isn't an immediately-obvious way to navigate around it from their position.
Artistic License – Military: Overlaps with Artistic License – Law. Generally, military units like the FEAR team or your redshirt companions can't be deployed within the US to make arrests owing to that whole Posse Comitatus issue. So the game's entire premise is already suspect barring some worldbuilding or unless Armacham was hit with the Insurrection Act while nobody was looking. That said, having the FEAR team be an arm of the FBI wouldn't be as cool as having them as a unit of commandos loosely affiliated with the Delta Force.
Asshole Victim: Turns out Alma had very good reasons for telling Paxton Fettel to "kill them all". After all the shit Armacham put her through, up to and including forcibly impregnating her and stealing her children, they did indeed "all deserve to die".
Badass Normal: Delta Force leader Doug Holiday manages to do just fine against everything the supersoldier Replica battalion throws at him, despite not having the superhuman reflexes of the Point Man. Alma pretty much curbstomps him, though. The nameless Delta operative from the PS3 exclusive bonus mission also does pretty good until he and his team get liquified by Alma at the end.
Bag of Spilling: F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point starts Point Man off without weapons, ostensibly justified by having just survived a nuclear explosion and a helicopter crash. Less justified is that he also loses the benefits of any of the health or reflex boosters he acquired during the original game.
Bag of Spilling: Extraction Point starts Point Man off without weapons, ostensibly justified by having just survived a nuclear explosion and a helicopter crash. Less justified is that he also loses the benefits of any of the health or reflex boosters he acquired during the original game.
BFG: Many kinds to go around with. The main game gives you a automatic 20mm cannon, multishot rocket rifle, and a flesh-vaporizing disintegrator ray , while the expansions give you a revolving grenade launcher, a frickin' laser carbine, a gatling gun, and a chain lightning gun.
Big Boo's Haunt: The Old Underground Metro Area in Perseus Mandate is populated exclusively by Alma's hostile apparitions, and is one of the scariest places in the whole series.
Body Armor as Hit Points: Averted. Body armor only absorbs a portion of damage, based on the armor penetration rating of the gun you get hit by.
Book Ends:
- One of the first things the player hears from Fettel is "They deserved to die. They all deserved to die." One of the last things Fettel says during The Stinger in the Point Man's ending in the third game is a repetition of those lines.
- The game begins and ends in, or technically just outside, the same building, where the Point Man was born. The second time it's in a hallucination, though.
- Extraction Point gives another one, beginning and ending with a helicopter crashing or blowing up followed by Paxton Fettel repeating his narration about an apocalyptic war he saw in his dreams.
Boring, but Practical: While you can carry three weapons, you're making it a harder for yourself if two of those weapon aren't the shotgun and assault rifle. These weapons don't do anything special, but they do the job well enough, cover short and medium ranged battles and you can find plenty of ammo. Expect to be juggling weapons as you encounter ammo for them with the cooler guns. Depending on how accurate a shooter you are, you may wish to switch the assault rifle out with the Penetrator. The Penetrator has better armor-piercing ability and more accuracy at the expense of less readily-available ammunition (it tends to come in several pickups at once and then disappear for a few levels) and much slower fire rate.
Boss Rush: The bonus mission "Arena" in Perseus Mandate features most of the game's Boss in Mook Clothing enemies dropping in to beat up on you in between waves of regular Replica soldiers. First a Heavy Armor soldier, then a REV-6, then a Heavy Riot Armor wielding a minigun, and finally a huge Leviathan mech walker that serves as the final boss.
Building of Adventure: The Armacham office building is a low-key example, as almost half the game takes place in or on it.
Bullet Time: The Point Man has Super-Reflexes, which is depicted in-game by allowing them to temporarily enter bullet time. You can increase the time you spend in it by collecting Reflex Boosters.
Canon Discontinuity: Monolith considers Extraction Point and "'Perseus Mandate'', which were made by other developers, non-canon.
Challenge Run: Beating the game without using Bullet Time earns you the "Real Time" achievement.
