I Still Think it's a Lame Acronym

Ever since I read Steve Gaynor’s incredibly illuminating article about FPS encounter design I’ve been paying closer attention to level design and how my battles play out. I agree with every one of his points in retrospect, though I don’t think I would have ever came up with what I liked about FPS encounters on my own. After reading his article I was especially interested in playing F.E.A.R. 2, despite Steve using it as his example of what not to do, if only to see exactly what he was talking about.


Well, I played through F.E.A.R. 2 this week and only agree with him halfway. I still agree with all his points about what makes an interesting encounter, but I think F.E.A.R. 2 does a better job of adhering to these rules than he gives it credit for. I definitely see what he is talking about; especially early on most fights start with the player walking through a doorway and immediately being assaulted with gunfire. These skirmishes result in exactly what you would expect, taking potshots from the doorway, which leads to a boring and tedious fight.

However, there are also several encounters that adhere to Gaynor’s suggestions almost verbatim. Such as:

An alternate approach is the ambush-- the player observes a quiet arena, and advances into the middle, only for the enemy to pop out of hiding and attack (rappel down through skylights, jump down off of balconies, swarm in through multiple entry doors, burst through a wall, etc.) This is a fair approach in the back half of the campaign, as the player should be experienced fighting his enemy and could use some variety to encounter setups. However, the ambushing enemies should nonetheless have terrible reflexes-- enemies that pop out guns blazing will merely frustrate the player. Rappelling/door-bashing/balcony-diving/wall-busting ambushers should take a while to ready their weapons and draw a bead on the player, allowing him to make it to cover and get the first shot off. The idea is for the player to retain some initial advantage while still being thrust suddenly into the middle of an encounter.

Sorry for the long quote, but this describes a few encounters about a third of the way through the game so accurately it’s like he was thinking about them when he wrote it. One part specifically landed me in what looks like a paintball arena, it was a large circular room with tons of various cover sizes. As I walked in I instantly knew I wouldn’t be leaving without a fight, but nothing happened while a giant monitor in the room displayed an angry Colonel threatening me. Of course I was ambushed by tons of guys popping out of tubes in the ground. These took a few seconds for them to emerge from. This fight goes along with Gaynor’s circular arena suggestion, his ambush idea and the slow reflexes that are necessary to make the fight fair perfectly. I found it odd that a few of his good design points were incorporated into the game that inspired the article about bad design.

What seemed to be the biggest complaint within the article was how often the fights took place in a hallway with varied cover. This leads to a slow advance down the hallway moving forward as the foes are eliminated. That would be boring, but the part of the game that comes to mind when I think hallways is the elementary school levels. Most of the encounters in this section did have hallways, but all of them had doors on either sides leading to classrooms and various other halls with overturned tables and what not to hide behind. They also lent themselves nicely to flanking by having multiple exits farther down the hallways. I found these fights to be among the most enjoyable in the game. It didn’t hurt that it was the only section I found to be genuinely creepy either.

Gaynor is right, the level and encounter design aren’t as solid as the original game and what it does wrong is apparently a pretty amateur mistake, but it also has plenty of quality fights in there. Combine that with an overall better presentation, more coherent storytelling, classic F.E.A.R. atmosphere, and some stunning visual effects that messed with my head and I think you have a pretty damn good sequel.