i played FEAR 3 today and coincidentally was looking to see what some of my first posts on SB2 were and anyway here’s me having basically the exact same opinion 4 years ago lol
i also read about the development of FEAR 3 and they ratfucked the day 1 devs. the original game was apparently more like FEAR and had procedural scares (?!) and was about a completely different FEAR team which sounded sick. then wb games got the FEAR license, decided the story needed to have the original characters AND be written by the 30 Days of Night guy (instead of someone who wrote for Hellboy and X-Files!!!), and also be co-op and focused on action because a wb executive liked cod spec ops. day 1 worked themselves into exhaustion to release it and then became a subsidiary of wargaming after all the talent fled the studio.
it makes all the choices in the game make so much more sense. the combat isn’t half bad, it still strikes the tense cover shooting elements the first game does, especially on hardest. it’s competently put together. but it’s a slop game. bargain bin shit. its main aesthetic and mechanical competitor is The Darkness 2. wb completely ruined day 1 by riding them into dust working on the daydreams of executives too stupid to tie their own shoes.
ironically also the fate of monolith, original developers of FEAR, also at the hands of wb. relegated to the ip mines to make wonder woman, and before that lotr games that commit the cardinal lotr sin of not matching canon. the downfall of a once great studio.
anyway. fear 3 is goofy and stupid and playably fun in the exact way you imagine when i say “early-10s 360 fps”. it’s such a picture of the time and the circumstances of its creation in a way that almost enhances it for me. if you hold a particular love of FEAR then yeah it’s offensively stupid and badly paced and the story don’t make no sense. but FEAR 2 is also quite bad, in a way that makes it feel more soulless, and it’s by Monolith.
maybe the series was always meant to turn out like this: a prodigal and tortured parent with two hideously inferior children.