Date:
Monday , February 23, 2009
Category:
GPU / Video Cards
Manufacturers:
AMD-ATI & NVIDIA
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice

F.E.A.R. 2 Gameplay Performance and IQ

F.E.A.R. 2 is here for all of you to get your Alma fix. But is Alma Wade the only terrifying part of the game, or will the performance make you want to crawl out of your skin too? We'll find out with seven of today's most popular video cards.

Introduction

Released on February 11, 2009 by Monolith and WB Games, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is the 2nd full installment in the First Encounter Assault Recon story. The F.E.A.R. series chronicles the exploits of a paramilitary organization apparently specializing in the investigation of supernatural phenomena. For the purpose of the games, the group's primary interest seems to be in the investigation of the exploits of the fictional Amarcham Technology Corporation (ATC), which specializes in the development and weaponization of telesthetic and telekinetic abilities. Their experimentation has led to the corruption of Alma Wade, a highly gifted young girl who was imprisoned and forced to bear children to be subjects for their research. The F.E.A.R. series are horror-themed first-person shooters, and the primary figure of dread is Alma.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

F.E.A.R. 2 picks up just a few minutes before the end of the original F.E.A.R. story. After losing contact with the first F.E.A.R. squad, a second squad, led by Sergeant Michael Becket, is sent to take Genevieve Aristide, president of Amarcham. However, just before Aristide can divulge important details about the Harbinger project, the F.E.A.R. point man detonates the Origin facility and Sgt. Becket is knocked unconscious. Much of the rest of the game involves tracking down Aristide, a dubious character calling himself "Snake First", and some of your remaining F.E.A.R. teammates.

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F.E.A.R. 2's multiplayer component is standard fare for modern First Person Shooters. There are Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes, which are simply an all-out battle for the most kills by a player or team. Armored Front mode is a territory control mode in which teams fight for control of power suit spawn and recharge facilities. Blitz mode is a modified capture the flag. It is somewhat turn-based. Each match consists of a number of rounds in which one team will defend the "PHLAG", while the other team attempts to capture as many "PHLAGs" as possible. The attacking and defending teams rotate with each round in Blitz mode. Failsafe mode is reminiscent of Assault mode in UT2004, in which teams venture into the enemy base and plant explosives on caches of the replicant enzyme that facilitates the telesthetic connection to the drone commander. And finally, Control mode forces player teams to capture and defend designated positions throughout the maps.

Game Technology

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin uses an updated version of the graphics engine which powered the first F.E.A.R., the Lithtech Jupiter EX engine from Touchdown Entertainment. Jupiter EX is the latest incarnation of the long-running Lithtech engine, which powered such classics as Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, No One Lives Forever, and Aliens versus Predator 2.

The Jupiter EX engine is a DirectX 9 renderer, featuring such features as per-pixel lighting, particle effect systems, Havok Physics, and lip-sync support to enhance character speech animations. The full feature list is too long to detail here, so for more information, readers can review the materials available here.

The most important aspect to the technology powering F.E.A.R. 2 is that it is mature, proven game engine that has evolved over the past 10 years, though little has apparently changed in the 1.5 years since F.E.A.R. was released. As such, we expect F.E.A.R. 2 performance to be very good across a wide range of video cards.

The Video Cards

We are using seven video cards in this evaluation. From AMD, we have a Radeon HD 4870 X2 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory per GPU, a Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB of GDDR5, a Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB of GDDR5, and a Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. NVIDIA is represented by a GeForce GTX 285 with 1GB of GDDR3, a GeForce GTX 280 also with 1GB of GDDR3, and a GeForce GTX 260 (216 Core) with 896MB of GDDR3 memory. Unfortunately, due to the timing of this article and the severe lack of GeForce GTX 295 stock currently, we were not able to include the GeForce GTX 295 in this evaluation. We will represent F.E.A.R. 2 gameplay on the GTX 295 in future reviews of GTX 295 video cards.