There are, without question, very few games for the Sony Playstation that appeal to the adventure gamer. Sure, there're RPG games (the Final Fantasy series comes to mind) that excel, but outside of that genre, there simply isn't much available. Occasionally a game is released that makes me sit up and take notice; members of this exclusive club include Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, the Oddworld series, and Silent Hill. These games combine excellent plots with respectable graphics to leave the player with lasting memories. Well, I'm happy to announce that another game has been added to this list--Fear Effect.

What's Going on Here?

The plot of Fear Effect is a great example of a well-thought-out story. When you start the game, you are given a "catch-up" movie clip that explains the current situation. The daughter of a rich and powerful Chinese businessman, Wee Ming Lam, has disappeared mysteriously into the Shan Xi protectorate. Your job is to rescue her and bring her safely back to her family. Her father would rather not pay your team's price, so his "goons" are also in pursuit of Wee Ming, hindering your progress at every turn. There are three characters that you control (separately) during the course of the game; Hana Tsu-Vachel, specializing in covert ops; Royce Glas, a mercenary with a past in the US government; and Jakob "Deke" Decourt, an Australian assassin and explosives expert. As the game progresses, you discover that Shan Xi is the staging ground for the King of Hell's release of evil onto the earth, and you must fight undead minions to succeed.

During the course of this game, I gained a great deal of respect for the writers of Fear Effect; the story seemed complete, and nothing seemed blatantly out of place during my exploration. I won't go into any further detail to avoid spoiling any surprises, but I will say that I was very pleased with the game's conclusion.

Overall Plot Grade: A

How Did it Look?

Since this game excels in graphical presentation on multiple fronts, I'll discuss them separately.

Backgrounds: Fear Effect uses looping background animation extremely effectively and nearly raises the bar for PC adventure games in the process. If you're not familiar with this style, here's a brief description; instead of a static scene, the developers create a loop of about three seconds of an animated scene, and repeat it while the character moves around. If done properly, you can't really tell where the loop starts and ends, and it gives the impression of a living environment. I'm really surprised that other games have not used this technique as extensively before (Riven, for example, animates parts of the background but leaves the remaining parts fixed). The implementation in Fear Effect was not perfect, but it was close enough to significantly enhance the game.

Character Animation: The characters in Fear Effect are rendered polygons with anime styling. I've seen polygon rendering before, and I always ask myself, "Does that really look like a person?" I've come to the conclusion that the graphics capabilities of the Playstation are simply not good enough to realistically portray people. Thankfully, Kronos did not attempt that level of realism; instead, they decided to simplify the characters by using anime. Granted, the anime feel to the characters fits with the theme, but I think it was also a good technical decision. The movements of the characters in this game also did not disappoint; you can tell characters apart by their styles of walking! The only negative I found in this area was that all of the different characters in the game look silly when they run. Not much you can do about that--so do I.

In-Game Movies: The theme here is "wow." The characters in the movies look exactly like the ones you control during gameplay, so there's a continuity to the game that I could really appreciate. The quality of the movies is the best I've seen on this platform; other developers would be wise to figure out how the high frame rate/low flicker was accomplished.

Did I mention that this game is presented in wide-screen format?

Overall Graphics Grade: A+

How Did it Sound?

This game sounds great. The voice acting is first-class and totally believable--and this isn't even a pure adventure game, where the voice acting is even more important. Perhaps I've become more sensitive to voice acting recently, but I've quit a number of games simply because the actors don't seem to care about the lines they're speaking, and if the developers of a game allow their product to be released with substandard acting, they don't really care about the game's quality. I played Fear Effect from beginning to end, and the acting throughout was done very well.

Likewise, the sound effects in Fear Effect were also very believable. Sound loops are coupled with the background loops to further immerse the player in the game's experience. All of the sounds were appropriate to the locales being explored; one of my favorite parts of the game takes place in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, where the cooks are throwing things around the kitchen, talking to themselves and each other. Very nicely done.

There's not much music in Fear Effect, besides the main theme that plays during the startup sequence, but the theme is a great, driving, techno-style tune that I found myself tapping my feet and bobbing my head to hours after I stopped playing.

Overall Sounds Grade: A

Was it Fun?

Fear Effect's gameplay has good points and bad points. As a third-person fighting/exploration game, it fares well, although it took some time to get used to the controls. For those unfamiliar with the Playstation's Dual Shock controller, there are two analog directional thumb-joysticks that allow full directional motion, but these joysticks can also function as buttons by pressing them down. If you press down on the left thumb-stick, your character performs an evasive roll--but in the heat of battle, I found myself inadvertently pressing it, more often than not putting me into a much more vulnerable position. You are given the option of sneaking up on enemies from behind to eliminate them quietly with hand-to-hand weapons, which is extremely useful in the early parts of the game.

Many parts of this game are similar to the old arcade game Dragon's Lair, where you had to push the joystick in a particular direction at exactly the right moment to make progress. This is an interesting concept for this type of game; you have to pay attention to the patterns of enemies and obstacles before attempting to engage them. There is a major drawback to this method of gameplay--you die often. One wrong move and you're history. This wouldn't have been such a bother except that reloading from your last saved position took at least 30 seconds! After dying eight or nine times in the same sequence, this gets very tiresome (and the developers recognized this, fixing this issue in the upcoming prequel Retro Helix).

Since I'm on the subject, saving your game in Fear Effect is fairly simple--as you walk through different rooms, your cellular phone will ring at certain points, allowing you to save your game at that location. I found plenty of places to save, but since there is no visual indication that a save game "spot" exists, they need to be discovered by exploration.

Three paragraphs and I haven't even gotten to Fear Effect's gimmick! You don't really have a health bar in this game--the game's title refers to the Fear Effect, your character's level of fear with respect to the current situation. As you are attacked by bad guys, your level of fear increases, as does your audible heart rate. Get too scared, and you die. When there are enemies nearby, your heart rate increases slightly to warn you that there's something dangerous in the next room. (For those gamers with Dual Shock controllers, vibration also indicates your fear level.) When you reach a particular goal, like solving a puzzle or finding a key, you calm down and your fear level resets. This is an interesting concept, but I have a hard time believing that finding a key will make me feel better after being shot five times by a machine gun!

The puzzles in Fear Effect are quite good; many puzzles have a Chinese theme, which makes them less familiar and almost (banish the thought) educational. Some puzzles require you to figure out creative ways to pass by enemies; other puzzles require placing items in the proper locations to succeed.

The inventory system in Fear Effect was also very well-done, allowing you to scan your stuff by weapon or by item, saving time during action sequences. Fear Effect does implement "item noticing," using your character's head to look at items of interest in a room, but there seemed to be many cases where your character would have to look slightly away from an object to notice it (which cost me an hour of gameplay, looking for something that I had already found but could not seem to pick up).

Overall Gameplay Grade: B+

Fear Effect is a worthy addition to a mature Playstation gamer's library. There's significant gore in this game, and there are some racy scenes with Hana, so keep that in mind when purchasing this for the young 'uns. This game goes on my top ten PSX list; I would recommend it to any adventure gamer who doesn't mind significant action sequences.

Final Grade: A-