Cold Fear: Review (PC)
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Developer: Darkworks
Genre: Action/Survival Horror.
Cold fear is Ubisoft’s venture into the survival horror genre. Let’s have a look and see whether this game is worth the survival horror fans game collection. Developed Darkwork’s Cold Fear puts in the boots of Tom Hansen, an ex-army man and now in the US Coast Guard. Something has gone wrong aboard the Russian whaler “Eastern Spirit†and a CIA strike team is sent to investigate it (as usual). But something or someone aboard the ship finishes off the strike team and the USCG is asked to search and investigate what went wrong. Here steps in our hero Tom Hansen who armed with a pistol is now left alone on the whaler left to survive and try to solve this mystery. But the whaler is inhibited by living as well as dead things as Tom soon learns. Ok now that’s probably a rehash of most modern horror/survival games. What sets Cold Fear apart from the rest are the settings of the story, it takes place aboard a whaler which is in the middle of storm and then proceeds to a Oiling rig in the middle of nowhere. Like most survival horror games you need not rack your brains as to what kind of enemies you will probably be facing in the game, the include the usual assortment of mercenaries, zombies, disfigured creatures etc etc. Apparently all this is due to the fact that the Russians discovered some creature (tagged as “exocels†in the game) and started conducting experiments on them in order to “learn†about them and use the knowledge for their nefarious gains. Of course in true survival horror style games, the experiment has gone awfully wrong and now the creatures born as a result of the experiments now roam free.
Darkwork’s have managed to capture the atmosphere aboard the whaler and the oil rig in middle of a storm pretty effectively. The whaler seems to rock from side to side with each lashing of the waves. This itself lends a realism to the atmosphere along with the rain drops and the lashing of the wind on the screen. If you are not careful while walking on the ship you could be knocked off into the sea and the mission would be ended. Be careful though since the rolling and rocking of the ship can lead to sea-sickness. You will realize its effectiveness once you start playing the game yourself.
The game revolves around shooting down/taking down the enemies and finding keys/card, finding routes etc. It consists of the usual stuff that most horror games are made of. The game has two modes, the usual fixed camera third person view and an over the shoulder (pseudo) first person view. The first person view will be the preferred mode for most PC gamers since it is much easier to score headshots on the enemies. Yeah! You
Guessed it right the brains of the zombies need to be shot. This makes for a good splatter fest with the blood sometimes blurring your vision. The default third person view won’t be a favorite among the PC gamers and I recommend it only once you cleared the area off enemies. The game includes interaction with other NPC’s as well including the Viktor Kamsky, his daughter Anna, a CIA operative Benett. The mystery unfolds through a series of log files, letters, and journals so it is important that you read those in order to understand the story. In addition to that these pieces of information also serve to remind you of how to use to environment against your adversaries (for e.g.: blowing up a gas pipe to kill someone in close vicinity, destroying certain artifacts etc.) and for achieving certain objectives in the game.
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Developer: Darkworks
Genre: Action/Survival Horror.
Cold fear is Ubisoft’s venture into the survival horror genre. Let’s have a look and see whether this game is worth the survival horror fans game collection. Developed Darkwork’s Cold Fear puts in the boots of Tom Hansen, an ex-army man and now in the US Coast Guard. Something has gone wrong aboard the Russian whaler “Eastern Spirit†and a CIA strike team is sent to investigate it (as usual). But something or someone aboard the ship finishes off the strike team and the USCG is asked to search and investigate what went wrong. Here steps in our hero Tom Hansen who armed with a pistol is now left alone on the whaler left to survive and try to solve this mystery. But the whaler is inhibited by living as well as dead things as Tom soon learns. Ok now that’s probably a rehash of most modern horror/survival games. What sets Cold Fear apart from the rest are the settings of the story, it takes place aboard a whaler which is in the middle of storm and then proceeds to a Oiling rig in the middle of nowhere. Like most survival horror games you need not rack your brains as to what kind of enemies you will probably be facing in the game, the include the usual assortment of mercenaries, zombies, disfigured creatures etc etc. Apparently all this is due to the fact that the Russians discovered some creature (tagged as “exocels†in the game) and started conducting experiments on them in order to “learn†about them and use the knowledge for their nefarious gains. Of course in true survival horror style games, the experiment has gone awfully wrong and now the creatures born as a result of the experiments now roam free.
Darkwork’s have managed to capture the atmosphere aboard the whaler and the oil rig in middle of a storm pretty effectively. The whaler seems to rock from side to side with each lashing of the waves. This itself lends a realism to the atmosphere along with the rain drops and the lashing of the wind on the screen. If you are not careful while walking on the ship you could be knocked off into the sea and the mission would be ended. Be careful though since the rolling and rocking of the ship can lead to sea-sickness. You will realize its effectiveness once you start playing the game yourself.
The game revolves around shooting down/taking down the enemies and finding keys/card, finding routes etc. It consists of the usual stuff that most horror games are made of. The game has two modes, the usual fixed camera third person view and an over the shoulder (pseudo) first person view. The first person view will be the preferred mode for most PC gamers since it is much easier to score headshots on the enemies. Yeah! You
Guessed it right the brains of the zombies need to be shot. This makes for a good splatter fest with the blood sometimes blurring your vision. The default third person view won’t be a favorite among the PC gamers and I recommend it only once you cleared the area off enemies. The game includes interaction with other NPC’s as well including the Viktor Kamsky, his daughter Anna, a CIA operative Benett. The mystery unfolds through a series of log files, letters, and journals so it is important that you read those in order to understand the story. In addition to that these pieces of information also serve to remind you of how to use to environment against your adversaries (for e.g.: blowing up a gas pipe to kill someone in close vicinity, destroying certain artifacts etc.) and for achieving certain objectives in the game.
. The live ones consist of Russian mercenaries while the undead consists of experiments gone wrong on humans. The enemies consist of the seemingly harmless exocels, the exo-nests, the awful exo-shades, the cannon fodder exo-mutants and so on. 
