Cold Fear Review

There is something you'd probably want to know about me before reading this article: I like to be afraid. (Oh really? Let me take off my shirt then. That should make you ecstatic -Ed) I am one of those psychotic individuals who enjoy watching cheap, senseless horror movies, taking delight in ketchup sprayed on the actors and the scenery, giving the murderer my support with enthusiastic cheers at the screen. On the other hand, I also like those 'intellectual' horrors where the accent isn't put on cheesy special effects but rather on a more psychological bent.

I think he's dead. He might be dead.

Yep, pretty sure he's dead.

I also enjoy playing survival horror games. The reason is simple: it allows me to shoot humans turned into monsters, or monsters turned into humans. (Is there a difference between the two? I wonder. (According to the court system there is -Ed)) You see, what scares me most is the human race. I sometimes think humans were created because there was such an excess of stupidity in the world that it needed to be stored somewhere. What better place to store it than the human brain? Because of that, humans do and say the scariest things, which make me flinch every time I encounter their kind. From this you can deduce I do quite a lot of flinching actually. But that is beside the point. The point is, I am a very self-conscious person, so I've always believed you have to sort of deal with your fears if you want to live with yourself. Unfortunately, my logic seems to indicate the solution requires shooting people as the most effective way of dealing with them. That's why my existence was far from peaceful until I discovered survival horrors. (She's a loony -Ed)

The thing with survival horror games is that they present humans in what I think is their true light - as senseless, inarticulate beasts with only enough brains to walk, eat, and kill others. So from that point of view, in the game, it's not really a crime spilling out their brains, or whatever it is that moves them. You're putting the freaks out of their misery, and you've also made yourself feel better about the quantity of stupidity in the world you live in.

Darkworks' survival horror/action game Cold Fear follows my (insane) logic, putting you in the role of an ex soldier Tom Hansen, now a member of the US Coast Guard. Tom and his colleagues are sent to search a Russian ship caught in a storm, but the entire boarding party (well all but one) gets killed in a matter of seconds. This leaves Tom as the only survivor of course, tasked with the nasty job of finding out the dark secret that the ship carries. Of course, having played all those survival horror games has taught me something, and that is that 'dark secrets' usually involve humanoid mutants, brain-dead zombies, alien life forms or perhaps some form of demonic horror.

Very soon Tom finds out that there was a strange experiment going on (no surprise) under the command of a General Yusupov, and as experiments have a tendency to go wrong, so the ship is crawling with Yusupov's mercenaries who have or have not yet been infected with something called Exocells. (Sounds like a brand of breath mint to me. -Ed) The principle is easy enough - you need to explore the ship, collect the evidence of what was going on and try not to get killed in the process. Oh, yes, and locating possible survivors would be pretty damn polite as well, thank you.

The game plays in the third and over-the-shoulder view, with the ability to switch between the two at will. I did not like the default third-person perspective although it makes you more aware of your environment. It's mainly because I found it difficult to move, shoot, or interact in the default view for several different reasons. First of all, the game is much more engaging from the over-the-shoulder perspective, and secondly, it makes it much less difficult to aim at monsters. Most weapons do have a laser sight that helps you perform this task, but take into account some monsters move really fast and you need to shoot most of them in the head in order to kill them for good. If not, you'll have to stomp on their head (Silent Hill, anyone?) or simply shoot them in the head while they're not moving.

Now, the game takes place in both indoor and outdoor settings, so it's either dark, narrow corridors or the swaying, shaking ship's deck showered by rain and large ocean waves. This means it's extremely difficult to even hit the monster, let alone shoot them in the head. The corridors do not allow you great freedom of movement nor the aiming precision you need, especially if the monster's one level above or below you - for example, if they're located at the bottom or the top of the stairs and such. On the other hand, fighting on the deck means your vision is blurred because of the rain, your health bar lessens if you get hit by the waves, and the ship's shaking so violently it makes it almost impossible to move. And then, when a monster jumps you from behind in the middle of all *THAT*, you realize you have absolutely no trouble with killing anybody who dared approach you in such conditions, especially if they are carrying a long, sharp knife and let out a terrible shriek.

Having said that, I must admit that the combat sequences in the outdoor settings made for one of the best parts of the game. In truth, the monsters are not that scary or varied, but the realistic looking outdoor settings and the general difficulty of shooting *anything* in that storm makes the game masochistically enjoyable to play. Of course, a better aim would be most helpful, but maybe that would spoil the feeling they were going for, damned if I know. The real problem with the game is that it does not have the atmosphere of a true horror game. Now let me explain myself: by 'horror' I don't mean the pathetic attempts at presenting Freddy Krueger as the ultimate killing machine instead of a poor old fuck with a personality disorder and a strange manicure. The Japanese know the true essence of horror, so if you want to learn how to be *really* scared, you know where to go. (I'd vote for your house -Ed) The thing with Cold Fear is that it isn't even half as scary as Resident Evil, which isn't exactly the scariest survival horror game I've ever played. There are some instances which do scare the hell out of you - the abruptly opened doors, exploding canisters, monsters jumping at you when you least (or most) expect them - but most of the time, I would just shrug my shoulders and kill the mutated idiot in my way. Now, I am not saying that the game isn't exciting, it just isn't scary enough. The scariest moment I've experienced was entering the radio room ... well; I'll leave you to discover that for yourself.

The most engaging part of the game is definitely the combat, although it is not without its flaws. The story offers nothing we have not seen or heard at least fourteen quadrillion times. (This number is not randomly generated. It is the result of a long and costly research.) Various items are scattered around the levels, from different weapons and ammo to health packs and various data, such as journals and info icons that serve as help on different topics and such. These data items help you find out more about what happened on the ship, only you could have it guessed yourself anyway. They also provide you with instructions on how to use the environment to your advantage, as if it was so hard to guess what all those canisters, fuel tanks and fire extinguishers were there for.