Just as in previous installments in the F.E.A.R. series much time will be spent in the dark, hunting the cute girl Alma. Cute is relative, in F.E.A.R. 2 Alma is no longer an 8 years old kid, but rather a 15 years old teenager. To top it off, the man eating child can hardly be called huggable.

You will not be getting a sort of tutorial or an introduction in F.E.A.R. 2. As a player you'll be thrown straight into the action and learn most things on the go, such as for example how to unjam a blocked elevator door. Thankfully F.E.A.R. 2 is like most shooters in that it doesn't have a very steep learning curve.

F.E.A.R. 2's story unfolds right after the explosion at the end of the original F.E.A.R. At that time you'll be searching the home of the head honcho of Armacham as sergeant Michael Becket. From various reports and other forms you'll see laying around you'll find out Becket too was part of an experiment. This paves the way for a few plot changes ultimately resulting in you finding out you're the weapon of choice to battle Alma. Not really bad in itself, as when you play the game you'll notice the only threat Alma poses is she sometimes pops up only to jump on you. These experiences are rather short lived however, the player can simply shake loose of Alma's grip.

As before F.E.A.R. once again comes with it's slow motion effect. Except getting more time to aim your shots - something which can now be done through the ironsight/scope of the gun - you'll also be seeing some nice visual effects. For example a hand grenade will show a nice shockwave around itself when it goes off, something you wouldn't spot in 'real time'. However, this feature was already present in F.E.A.R. 1 and its offspring so it isn't exactly new.

What is new though is the experience of the first person aspect. When your character falls, Becket will push himself up with his hands and your field of view will change accordingly. With a few well placed hand animations and a view that depending on the situation shakes, tilts or wobbles, Monolith has ensured a nice immersion. Eventhough new to the F.E.A.R. franchise, it is not a real first for shooters in general. Call of Duty 4 and others have beaten F.E.A.R. 2 to the punchline in this regard.

Then again, other games do not have the horror effect F.E.A.R. so brilliantly displays. There aren't a great deal of games where you'll have to cross dimly lit corridors, shooting at glowing shapes who can best be described as ghosts. Not to mention plowing through a sewage drain, dodging all sorts of jump crazed cannibals. One thing is certain, with the volume cranked up high enough, and dark enough surroundings, F.E.A.R. has a whole arsenal of tricks up its sleeves to scare you. So when all the lights around you in the game suddenly go out, pay attention, this is usually when something fun happens.

To deliver this horror effect F.E.A.R. needs appropriate sound effects. At that the game excells, players of the original game will remember the high shrieking noises accompanying Alma's visits. These tones make their comeback, and can still make your skin crawl. Through this and various other effects you'll soon notice the game is pushing you more and more to the edge of your seat.

While the original F.E.A.R. at the time of its launch boasted brand spanking new graphics, F.E.A.R. 2 is a lot less impressive. All the environments, weapons and animations are all very detailed, but despite this they are not digital pieces of art. In comparison with Crysis, a game that could be seen as the new milestone in graphics, F.E.A.R. 2 doesn't make a lasting impression. That there are no huge open environments to show off its graphics and that the pace of the game is a lot higher than the one in Crysis most likely also plays its part.

There isn't always a lot of variation in F.E.A.R.'s levels. You'll be spending many hours traversing dark hallways, besting horde after horde of enemy troops, all the while going where the story sends you to go. Interesting intermezzos are the power armor sections. These are parts in your virtual odyssey you'll travel through piloting a sort of walking tank. Pretty fun to roam through the streets in this ultimate fighting machine. These relatively short bits aren't very hard though, except enemy robots and soldiers with rocket launchers there's not much that can do anything but scratch your armor. Even then, your armor usually manages to repair itself in the nick of time.

This relatively low difficulty can also be found in the normal - footsoldier - parts of the game. Maybe the enemy will be hard to hit sometimes, maybe he'll have thicker armor, but you'll never be short on ammo to finish him off. Similarly whenever you're wounded it'll be little effort to find a medkit. A little harder to find, but still plenty, is body armor. Obviously the difficulty you play the game at plays a large part in all this, but in general the logistics (medkits and the likes) will be ample.

All in all F.E.A.R. 2 is a good game, but it's also a bit of a disappointment. For this reviewer then at least. Personally I had expected Monolith to put more energy in implementing new ideas in F.E.A.R. 2. At the moment it looks a bit like F.E.A.R. 1, but with a new name, updated graphics and a slightly different storyline. No matter which way you look at it, this game is essentially the same as F.E.A.R. 1. Of course every shooter sequel will be a bit like its predecessors, but there's not enough novelty in F.E.A.R. 2 to make it really stand out as the sequel it should be, and not appear as another spinoff of F.E.A.R. 1. F.E.A.R. 2 is still a good game, but this is mostly to the credit of the original F.E.A.R. Perhaps it would have been better if F.E.A.R. 2 didn't have such large shoes to fill.