Compilation Re-release: The expansion packs, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate, were bundled together for the Xbox 360 as a stand-alone entry titled F.E.A.R. Files, which also served as a port for the previously-PC-exclusive Extraction Point.
Covers Always Lie: The covers for the expansion packs Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate prominently feature a soldier in the foreground with a large explosion in the background. The implication being that the soldier is the main character. However, they are not. The soldier on the cover of Extraction Point is a Delta operator, not the Point Man, and the soldier on the cover of Perseus Mandate is a Replica Tactical soldier (one of the bad guys!), not the Sergeant. They get away with this because at no point in the game do you get a clear view of your own character.
Crate Expectations: Introduced in the two F.E.A.R. expansion packs, where they can contain anything from weapon caches to health boosters. Strangely, they're all marked as explosive, despite very rarely actually having any sort of explosive weapon in them (though grenades too occasionally pop up in smaller metal boxes), presumably because a big red warning label on every side catches the eye.
Critical Existence Failure: Low health only makes the Point Man breathe heavier, like he does when exiting some scare sequences - once his health actually hits zero he seems to be instagibbed. The Replica are pretty easy to turn into Ludicrous Gibs, as well, especially with close-range shotgun blasts or the damage bonus from hitting an unaware enemy.
Critical Hit: Your gunshots will occasionally deal a bonus effect that dramatically effects your target. For some guns, like the Pistols and the SMG, your opponents can go flying or lose their head, while the shotgun can do that or even cause them to explode into a red mist. Fun!
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Though it's easier to just shoot her, a well timed kick is enough to ward off Alma when you confront her near the end of the game.
Disc-One Nuke: You can obtain the Penetrator in an early level, where it'll two-shot pretty much anything short of a Heavy Armor unit.
Downer Ending: The ending of Extraction Point is probably the bleakest of the game endings. The helicopter sent by Betters to evac him is destroyed, leaving him stranded in a burning Fairport. His allies are all dead, and his fate is left unknown.
Easter Egg:
- Near the end of the original, checking out an area behind a flaming gas leak the player never actually has to deal with to finish the level leads to not only one of the final health boosters in the game, but a room with a radio playing a news report ("Five car pile-up on Maritropa route five when a completely chromed motorcycle entered traffic, apparently blinding several motorists") and then the theme song from Shogo: Mobile Armor Division.
- Extraction Point has one in the Hospital level. Shooting a ventilation grate on the wall of an exam room opens up a back wall that leads to Norton Mapes doing a strange little jig. Mostly loved by players because it lets them finally shoot the bastard.
Everybody's Dead, Dave: The ending to Extraction Point. Holiday and Kwon have been slaughtered by the apparitions, all the survivors gathered at Auburn Memorial are wiped out by the time you get there, as well as ATC's presence in the city being exterminated and the civilian population missing or dead. The only characters left alive are you and Betters; not even your rescue team makes it out, and Betters only gets into contact in the last ten or so minutes.
Every Bullet Is a Tracer: In reflex mode, so you can see the rippling trails of the bullets as they sail through the air.
Evil Versus Evil: The Replica soldiers and the ATC forces are hostile to each other as well as to the player, and you will occasionally encounter gun battles in progress between the two.
Four Is Death: A (possibly) unintentional example in Perseus Mandate. Interval 4, Devastation, takes place right after the city is razed by the Origin explosion; there is only one fight with "human" enemies in the whole interval (the rest is against Alma's supernatural apparitions), and Lieutenant Chen dies early on.
Gas-Cylinder Rocket: One particularly noisy but strangely harmless example in the Vivendi expansions, notably Extraction Point. The green gas canisters seem to be just to show off the engine's Wreaking Havok capabilities with their erratic trajectories (and make a ton of noise).
Gas Mask Mooks: The Urban Replica Soldiers. Perseus Mandate also has the Nightcrawler Light Soldiers wear these as.
Gateless Ghetto: The city streets of Fairport were clearly designed with gameplay more than verosimilitude in mind. Most streets last for a scant few hundred yards before abruptly stopping at walls.
