Cold Fear review:
Ironically, completing the game will give you the option ofreplaying it on a fourth difficulty mode. It’s unlikely that anyone other thana die-hard survival horror fan will ever experience this treat. As it stands (orsways) Cold Fear does little to distinguish itself among similar games thatlitter the bargain basement stores. It’s definitely a try before you buy.
Cold Fear review:
What would happen if you mixed Tom Clancy with H.P. Lovecraft? You’d get Cold Fear, a game that does away with the conventions of a tired genre and successfully blends military action with survival horror.Cold Fear is a naval themed survival horror game from the folks at Ubi Soft, best known for their Tom Clancy games like Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell. The game starts out with a very Tom Clancy feel. You arrive on a ship, tossing rather dramatically on a very stormy sea, sent to investigate a fishing trawler which is on its way to a previously abandoned Russian oil drilling platform.It doesn't take long for things to go to hell. Your team is soon wiped out by some freakish monsters, even ripped in half in a lavish display of affection. Your mission is to rescue a certain doctor who has been working on strange experiments. Apparently the oil drilling platform was closed down for good reason: the drilling disturbed something beneath the surface; something hungry.I didn't say the story wasn't clichéd.Right from the start Cold Fear feels familiar. You can wander around from the fixed perspective easily, with typical camera angle problems, but when it's time to play melon popping with your zombie adversaries, you can switch to an over the shoulder targeting view. This takes care of one of the major flaws in previous survival horror games. Now, if only RPG’s would get rid of random battles…Of course, given the game, or first half of the game at least, takes place on a ship in the middle of a stormy sea, aiming is suitably difficult. Due to the rocking ship, your laser sight will weave all over the place, making for a realistic experience and adding to the intensity of the battles, struggling not only against your foes but against the environment itself. This is aggravated by the PS2's analogue thumbsticks distinct lack of sensitivityThankfully, you can grab onto nearby railings in order to steady your aim. Grabbing the railing will stop your gun from wavering, but it will also stop you from moving, leaving you a sitting duck.Marksmanship is important. Being a survival horror game, supplies are limited, so making every shot count is important. This is compounded by the fact that, unless you blow the enemy's head clean off, they’re just gonna get back up again, causing you to waste even more ammo, and possibly health. There are armouries littered throughout the game, so you won't be down to just using a combat knife if things get tight.The rocking of the ship is also likely to cause some players a degree of motion sickness. The continual rolling, which affects not only aiming but movement, is atmospheric, but will perhaps be too atmospheric for some. The mission design is rather simple. Being a quasi-military game, you are given objectives that must be fulfilled to progress. At the end of specific objectives, you can save your game. The mission design is often a case of make it to point A to point B first, but the tension remains constant even if the surprises are a little predictable.The level design fits in with the theme of other Ubi games, notably the Tom Clancy games. The functional and bare bones style of the military installations carries over to the trawler and oil rig. The maps are filled with corridors and small rooms, with barely enough room for a zombie to swing a gutted fish. There are also broad sections on the deck, but you have to be careful. Large waves can sweep you to death in the blink of an eye.It can be easy to get lost in the game, as there are many corridors and many rooms that go nowhere. There is no map feature in the game, which adds not only to the desperation, but also to the frustration of your situation (sometimes I rhyme way too much). If you have intimate knowledge of fishing trawlers and oil rigs, then perhaps you’ll be better off, as they seem to be modelled pretty accurately.The game is littered with moments that make you doubt yourself. Shadows will appear, lit up by the flashes of lightening, only to disappear a second later. The controller itself will often throb, a heartbeat that gets steadily louder the closer you get to certain danger zones. The effect works well and genuinely has you second guessing every section of your environment for the duration of the effect. For the most part, the game uses the simple scare tactic of throwing stuff at you from the shadows, or at unexpected moments, rather than creating a genuine feeling of malevolence.A survival horror game wouldn't be much without liberal doses of shadowy corridors and dark and seemingly empty rooms. Whipping out your pistol and going into targeting mode will bring up a handy flashlight, which is crucial to finding extra ammo. The game focuses more on the combat than the puzzles. The puzzles themselves are rather weak, but the