XB Cold Fear review:4 stars ("Fear" Is Fun) - "Cold Fear" plays like a gem, and contains all the essential elements to make a great action-horror game - everything, that is, except a storyline devoid of clichÃ#s. In other words, the game itself, while certainly less than original, is a class act, but the broken wings of the derivative plot keep it from soaring to utter greatness.

Like last year's "The Suffering," the setting is one of the strengths of "Cold Fear" (at least for the first half of the game). As Tom Hansen, a United States Coast Guard officer dispatched to investigate a Russian ship tossed about on a stormy sea, you quickly discover that you're alone, far from any possible help due to circumstances beyond your control (naturally), and that there is more to this distress call than you bargained for. It seems the ship's crew have become infected with parasitical creatures ("Alien" style) and they're rapidly mutating into zombies... and worse ("Resident Evil," anyone?).

Yes, the storyline is boilerplate for a game of this genre, but the gameplay itself, while perhaps not taking full advantage of the setting, is exceedingly well done. The action is responsive and satisfying, and not overly frequent - "Cold Fear" is a game of tension punctuated by sporadic blasts of combat, as it should be. Each of the game's weapons packs a punch, although, realistically, they can be hard to aim with pinpoint accuracy do to the choppiness of the high seas. Unfortunately a zombie can only be permanently dispatched by a blow to the brain, which is a difficult shot to pull off - so, instead, most of the time you'll shoot a zombie to the ground, stroll casually up to it, and stomp on its skull with your boot. Though this practice becomes repetitive after a while, it's good gory fun at first.

As previously mentioned, the atmosphere and the nautical setting of "Cold Fear" go a long distance toward making the game work. Despite the rampant clichÃ#s and the gruff, wise-cracking protagonist (who seems literally lifted from "Far Cry," alongside his female sidekick), the leaky, dank environments are unlike anything seen before in a game of this type. The graphics, which are crisp and very attractive, bring this to splendid life, with the moving shadows threatening to contain some creature about to pounce. The raging seas are equally impressive, but more so the rain spatter effect that strikes the camera - or the occasional spurt of blood from a fractured skull that splats across it instead.

Alas, the second half of the game, in an attempt to mix things up, foregoes the ship and places the remainder of the action on an oil platform that feels like your Mars base in "Doom 3" or your Arctic research lab in "The Thing." In other words, it's not quite as striking or as interesting, but still being soaked in atmosphere it more than gets the job done. Surprisingly, it's this late in the game before "Cold Fear" introduces its bigger, badder mutants, where before zombies were the catch of the day. The timing is excellent, actually, because these new threats force a different style of attack (or running for one's life) that shakes up the whole experience, keeping it fresh and addictive. And addictive is perhaps one of the best words to use in describing the "Cold Fear" experience.

The game's biggest problems arise in the form of its weak, derivative story and characters. It's never fully explained why Hansen is supposedly disgraced as a US Coast Guard officer, though this is a point that's driven home on several occasions - more confusing still, there's a reference to him somehow getting his former girlfriend shot and killed, but no further explanation of this (at least not that I could find). This is but one example in a game filled with loose ends. Bigger still, what are all these mutants running around? They're not aliens per se, and they're not genetic constructs. The game's ads implied they were hellspawn "Doom" style, but there's no in-game evidence of this except for the fact that they emerge from the depths where the Russians are drilling. I suppose it's safe to say they are a terrestrial form of unknown life, but there simply needs to be more. Fortunately, the story isn't a deal-breaker in a game this good, but it certainly shoots itself in the foot.

All in all, "Cold Fear" is a game that demands to be played by fans of the genre. The nautical setting makes it this year's "The Suffering," if not quite as creative in terms of its premise and characterizations. Still, when it's all said and done, you can feel it missing the mark of the game it could have been had its story elements come together properly, and had its developers gone that extra mile to incorporate the setting more fully into the game. For example, in mid-development a system was mentioned where Hansen would have to grab onto objects (such as poles, banisters, etc.) to steady himself, and his aim, on the choppy waters, but the mechanic, which could have been truly original, got axed at the last minute. This is emblematic of the game's adherence to the standard, but that is by no means a condemnation. While not quite a classic, "Cold Fear" is a solid, enjoyable effort well worth the price of admission.
2 stars (Lacking for a modern action/horror shooter) - My interest was piqued by the concept of this game, so I was excited to have time to start playing it. Unfortunately, it did not deliver.