Gatling Good: The TG-2A Minigun in the Vivendi expansions. It's as heavy as the Type-7 Particle Weapon, the heaviest gun in main game, and its ammo is rare, but needless to say things facing the business end tend to die rather quickly, be it human or ghostly apparition. Ironically, the Quick Melee done with it when the Player Character is crouching is the fastest in the franchise, even faster than bare fists.
The Ghost: Iain Hives, Marshall Disler, Phil Vecchio, and Genevieve Aristide only appear via phone messages.
Ghost City: With real ghosts! Lampshaded in Extraction Point when Jin tries to come up with a rational explanation for the deserted city.
Jin: There must have been a radioactive element to the Origin explosion, and the city was evacuated.
Holiday: Cities don't empty this quick.
Giant Mook: Replica Heavy Armor soldiers are more than 6 and 1/2 feet tall, wear a heavy suit of armor plates and can absorb more than a full drum mag of assault rifle fire before dying. They're more heavily armed than most regular Replica as well, the vast majority given the HV Penetrator to cut through your armor like butter, with a few standouts carrying weapons that can paste you in a few hits (one in the base game with a Type 7 and one in Extraction Point with a ludicrously-powerful MOD-3). In the expansion packs, another variant with even heavier armor shows up, and they're armed with miniguns.
Guns Akimbo: The Point Man can wield two pistols at once. Lampshaded in the manual, because apparently he was trained for it specifically because of his heightened reflexes. Gets really silly/fun when he's dual wielding fully automatic pistols in the Xbox 360 port - which apparently Holiday can do too. This returns in F.E.A.R. 3, as the only way to use the MP-970 machine pistols.
Heart Container: Health and Reflex boosters you can find scattered around the world will increase the maximum amount of the respective stat.
Immediate Sequel: Extraction Point starts off immediately after the end of the original game.
It's Up to You: Your SFOD-D escorts have a bad habit of being wiped out as a level loads. In Perseus Mandate, friendly soldiers do help you out in a few firefights, but they're not exactly very good.
Jerkass: If his phone messages are anything to by, then Iain Hives wasn't a particularly nice person. He shit talks Bill Moody to other Armacham workers, dismisses Alice Wade's sexual harassment complaints, and was one of the primary instigators of Project Origin.
Landmine Goes Click: Landmine detonation mechanisms in this game work like the Bouncing Betty, but the deployment and trigger mechanism... not so much.
Limited Loadout: Point Man can only carry three guns at a time, four if he doubles up on the handguns.
Lite Crème: Cheezee Pooz, a favorite snack of Armacham employee Norton Mapes. Are they chips? Puffs? Crackers?
Ludicrous Gibs: Several of the higher-tier weapons are capable of evaporating an enemy, namely the Rocket Launcher and the Repeating Cannon (the ASP and Penetrator being the only real exceptions). Most egregiously with the shotgun, which sometimes tears enemies into several large pieces. Presumably it uses special high-explosive pellets. Seems kind of appropriate, given one of Monolith's prior FPS games that introduced the engine this series uses, but it still gets ridiculous when you can turn a Replica soldier into a fine red mist with a single shell to the foot.
Made of Explodium: All the fire extinguishers and circuit boards explode powerful enough to kill the player and enemies up to 3 feet away.
Mana Meter: The Point Man and the Sergeant have a 'reflex' meter which allow them to enter Bullet Time mode, where they move much faster than their enemies until it drains. The length of the bar can be increased by picking up Reflex Boosters.
Never Found the Body: F.E.A.R. operative Spen Jankowski. In the released game, it's not even totally confirmed that he's actually dead, as the commissioner comments more than once on his life signs still being active and, at one point, showing up around ATC's headquarters.
New Work, Recycled Graphics:
- The game uses quite a few foundational assets such as character animations taken from earlier Lithtech games, such as No One Lives Forever and Aliens vs. Predator 2.
