To refresh my memory on how F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (Xbox 360) played I ran through the Demo level they have up on Xbox Live right now.  I remember attempting to play through the original F.E.A.R. way back when and loving the paranormal stuff that was going on but realizing that I spent most of my time in static office building environments waiting for generic grunts to come running at me.  The slow motion stuff was quite cool at the time but didn’t make for much amusement after the 20th or so time you watched some dude fly back in slowmo from a strategically placed shotgun blast to the crotch.

I am glad to see that Fear 2 is shaping to add a little more variety into the environments that you’re traversing throughout the game.  Thankfully I have not been through a single office hallway, though I did visit a creepy blood-coated school.  I am glad to see that just within the 30 minutes or so worth of gameplay contained in the demo there already seems to be a substantial amount more of the paranormal activity that drew me into the first one.  I also loved the fact that you will have a chance to enter the badass mechanized suits that were huge headaches in the original game.

Overall the Demo seems to be a perfect vertical slice of excitement that I’m hoping is duplicated throughout the rest of the game.  The game is absolutely gorgoeus and gives equal graphical attention to the gore and the destroyed world around you. Each of the weapons I was able to get my hands on felt and played like exactly how I would like them to have.  I know it’s hard to judge how a full game will be just from what companies provide you through demo’s but I can say in confidence that I am thoroughly geeked about F.E.A.R. 2′s release on Feb 10th, 2009.

There have been games before that have used Zombies and the undead as the “baddies.”  What sets Left 4 Dead apart is how close it gets to duplicating the pacing of a real Zombie flick.  They’ve created an AI “Director” that chooses at random when would be the best place to surprise the hell out of you.  It is a feat to behold that almost never gets old because of the spontaneity.

Left 4 Dead also gives you a chance to see how it feels to fight on the other side of the Zombie Apocalypse.  The Versus multiplayer gameplay let’s you battle it out against other real players switching from one side to the other trying to stop the opposite team from reaching the safe room.  This switch up in gameplay definitely resists the fatigue that can sometimes set on while playing FPS mutiplayer games.

The one an only drawback to this game is the insufficient amount of maps to play on.  While this will eventually prove why many people migrate away from the game, hopefully Valve will have some new downloadable content  before that happens.

We need more games like Mirror’s Edge, Portal, and Bioshock.  The one key factor that all of these games have is that your exploration of the world around you is what will lead you to progressing and fleshing out the story.  This utilization of exploration = immersion has the gamer actually searching out the nooks and crannies of environments that are mere set pieces in other games.

• Mirrors Edge puts you in the shoes of a parkour messenger and you literally feel like you’re doing the jumps with her because of how it uses the first person viewpoint.  Your gut clenches slightly when making those long jumps from roof top to roof top as if it would be you plunging to the streets below if you missed.

• Portal uses the first person perspective to give you freedom to figure out the puzzles it provides you with.  No glowing bread crumbs here, just plain ole brain power pushing you forward.  The only things that drive you forward is an disembodied voice that mocks you throughout the game rather than guiding you along and your own drive to escape the walls of what looks to be a huge hamster cage with you at its center.  The lack of any type of combat allows you time to figure out how to escape the cake’s evil lie at your own pace(play the game and you’ll understand!).

• Bioshock puts you in a world that is a beauty to look at an enigma to ponder.  Your eyes are met with an almost Utopian city under the sea yet it’s gone terribly wrong yet the only way the game provides for a narrative is exploring the world for yourself and listening to eerily and disjointed audio files strewn about the world.

Each works because they actually utilize the uniqueness of the first person viewpoint.  Here’s my message to all game developers looking to use the First Perspective in their games…use it to tell story or convey a new experience not just a way to put out yet another FPS game in an already over saturated market.  Less games like Legendary and more games in the vein of the Half Life series…please.