While the art (textures, light, shaders) is excellent, the level design is mediocre at best. It was ambitious to have a large chunk of a game like this on a relatively small ship, but as it turns out, it may have been a bit TOO ambitious. While the art and environment are excellent and immersive, there are many points one re-encounters, crosses over, and at many points, objectives are simply names of places you haven't been yet, so you rather stumble around aimlessly hoping to hit what you're looking for instead of making clear progress or heading through a relatively fixed course. As with many other TPSs, the camera angle is fixed in most enclosed spaces, which makes it absolutely useless for exploring a room, moving through the room, or spotting/fighting enemies. This leads you to spend most of your time in the pseudo-FPS, "over-the-shoulder" aiming mode, so that you can actually see where you're going. However, this slows you down. So your choice is between either having no idea what you're actually looking at (is there a bulkhead, a door, a shelf, or a killer zombie just outside this camera angle?), or seeing what you're looking at, but progressing at an agonizingly slow pace.

The physics is also mediocre to poor. Aiming is difficult to near-impossible for the first half of the game because the ship is rolling, and your aim shifts randomly along with the motion of the ship. There are a few scares, but if you want to be scared witless, try Doom 3. The "horror" factor of this game pales by comparison to Doom 3, or even The Suffering.

One of the low points of this game is its aforementioned sloooooow pace. Your run is slow, walking is even slower, and aim-walking is slowest. This is NOT a fast-paced action shooter like FarCry, Doom 3, or HalfLife 2.

Character balance is piss-poor. You baby-step along, your aiming is sluggish and extremely difficult to be accurate. This is partly a limitation of Xbox controls, but when you fire up the game, you'll see what I mean. There's a "clumsiness" level built in that might be... hmm... too realistic to be fun.

Save points are pre-set. You can encounter some pretty stupid obstacles pretty far along beyond a save point and find yourself repeating 10-15 minutes of gameplay, sometimes more than once. That alone can be infuriating.

As I said, the art is excellent, very interesting, even highly immersive, and the concept is fascinating, but this is not a huge game. It has a B-movie storyline (I read everything along the way, and trust me, it SUCKS), it is slow-paced, the physics suck, and the character's balance and range of motion just sucks. Overall, a let-down. It's not worth the time or money for a little eye candy; it might be worth a few hours of semi-fun and cool environments when you can buy a used copy for $5.3 stars (Cold Fear is Cold) - Atmospherically, Cold Fear is derivative and predictable, which is a shame considering that it is, at times, an enjoyable action game. While Cold Fear does not exactly establish itself as a high-quality survival horror game, the involved story and occasional interesting gameplay element make Cold Fear worth playing, for at least a little while, anyway.

They got the cold part right. In Cold Fear, you play as Tom Hansen, a US Coast Guard officer who has been sent to investigate a mysterious Russian frigate on a windy and stormy night in the middle of the ocean. You find out early on that the boat is occupied not merely by hostile Russian soldiers, of which there are plenty, but also by alien creatures that feed on the humans and provide a severe threat from both inside and outside their host bodies. Your investigation leads you to a few friendly faces and many threatening ones as you uncover the mystery of the ship and its lethal cargo.

The perspective is third person, with the ability to go into a first-person aiming mode through which you can freely guide your view. Although the fixed camera gives a wider glimpse of the scene, it's not easy to keep fluid control when going back and forth between cameras, which is a problem as you try to maneuver around the boat and take out the enemies you encounter along the way.