- During the mid-00's, City Interactive (of Sniper: Ghost Warrior fame) released a large number of low budget military-themed FPS games built on the Lithtech Jupiter EX engine and using many assets from F.E.A.R. (such as animations and A.I.), essentially being total conversions of the first F.E.A.R. with real world weapons and no bullet time. Titles in this list include SAS: Secure Tomorrow, Mortyr: Operation Thunderstorm, Terrorist Takedown 2, Terrorist Takedown 3, Code of Honor 2, Code of Honor 3, Royal Marines: Commando, Armed Force Corp, Special Forces, Battlestrike: Shadow of Stalingrad, and Wolfschanze II.
Noodle Incident: Perseus Mandate hints that F.E.A.R. used to have had hard times doing their work. This one incident is only referred to as 'Amarillo', and according to Chen's opinion, even getting dragged into the dark and almost being mauled to death by Shades isn't quite as bad as it was. Betters has a few words about it as well:
Betters: I want [Morrison] taken into custody. That means alive... I don't want a repeat of Amarillo.
Chen: That was an accident.
No-Sell: In Perseus Mandate, Nightcrawler Elites are unaffected by your Slo Mo power, and continue to move and fire at normal speed, because they have their own Slow Mo power.
One-Hit Kill:
- Several of the melee attacks on weaker foes, including the "sliding ankle kick of death".
- If you shoot an enemy that's unaware of danger, they die in a single shot no matter what weapon you're using.
Over-the-Shoulder Murder Shot: Early on, Paxton Fettel is occupied over a labcoat's body. He looks back at the camera to reveal the blood smeared around his mouth.
Product Placement: All of the intel laptops are Alienware and the desktops are Dell. In Perseus Mandate, nearly every computer screen has an XFX screen saver going on.
Punch-Packing Pistol: When only one is used, the Rakow AT-14 pistol is but a humble popgun with actually decent damage. Going Guns Akimbo, however, doubles the ammo capacity to a lot more than the mid-game Penetrator rifle can hold without sacrificing reload speed, and increases the fire rate while still keeping it perfectly controllable. This combination makes the pistols a valuable asset throughout the first generation of games, and the best weapon to use in Slow-Mo. It's no surprise to ask around and find out many players ignore novelty weapons (which includes most of the BFG's) in favor of the "AT-14 pistol/G2A2 rifle/VK-12 shotgun" combo from start to finish.
Redemption Equals Death: Harlan Wade... In his eyes, at least. From most other perspectives, it is hard not to see his final actions as egotistically making everything worse just for a bit of closure for himself.
Redshirt Army: The members of Delta Force (1st SFOD-D) who are assigned to assist the F.E.A.R. unit die quickly and in droves; there are exactly two Deltas in the game who are not Holiday and not already dead when you find them or dead within a minute of meeting up, one with Jin who never actually sees any combat to die in, and one with Holiday who only survives because ATC security was more interested in shooting Bishop than the people pulling him out.
Regenerating Health: The Point Man and the Sergeant can regenerate back up 25 health points, although since this is only enough to survive 1 or 2 bullets, picking up medkits and body armor is still the primary means of restoring lost health. Entirely averted in Extreme difficulty.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Alma was put in an induced coma and sealed in a telesthetic suppression field after Armacham found her psychic powers too overwhelming to control. It didn't stop her. Dual credit for unsealing her goes to Genevieve Aristide, who wanted to renovate or repurpose the site, and Harlan Wade, who by the time he reopens the Vault feels that Alma has "suffered enough".
Short-Range Shotgun: Downplayed with the VK-12. The spread is tight enough to hit a human torso at ten meters without missing a pellet, but damage falloff dampens power by a lot past medium range, requiring five or six shells to put down even the most lightly armored enemy when in close range typically only one shot is needed.
Shotguns Are Just Better: The VK-12. Accurate, powerful, plentiful ammo, fast reload... several reasons, really.
Stealth Prequel: To Shogo, possibly, considering several of the company names (Armacham, Andra, Vollmer, etc.) are borrowed from Shogo.
