One of the major disappointments for me on launch day of the PlayStation 3 last month was the news that F.E.A.R had been pushed back from day one to approximately day twenty-one and would no longer be knocking about on shop shelves for me to pick up for the new office console. The fact that I had actually played through the thing before on the Xbox 360 and also sampled a good few hours of the PC original hadn’t dimmed my enthusiasm for what, in my opinion, is one of the finest first-person shooters of the past decade. If anything, I was really rather looking forward to seeing what the much-heralded extra juice the PS3 offered had afforded Day 1 Studios to do with the original material.

Ah. Actually, before I go on it would be a sensible idea to make it clear at this very point that F.E.A.R is still very much a game worth playing. Mixing classic first-person shooter sensibilities with the ability to use bullet time to slow things down ala Max Payne etc and adding a whole host of freaky, startling psychological horror imagery, it’s a game you can’t help but get absorbed in. In the same way that Half Life 2 had you gripping your control pad and progressing past the last save point for that just-half-an-hour-more bit of gaming, so F.E.A.R keeps you sitting in front of your television, straining to see any signs of enemy activity in the near distance.

In fact, it’s the one thing that F.E.A.R possibly does much better than anything else out there. From the moment you get out of a car at the beginning of the first level right through to the game’s last moments, you’re always wanting to continue the hunt for the maniacal, cultish bad guy no matter how long a gaming session it’ll take. You’ll also want to find out exactly why the slightly creepy little girl who you see fairly soon after the get-go is, and what part she has to play in the unfolding storyline. To be completely honest the actual story itself isn’t an epic award-winning classic and there are occasional lulls where your progress seems to be accompanied by little or even no plot advancement, but the sheer enjoyment of what you’re doing more than makes up for that.

A hefty slice of this is undoubtedly due to the game’s pacing, and the way it unsettles the player by lurching between strangely quiet moments of lone exploration and sudden bursts of gun battling with the enemy. With the surroundings being so dark and claustrophobic for the main part, running into a group of opposing soldiers is very much a nerve-wracking prospect and one that’ll have you carefully creeping around corners and desperately trying to hear footsteps or radio communication. There’s rarely – if ever – an opportunity to sneak around your enemies and at some point you will have to go through them to get to your next waypoint. In a way this ramps up the tension, leaving you with the feeling that combat is inevitable but not ever really knowing when and from where it’ll be coming.

When it does come you’ll need to be on your toes. Enemy AI is pleasingly intelligent, with soldiers firing at you from around corners, running into cover and sneaking to new positions and diving around or over obstacles in order to get to you. Because of this it’s very important to use your slow-mo power to give even the odds out and give you a good chance of conserving precious health and ammo, with a deft tap of the L1 button seeing the action around you dipped in treacle and allowing you to take aim at anyone unfortunate enough to be in your field of vision. It won’t last forever and you are going to have to manage when you use it and when you leave time for it to regenerate, but it’s certainly very helpful and hardly what you’d call a gimmick put in the game for the sake of it.

There’s certainly much to be pleased about with F.E.A.R. Be it the head-shrinking moments of psychological terror that often sees your entire surroundings change without warning or random people popping up out of nowhere and then suddenly disappearing again just as quickly, the fine selection of weaponry on offer or the plain simple fun that the game offers as a first-person shooter, it’s a very enjoyable experience for any gamer. Anyone who’s played original developer Monolith’s Xbox 360 launch title Condemned will very much appreciate the way in which F.E.A.R adds layer upon layer of paranoia and dread to every step you take, leaving your trigger finger twitching nervously and giving you the urge to check over your shoulder every ten minutes or so to make sure that the door is still shut and you are still the only person in the room.

As an added plus, the online multiplayer section of the game has made it across, giving up to eight players the chance for some fragging goodness. Also, there’s an Instant Action selection available for those who just want to jump straight into some uncomplicated shooting, free of such constraints as a plot but with a scoreboard to compare your skills with others across the globe. The ingredients are most certainly there.

But. B.U.T. You see, passing a cursory glance from the above paragraphs to the score below (if you haven’t checked it already) will probably confuse you and leave you wondering why a game I obviously hold in such high regard can get just a seven. The first problem hits you as soon as you pop in the game disc and set yourself up to delve into the campaign. To say the loading times are rather long wouldn’t do them justice in a way, as it is quite possible for you to get up, walk around the room, perform a few push-ups, have a sip of your tea and a few bites of your sandwich and return to find the game still loading. Given the way that both the PC and the subsequent 360 port – handled by Day 1 Studios as with this version – kept loading times to a minimum it’s rather crushing to have to sit through them, and in a way it does a lot to break up the tempo of the game.

It’s not as if the extra loading time is actually put to much use, either. When put side-by-side with the PC and 360 versions of the game, F.E.A.R’s PS3 incarnation is dull and lacking in detail, and is packed full of strange bugs that see soldiers you have downed twitching around the floor in some kind of bizarre circle. To be put to shame by an accomplished port of a game on another console that developers have got a pretty good handle on is one thing, but to be hugely outshone by the aging PC original to the extent that the PS3 version of F.E.A.R has been is massively disappointing. Even with the added chapter added in to play through you can’t help but feel that it’s by far the weakest version of the game on the market.

Hence, if you’ve played through F.E.A.R on another system or have one that is capable of running it then it’s hard to recommend the PS3 version over what else is available. As a standalone product it’s still a great game and it blows Resistance out of the weeds in terms of being the best first-person shooter the console currently has to offer, but when considered against previous iterations that are still easily available and at a cheaper price you’re left with a slightly sour taste. Given the extra time in development and the potential the hardware has for graphical prowess, you’d certainly be forgiven for having expected more.