FEAR and Why I Miss Physics Engines in Games

 

FEAR and Why I Miss Physics Engines in Games

I miss the fuck out of ragdoll physics. FEAR combining ragdoll physics and gore is one of the many reasons why that game nails combat so well. 8th gen, give me a AAA fps game like FEAR and shove your open world shit up your ass. Doom and Titanfall don't count.

It's amazing how FEAR basically combines, Max Payne 2's ragdoll physics with Quake 2's over the top gore. I think this is what FEAR 2 and 3's combat was missing in many ways, the ragdoll physics. It's really disappointing that the more the 7th gen progressed physics engines pretty much became more and more irrelevant. Star Wars the Force Unleashed and GTA 4 were probably the last games that really pushed the ideas of exaggerated game physics. But back to FEAR, it seems FEAR 2 and 3, just only remember the blood and gore but not the over the top exaggerated death animations when you hit an enemy. Hitting an enemy in the first FEAR and Extraction Point just provides a great stimulus for combat that no game provides. It truly is a very big fucking shame that the god awful horror elements of FEAR gets talked about more than this stuff. This along with the level layouts, the AI with it's goals and communication with each other, the amazing weapons to use, the level of detail in the environments where at times it can put you at a disadvantage(smoke, explosions wrecking your focus while in BT, and glass breaking to surprise enemies), and the weapon limit making you improvise is among the many underused examples of why FEAR is great. The AI, I get, but the scripted obvious as fuck horror sequences can fuck themselves, and should be a negative.

It's quite interesting when talking about physics engine in general. Games in the early to mid 00s were basically abusing it and was in almost every action game, from Half Life 2, Second Sight, Psi Ops, GTA 4, FEAR, Max Payne 2, Star Wars the Force Unleashed, and Painkiller to name a few.

In a lot of the games they were in, they added a hilariously over the top element to the gameplay. The most fun thing about GTA 4 was using explosive weapons to see the bodies flying. Jumping out of cars were hilarious due to how exaggerated the death animations were. Killing Niko over and again was just hilariously fun. Jumping out of cars, helicopters, boats, buildings was just so damn funny because Niko would just bounce like if his body barely had any weight.

In Star Wars the Force Unleashed, it was a so hilariously dumb and over the top to play around with the Stormtroopers. Just pushing and pulling them around, having them grab on to the environment, having them grab on to each other provided for a somewhat unique Star Wars and gaming experience. Where Psi Ops and Second Sight only lightly touched up interactions with enemies and the environments with psychic powers, TFU really took the idea two extra steps further.

Max Payne 2 and Painkiller had combat be really over the top because blasting enemies with the weapons would cause them to go flying and land to the ground very lightly. It's like sort of like those action movies where enemies would go flying every time they got hit by guns. It really made the weapons feel that much better.

Instead of open worlds, and MMO shit maybe gaming should go back to incorporating physics engines into their games for more fun and unique gameplay experiences. I know it's expensive but I would rather see physics engines come back then high powered graphics.