Cold Fear

I remember reading about this game around the time Resident Evil 4 was a thing on the Gamecube, but it was only on the PS2 (and later Xbox) at the time which I didn't have. Now, nearly 20 years later, I managed to hunt the game down. I was looking for a game to sink my teeth into now that my girlfriend is back to Taiwan for a while, and thought this was a good idea.

The game was originally slammed for numerous reasons. Too hard (aka, good difficulty), clunky controls (aka, well design controls that allow for mastery), confusing (good level design), bad combat (good combat with lots of nuanced mechanics), lack of map (there's a map in the manual that you have to complete) and of course the eternal critique that it was too short (aka, well paced and well designed).

It plays very similar to the Hookman Build of Resident Evil 4. The camera is fixed but if you press the shoulder button you go over the shoulder with a laser-sight to aim. You can walk and shoot at the same time though. You have a "resistance" gauge that drains while running, but has other uses. You see, the game takes place on a ship and outside there's a storm going on. The ebbing of the ship plays into the game's mechanics and you can fall overboard if you don't hold on for instance. There's also melee functions and more, even a finishing blow.

At the end of the line is an Extreme Mode which is basically Akumu, aka you die in one hit. Really well done game so far. Spooky too. I'm going to probably dive in deep into this game.

A complete run of the game without commentary:

I have this game on a copied dvd somewhere. Only played it a little though but seemed decent.

So far it seems pretty cool to me, but I need to dive a bit deeper. Will keep you all posted.

This seems ok, funny another shooter/horror game on an infected virus boat...

The boat part is especially cool, but the more I play it the more I notice a few design oversights that RE4 had at the time, and fixed in its final release. Most notable is the aiming, which gets really hard when outside with the boat rocking and rolling around. The other is the camera, while it is generally fixed, you can switch to over the shoulder all the time with ironically leads to you using that mode constantly, having you play a slower version of the game.

Played it a lot more, game is pretty darn good. Some notes:

• you die really fast and if you're cornered, it's over. Even if you kill a foe he'll keep attacking for a bit until his 'body understands' that he's dead;
  
• you have a ton of weapons, mostly cookie cutter but there is a weird 'lure' weapon which is neat;
  
• zombies only die by headshots, they will constantly come back up if you don't get a headshot.
  
• Saving is by checkpoints and they are rare. The first one takes a while to pop, then it is on and off before major fights. The game really wants you to learn its layout inside out, pretty nifty;
  
• One enemy type is a sort of parasite that will try to enter corpses to revive them;
  
• There is this dog like enemy that's really rare which jams all lights and you can only see its eyes in the dark. It is a really cool idea but this thing can murder you too easily I feel and has way too much HP;
  
• The game is surprisingly linear, with all the hateful reviews I assumed it'd be a maze, but the levels loop around nicely and you are always only able to go to your objective;
  
• The ship mechanic (of the flowing water and how it is flooding the ship) is underused, but when it comes into play it is pretty cool.
  

In the end it is obvious that this game is a pretty big inspiration to Dead Space that was never mentioned. I also feel that RE4 did take a look at this at some point to learn that over the shoulder is best used constantly instead of tied to a button.

I didn't get too far, but I remember fighting some humans with guns too. Hope there's not much more of that nonsense, because the game doesn't feel designed for it.

Do enemies have weak points other than their head? Can you shoot legs and stuff like RE4 and get stuns? Is there melee?

I remember reading about that evil dog thing. Apparently it's an absolute nightmare on the hardest mode.

Strange, while I did play this for around 2 hours and fought a few enemies, I can barely remember how it played. It's one of those games I've been meaning to finish but keep forgetting.

There are few shooting enemies, though there is one big fight halfway through where you have to murder a few in a row. Generally if you encounter them they are fighting against zombies too. 

In terms of killing, you can do an Execution (not quite sure how to trigger this yet). Otherwise you can shoot the legs with a shotgun to make them stumble and melee-stomp their head for an instant kill. Flamethrower also ends their lives. 

One thing I do like is how the pistol (and later the MP5) are the only thing with a flashlight. So other weapons, while more powerful, have a downside to the main pistol. I like that design choice.