I’ve played a lot of games this summer, you guys! And I’m seemingly not done yet, so, pretty cool. Anyway, this is a sequel to a game from back before the console revolution, F.E.A.R. The second entry, Project Origin covers the immediate aftermath of original game, from a new perspective and with some small degree of overlap. Basically, where the first game explored the mystery of how the creepy little girl was involved with Paxton Fettel and his army of psychically-controlled Replicant soldiers, the second game goes deeper into both the future and the past of the corporation that caused all of this to be as well as into the story of Alma herself, creepier than ever but no longer quite so little.

Of course, not much of the game by percentage follows that story, and what is revealed is on the whole unsatisfying by itself: this game has “middle of a trilogy” written all over it. And honestly I don’t think the enemy AI was as challenging as last time, though whether that says more about the game or me is impossible to determine. Luckily, it was still eminently playable and full of moody scares, which is really the number one reason I was here in the first place. At least as scary as I remember the first one being? So between that and the speed with which I breezed through it, I regret nothing and in fact still want to play the third (and final?) game in the series.

I should also admit that even though the whole game felt like a trap, the unavoidability of its execution reminded me quite a bit of a certain underwater allegory I played a few years ago, and I found the end of the game to be extremely satisfying. (The admission is due to my theory that most people won’t have cared for the ending, you see.)