We thought we knew what it was to be afraid, having been drip-fed what are now considered crass horror flicks through the Eighties and having gradually soaked up M. Night Shayamalan’s psychological attempts to scare the bejesus out of us in the Nineties. It’s been a slow attrition on a base human emotion, but cinema has coaxed the fear from our adrenal gland in such a variety of ways that we’re now almost completely dauntless. In an ironic twist, even the iconic, nightmarefeeding Freddy Kreuger has become a victim of his own success; unable to draw the terror-junkie audiences he once commanded, he’s been thrust into a parody of himself with fearless masses laughing at his clumsy attempts to panic them. Nope, we’re just too damn hard to freak – which is why games could be the last bastion of hope to make us feel truly scared.

We can safely say that First Encounter Assault Recon is bloody petrifying, but on the surface it really doesn’t do anything that different from film, and even uses many of the classic theatrical devices from chiller cinema in order to send a shiver up gamers’ spines.

Stanley Kubrick and Gore Verbinski have had an obvious influence on the Day 1 Studios’ creation with Alma – a phantasm of a young girl with supernatural powers and a thoroughly sadistic bent on any living thing. She’s a hybrid of a spook, sometimes popping up briefly like the twins in The Shining, other times confronting you directly just like the spirit from The Ring. Every single time though, her presence will send your pulse racing absolutely sky-high; you will rarely expect her to appear when she does and even if you do, you can guarantee that her timing is perfected to coincide with your next bowel movement.

Somewhat further down in the fear-factor leagues is Paxton Fettel, the deranged psychic commander of an elite force of telepathic cloned soldiers. He’s a little more verbose than Alma and projects a psychic image of himself to you on the odd occasion, taunting you and sometimes feeding you small snippets of plot in brief sentences. It’s probably the fact that he does speak, you’re given an idea of his agenda and you know some of his background that makes him that much less frightening than Alma, of whom you know absolutely nothing about before your first encounter with her.

Both of these characters, coupled with a gloomy set and appropriately strung musical score create F.E.A.R.’s chilling ambience. During the quieter phases of the game, you’ll be tiptoeing around corners expecting – and sometimes even hoping – to be scared witless just to get the next inevitable encounter with Alma out of the way. This anticipation completely dominates the game, which is why F.E.A.R. is so appropriately named. It could almost pass as a survival horror of Resident Evil’s ilk, if it wasn’t for the fact that the object of your fear isn’t a direct threat to you and the basic gameplay mechanic is very much that of a firstperson shooter.

Paxton’s numerous subordinates are your standard FPS special forces soldiers and as such, don’t fill you with the kind of dread you will experience when confronted with Alma or even Fettel. They will try to kill you however, and they’re particularly good at it, especially on the harder difficulty settings. F.E.A.R.’s artificial intelligence is superb - despite encountering only two types of soldier (regular Kevlar-clad and ceramicplate soldiers with armour-piercing shell guns), as throughout most of the game, their intelligent and efficient use of the environment and their movement as a team keeps the action from becoming stale. These enemies will act according to the type of weapon they wield, with shotguns closing in on your cover while sub-machine guns provide covering fire and the odd grenade to flush you out. On the normal and hard settings you’re even likely to see them make clever flanking manoeuvres, although their rather vocal commands to each other do sometimes give the game away. Alma, Fettel and the soldiers appear in distinct stages, with periods of intense FPS action. These periods are followed by deliberately protracted phases of trepidation as you navigate an area with the uneasy awareness that Alma or Fettel may decide to pop up and say boo at any time.

F.E.A.R. for the 360 is as close to a perfect conversion as you can get, with visuals exceeding that of a high-end PC and 360 owners getting Achievements, an additional weapon and level over the PC version. However, unless you have a few mates who have bought F.E.A.R. for their 360 and want to play multiplayer, you won’t find it a worthwhile purchase for these reasons alone if you’ve already played it. For those who haven’t though, you will probably experience some of the most frightening moments in gaming this year. One final tip from us: pause often to regulate breathing, don’t play on your own and most of all, whatever else you do, don’t play at night.

Ben Biggs