Additional controls let you crouch, run, and scroll quickly through weapons, which is slightly more intuitive in the PS2 version, thanks to the extra trigger buttons. However, since the weapon scroll is placed on the white/black buttons on the Xbox controller, the difference is not that severe. Running brings up an onscreen meter that, when depleted, prohibits you from running anymore. This helps to make certain puzzles more challenging, and you will find yourself monitoring the meter frequently, but it does not detract from or add to the gameplay in any significant way.

Because Cold Fear takes place in ocean-locked environments, the control scheme is affected by the movement of the waves. This is mostly noticeable when you are outside, and at times it looks like you're walking almost completely sideways, due to the volatile movement of the deck beneath you. This adversely impacts the controls, but the trade-off is a unique and interesting component of the gameplay. As you fight against the tossing of the boat, timing yourself to cross decks only when the waves are low, you encounter some of the most compelling aspects of Cold Fear. Unfortunately, the outside environments are not tapped to their fullest, and you'll spend the majority of the game, past the first hour, in generic indoor locations.

Your objective in Cold Fear is to discover the story behind the vessel's apparent destruction and the emergence of the nonhuman creatures upon it. Despite being a highly derivative story about a genetic experiment gone wrong, the relationship between characters is interesting, and the story is neat and simple. Most of the plot exploration is conveyed through notes that are littered about the environment and through dialogues with characters (for the short duration that the people on the boat other than Hansen manage to stay alive). The notes are well implemented, and they drive the story and reveal critical information about weapons, environmental objects, and enemies.

Although you start off with merely a handgun, there are a number of different weapons to be found in the middle of the ocean, including a submachine gun, an AK-47, a speargun, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher. The weapons are almost all equally effective, except for differences in power. The speargun is the only weapon that is not used explicitly for dealing damage, and when fired, it releases a gas that draws enemies near it. This is a great tactic to use in conjunction with one of the more explosive weapons such as the shotgun or grenade launcher. Otherwise, the objective of the game is to make headshots on all humanoid enemies, which can be exceedingly difficult as the enemies draw nearer to you. Fortunately, most of the weapons have either a laser sight or flashlight, which aids your precision. The point of the headshot is to conserve ammunition, although enemies will not die unless they are decapitated. This means that if you shoot an enemy anywhere other than in the head, and merely knock it down to the ground, you have a certain amount of time to run over and step on the head before the enemy gets back up and attacks you again.

Many of the zombies are possessed by exocel creatures, which are spidery beings that alternate between crawling on the floor and the ceiling before attempting to take possession of a human being by reaching out a long tendril into a human's mouth and then climbing inside. Outside of a host body, these exocels are fairly easy to destroy--usually one bullet sends them rolling up into a ball, and a second one takes them out--but given their flexibility and their penchant for appearing out of nowhere, including bodies you've just killed, they provide a formidable threat if not dealt with quickly. More advanced abominations of genetics appear later on, but with the more difficult enemies, it's sometimes easier to merely avoid confrontation and run along to the next room. If you choose to run, you'll find these creatures often jumping on your back. When this happens, you're given a button sequence to throw the enemy and try to achieve a critical hit. If you successfully land a critical hit, enemies are killed much more quickly than if you had gone about it the normal way. Because of this, it's sometimes tactically important to let Hansen be jumped by enemies, as long as you can throw them quickly.



Hansen knows a ballet bar when he sees one.
Other game tactics include using pieces of the environment to do the work for you. You can shoot explosive barrels, fire extinguishers, and different-colored valves to create an environmental trap for oncoming enemies. From time to time, you'll encounter a fight between two of the enemy species, and you can let them fight among themselves before you intervene. Environmental effects, such as laser beams and swinging obstacles, can often be used to pick off the less bright enemies, and the rocking of the boat will send a zombie or you overboard, if you're standing on the wrong side of a slippery surface.
XB Cold Fear Features:
Video Games
Xbox (x box)
Microsoft
Action
Adventure
XBox
ESRB Rating: RP (Rating Pending)
Action/Adventure/Survival/Horror

XB Cold Fear is the Video Game version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 29.99USD.