Formulaic action shooters are a dime a dozen. Here’s another one, and it slots into the not uncommon genre of ‘Special Forces hero sent in to infiltrate an evil corporation, and waste its lackeys with extreme prejudice’. F.E.A.R accomplishes this design goal admirably, better than most. The combat is mostly indoors, is paced well, and the weapons and their effects have a particularly meaty realism, which is good or bad, depending on your feelings on the topic. But F.E.A.R. is so much more than a bog standard shooter. On top of the core game, developer Monolith has layered three very special Things of Brilliance.

First is the AI of the bad guys. The best ever seen in an action game. The only way to tackle them, in fact, is to fool yourself you are playing a well honed team of tournament gamers, and that isn’t hard to do. Encounter an enemy squad and some will lay down suppressing fire while others jump over obstacles and sprint to flanking cover.

While playing I had a guy cornered – but he ran to a filing cabinet and pulled it over to cover behind!

Next on the Brilliant list are the graphic effects. Easily the most advanced in the world of games, but the genius is in the subtlety Rather than dazzling the player with eye candy for the sake of it, the effects are used to create a world convincingly real. Water sloshes as you walk through it. A heat haze shimmers over a fire caused when your grenade causes the contents of a bookcase to create a thousand fluttering bits of paper. Explosions cause a shockwave ripple that distorts your vision for the briefest moment.

Bad guys explode in a splattery mess in accordance with the laws of Newton as much as those of Hippocrates. But it all accentuates the game world, rather than dominating it. You forget it’s amazing. Instead, quite simply and more than ever before, looking at this game on your monitor isn’t far off looking out the window at the real world.

The last special wonder in F.E.A.R. is the supernatural scary stuff. It is as clever and artfully done as a great horror flick. I will not spoil it by giving anything away, suffice to say I approached this game knowing its claim for being truly frightening, but thinking I was too cool and indifferent to be affected. Wrong. Many times I felt a full body chill and had to breath deeply before continuing.

F.E.A.R. deserves cult status, and I believe it will get it in the years to come. It is a subtle and crafty combination of several sledgehammer blows to the senses. Play in a dark room with the volume cranked.