strong combat helps tip the balance back into the good.The game is good, but there are problems. One is the loading times, which last four to seven seconds a piece nearly every time you open a door. The second is the clipping, which can lead to unnecessary deaths in certain areas of the game. Finally, the enemy deaths; enemies will often continue to attack once you’ve effectively delivered the killing blow. Whether this was intentional or not, I'm unsure, but it doesn't look natural and it can be aggravating when every drop last of blood counts.The game also has a share of bonus material to be unlocked over the course of the game. Upon completing specific objectives within the game, new content is unlocked, but due to the nature of the unlocking, and the content itself (production sketches mostly), you unlock it all in a single play through. The game is good for a single play through, and the extra difficulty levels makes playing through again more of a challenge, but by the end of the first run through, which won’t take more than ten hours at most, there is no need.GraphicsThe graphics are pretty decent in Cold Fear, about as good as you can expect from a PS2 title given the hardware's age. The atmosphere is really driven home. Rain splashes against the screen, distorting the image. Blood splatters against the screen, obscuring vision. Walls of water pound into the ship and send it rocking. Foamy waves can literally wash you off the ship. Not only that, but the character models look suitably monstrous yet familiar. Characters are animated well, especially the zombified enemies, which lurch appropriately.Wounds will appear on your avatar as they're dealt, your vest being ripped and splattered with bullet wounds until being miraculously repaired by a med kit. I’m assuming there was a sewing machine in there. The backgrounds are detailed, but the graphics are not without problems. Facial textures can disappear completely, leaving Hanson's face a black mess. On the whole though, the visuals are solid and add to the atmosphere.SoundRight from the opening, Cold Fear sounds like a Tom Clancy game. The soundtrack continues the military theme throughout, scattered throughout with low, moody tones, rock music blaring during hectic gunfights. The sound effects themselves are standard gun fire, liberally dispersed moans and groans. The storm doesn’t sound as convincing as it could have; the thunder sounds a bit flat and distance, even as the waves nearly wash you overboard. The atmospheric sounds really do their job well.The voice acting, continuing the audio theme, seems ripped from a Tom Clancy game. Even the voice actors themselves sound familiar. The dialogue ranges from cringe-worthy to average, never really getting out of the B-movie low.OverallThe gameplay is solid and enjoyable. The visuals fit the atmosphere wonderfully, the sound is suitably heroic and epic and the gameplay gets rid of some of the tired conventions of the genre and in their place introduces new ideas that help move it forward. This is a solid survival horror game that should be played by anyone looking for a good adaptation of the genre, or someone who has wanted to get into the genre, but hasn't been able to stand the conventions of the genre to this point. The game has little replay value, but it is definitely worth a rental. Thumbs Up Over the shoulder aiming helps massively and gets rid of the tired fixed angles of the genre Wonderful atmosphere really sets the mood Decent difficulty level Strong combat helps build tensionThumbs Down Some issues with facial textures and clipping Enemies don't always die when you kill them Not much replay value Unlocked bonuses are average Load times are overly long full size >>
Cold Fear review:
Neither is particularly satisfying, but one can be made to do the job in most situations.Ultimately, the sea-bound setting provides the twists on the survival horror series which make it worth playing, but also the necessity to tramp around the same places repeatedly.
Cold Fear review:
Cold Fear is a first action-horror title with both action and horror, delivering an action-packed, tension-filled gaming experience. Players step into the role of Tom Hansen, a U.S. Coast Guard who is sent to board a drifting Russian whaling ship in the middle of a howling storm on the Bering Sea, who will discover there is no safe place here. On this constantly rocking and shifting ship and a mysterious oil rig, players must turn their interactive surroundings to their advantage to take down human enemies – and enemies that aren't human any more - and save their own life.
Cold Fear preview:
The sheer epic feeling given off by Cold Fear is enough to give any gamer a good vibe about the game, overly-abundant in shadows, gore, and flesh-eating zombies, Cold Fear is looking to be the cornerstone of a whole new breed of survival horror.
Cold Fear review:
Its worth picking up if you don’t have a GAMECUBE, or if you fancy a new adventure after the latest Resident Evil, but I have to say Capcom raised the bar to such a height with RE4, the competition really does have to go back to the drawing board to see what they can do, and that includes Cold Fear too.
Cold Fear cheats: