Finished F.E.A.R. Series... Now What...?

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So, I just finished the entirety of the F.E.A.R. series; all six games, covering both the canon Monolith timeline and the non-canon Vivendi timeline, and I've got to say: I have yet to have played another game or series of games with such an interesting story and set of characters. As the series progresses, you realize that there are some very sympathetic anti-villains (Alma, the Replica soldiers) some real anti-heroes (the Pointman, Paxton Fettel) and some complete monsters (Genevieve Aristide, Harlan Wade and probably Paxton Fettel) in there.

At its core, the story is really nothing more than a 'psychic's revenge' tale, but the way it's told, and the whole 'one big screwed-up family' aspect make for a very engaging, twisted story; at the end of which, I can't really bring myself to truly like the protagonists or truly hate the antagonists. I highly recommend it for any FPS or horror game fan for both the story and the gameplay (the enemy AI in the first game is probably the smartest I've ever played against, even compared to today's games).

So, now, I'm looking for other FPS games with good stories to back them up, like the F.E.A.R. series does. I've seen people recommend Bioshock elsewhere, so I'm probably going to give that a try; but does anyone here have any other suggestions for good story-driven first/third-person shooters or first/third-person shooter hybrids for PC?

To note, I've already played Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and the Episodes, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I couldn't seem to get into the original Deus Ex (it just felt so damn clunky) or Invisible War, though; same with Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3. I liked Beyond Good & Evil a lot; its an action-adventure game, but those are good too, really.

BLASPHEMY!



While DX:HR is the most polished of games, and certainly a good job considering the giant the devs had to follow (DX), it is severely lacking in replay value. Key point, DX had lots of little details you could discover by trying different things. On top of that, the plot was a bit too predictable, but when you make a pre-quel to something, your options are more limited. DX:HR has a major flaw in that there are no real consequences for doing something outside the quest line. Example? A side quest in Detroit has you posing as an assassin to get dirt on a bad cop. Well, if you try to kill the target as directed and plant the weapon as instructed, the bad cop just vanishes and the cop who asked you to help has nothing more to say to you. Why not code so that you could really do a renegade choice? DX gave you options at many points with consequences.

The only real flaw of DX is the era it was coded. Believe it or not, DX was supposed to be even bigger than it was, but it got cut down some to make deadlines.

Maybe look into Jericho? Good atmosphere. If you're up for unlocking and reading the data log entries it fleshes things out a lot more.

Yeah, I know, especially as I'm a huge cyberpunk fan, myself. I really wanted to get into it, but the whole time I was playing, I just felt like a walking brick with a gun in a world of cubes and tiled textures.


I'll look into it, for sure. I'm one of those people that can't resist reading everything I find in a game to get the story; whether it's phone messages, audio logs, emails, dossiers, or whatever. That's part of what made F.E.A.R. and Dead Space so great, to me; the more I read of the background info left behind, the more I pieced together the full story and got a better idea of how big it actually was.