Super Not-Drowning Skills: Due to a developer oversight, swimming is a free action in this game. You can stay underwater until your entire skin prunes, you won't have to come up for air.
Tech-Demo Game: The game was a notorious system hog back when it came out, due to its impressive but highly demanding lighting, absurd amount of particle effects, and top-shelf texture and object work. Before Crysis, it was generally the go-to for PC benchmarking - unlike that game, however, just about any modern gaming rig will happily chew through it on max settings without breaking a sweat. ^note
Underground Monkey: The Shades in the Vivendi expansions are the supernatural equivalents to the Replica Assassins, down to the acrobatic moveset and vaguely similar Visible Invisibility (losing the flicker from sudden movements in return for any parts that you hit becoming permanently visible). They start appearing after the Origin facility goes up in radioactive smoke. Assassins are still encountered, and in bigger packs, but the Shades come up more frequently.
Unique Enemy: There's a Powered Armor during the level "Urban Decay" which shoots laser beams, instead of the rockets used by every other instance appearing either in the main game or its expansions.
Updated Re-release: The game is rather odd in this in that it technically has four of these. The baseline for each of these was coming on DVD rather than the five CDs of the original release, alongside a "making of" documentary, a "director's commentary" video where five of the lead designers commentate over a playthrough of the game's demo, a short live-action prequel film centered around Alma, and a bonus episode of the P.A.N.I.C.S. machinima series. The "Director's Cut" version, which came out alongside the normal version, otherwise differs by including a comic adaptation of the intro cinematic by Dark Horse Comics, while the later versions are incremental updates, the "Gold Edition" packing in the latest patch for the base game and its first expansion, and the other two adding on the second expansion; these two differ primarily in distribution methods, the "Platinum Edition" being the physical release (and the name of the GOG.com version) while the "Ultimate Shooter Edition" is specific to Steam.
Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: The Point Man, who is the first attempt by Armacham to create a psychic commander, manages to overcome Paxton Fettel, the second and successful attempt, despite lacking overt psychic powers and thus being considered a failure.
Version-Exclusive Content:
- The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the original game have an "Instant Action" mode that challenges players to complete four gauntlets based on levels from the campaign, and each had their bonus mission starring a character who doesn't have Point Man's slo-mo powers and an exclusive weapon. On the 360, this consisted of a bonus mission starring Douglas Holiday and the SM15 Machine Pistol, which replaced half of the available RPL SMG spawns to be usable across the game and its expansions, while the PS3 had a mission starring two Delta Force operators and the Watson Automatic Shotgun, which is only found in the bonus mission and a single enemy near the end of the campaign.
- The console exclusive F.E.A.R. Files (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate bundled into a single package for consoles) has 8 Instant Action maps, adding five such levels based on Extraction Point to the three bonus missions included in the PC version of Perseus Mandate.
Visible Invisibility:
- Replica Assassins have a slight Predator-like distortion effect to the cloaking devices, but it's actually subtler and more difficult to spot compared to similar enemies in other games in the genre. This is mitigated by the fact that the Assassins will flicker in and out of their invisibility briefly when they make sudden movements, i.e. leaping to attack, punching the player, or detaching from walls.
- Shades in Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate are similarly transparent, but unlike Assassins, they don't flicker. To offset this advantage, they sport glowing red eyes and their skin becomes a dull grey wherever it's shot, so they're both easier to see from a distance and manage, as you can focus fire on the weaker ones. You will need to.
The Walls Are Closing In: It's one of the Point Man's dream sequences in F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point. It's actually all scare and no pain - the floor gives out and you're dropped out of the room just as there's no more room for the walls to move without starting to crush you.
Zeerust: The game takes place in 2025, yet no-one has a cellphone or tablet. Additonally, Laptops are present but few and far between with the majority of computers have bulky white moniters. Somewhat justified in the initial intervals as the location is supposed to be a run-down water treatment plant.

F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon - TV Tropes (2025)

Tropes in this game and its expansions: