My Name is Marcy, I'm a writer.
As I sat down to pick up the controller and do my replay of the game, I wondered to myself if it held up quite I remembered.
It did.
As I went through Episode 1 I loved the time put into establishing Bright Falls. As someone around the area it's supposed to be, I think it does well at making it a believable little town in the sticks that's got a certain charm to it you can't quite get in many places anymore. As soon as the plot gets rolling though I did get invested. The intrigue of what could of happened in the time Alan doesn't remember really helps push me forward and to figure out what's going on. Finding manuscripts along the way I realize they are laying out a story, the one that's happening before my very eyes. As I do some of the 1st major combat encounters in the game, I really enjoy them. A interesting idea for the genre that hasn't really been done before with shining light on the taken to weaken them.
(I can't keep up this bit)
Anyways the game is pretty damn good all around other then the fact it seems to overstay it's welcome. The Story is pretty damn good all the way through with a few problems here and there, mainly in it's pacing in some spots. For example Episode 3 doesn't really feel like it provides enough of importance for as long as it is. The combat is also pretty fun at 1st but it loses steam near the end of the game mostly because of the aforementioned Episode 3 which drags on and on, and for the 1st half of Episode 6. While the gauntlet you face at the start of Episode 6 seems like a neat idea, it really just feels like it's dragging the games runtime at that point because it's more of the same with the combat you've been doing for the last 8-9 hours you've been playing. Especially since the combat isn't particularly difficult, just somewhat time consuming by the end. Honestly I would say the gameplay of this game alone would get about a 2.5-3 star rating but the story is so memorable with so many great moments to it that it leaves me constantly thinking about it and wanting more of the story itself.

Also all the music in the game absolutely rocks. Anyways I would say more about the game but I'd rather not spoil people who are interested in it on anything. Cause if you are interested you should 100% play it.

It's even more FEAR except this time it's super boring because the combat feels slow with how spongy the new enemies are, the lighting is gone making the game look like shit, and the story and horror is somehow even worse then it already was. If it says anything on how boring it was I've also completed Postal 3 and the Sega CD version of The Lawnmower Man game without even thinking about maybe abandoning them. Not outright awful but maybe it should of been so it was at least interesting in any way shape or form, would not recommend.

I am technically saying I shelved this only because I haven't done the Dishwasher's Campaign yet. I've only completed Yuki's. However they seem like they may just be the same exact story but with a different playable character.
(Yuki's Campaign Finished: Ninja Difficulty)
Now to talk about how I actually feel about the game. I think it's a pretty alright action game that looks and sounds great with it's very grungy comic book art style which feels reminiscent of things like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and The Crow. Then it has the soundtrack which doesn't feel like anything to write home about but still is a fun Punk Rock soundtrack that works for what the game is. When it comes to the way the game feels, it's fun when everything clicks with the combat but the moment you throw the wrong couple of enemies together in a group it becomes really boring as you figure out the best way to lame out the fight considering sometimes you just can't get enough hits in to do anything cool or interesting. Also the boss fights themselves tend to just be bad. Nearly everyone single one of them has additional enemies that spawn in just to somewhat waste your time focusing on them so you don't get randomly knocked over while hitting the boss. However even if the additional enemies weren't there it's very obvious most of the bosses just don't have much to them at all to make them really interesting. Finally the last things I want to talk about are the story and the 2 levels near the end of the game. The story all the way through is this unapologetically edgy revenge quest about how we have poisoned our society with some small horror elements thrown in. Honestly while there isn't much to chew on from it, I do actually like and respect it for how much it just goes all in on what it wants to be. However now I have to talk about the level right before the final level. It is just a absolute shit show, it has a Boss Rush in it that is alright and even fun but it's then immediately followed up with the game throwing every non-boss enemy (including mini-bosses and bosses who become regular enemies) from the roster at you in some of the worst most unfun configurations it could. Then it tops it off with a Boss that is actually fun and somewhat cool. However there is a problem with it too even. That problem being that they are also just the actual final boss in the final level but they have more moves and are more interesting in the actual final level. The actual final level in itself is very good and interesting, but the weird thing about it is it's just doing what the level before hand did in it's encounter structure but straight up better.
Overall Vampire Smile is a fun but often mediocre/frustrating action game which I feel mainly stands out more for it's art style and music then it's actual gameplay.

So here I am writing this review and honestly I don't quite know exactly how to feel about this DLC. I thought it started strong and had some interesting stuff near the end but overall it was just more of the same with a couple benefits and downsides here and there. It does actually improve on some stuff like the balancing by making the some of the spongier enemies less spongy and putting them in groups of regular enemies vs just groups comprised of themselves like in the base game. On top of that it actually has some horror sections which were cool in the way they were presented, but still not actually scary. But the sheer amount of technical problems and some poor design choices with these annoying but also just uninteresting monsters that show up for the DLC just really brought down my experience. Also the Finale is just the most nothing wave of enemies ever comparing all encounters from both base game and the DLC itself, it's just so boring and anti climatic. Essentially my final feelings on it are that I think there was some good moments here and there and I think the team did a decent job for making a DLC for a game they didn't even initially do development for, but by the end of Extraction Point I was thinking less about all that that I just mentioned and I was more so just thinking about the fact I was glad I was done with it.

F.E.A.R is a overall kinda amazing FPS for when it was released. Even going back to it today it's pretty fun and has some impressive stuff to it. The combat is extremely solid through most of the game and shooting enemies feels both good from a feedback and challenge angle. The AI is very impressive too, it's not actually super smart as much as it is tuned to have a way more wide variety of options in a firefight, however those options for them don't really matter when sometimes they just decide to stand right there and eat it. Also while I did say the combat is fun for most of it, it does have some problems that mainly have to do with the different enemies. Those enemies being the flying enemies that start showing up near the end of the game and the spongier clones that show up in the last couple of levels. While it's not super hard to fight these enemies, it doesn't feel very good either. I would say this is mainly because all the feedback you would get back from shots is completely gone, at least on the drones, the spongier clones still react to being shot sometimes. Past that the story is alright, it's definitely nothing ground breaking but it keeps the action going and does have some interesting twists and turns here and there. Finally the last thing I want to say on it is that the horror really really just doesn't feel like it works that often. The only times in which I even felt somewhat more tense from it was in the Finale and that's because there are actual enemies that can hurt you during it in that. All in all though, FEAR is a fun FPS that doesn't last too long to outstay it's welcome but does stay long enough to show how it could.