F.E.A.R. Multiplayer free to the public soon!

[welco]

08-08-2006 - Sierra Entertainment today announced that the multiplayer component from the award winning PC title F.E.A.R.™ (First Encounter Assault Recon), has been renamed F.E.A.R. Combat, and will be made available to the public as a free download on Thursday August 17th, 2006.

F.E.A.R. Combat is the complete multiplayer component of F.E.A.R. and includes all the updates, additional official maps and additional official game modes all in one downloadable file. F.E.A.R. Combat users will be able to play against the owners of the retail version of F.E.A.R. as well as the other F.E.A.R. Combat users.

F.E.A.R. Combat features:
- 10 Multiplayer Game modes.
- 19 Multiplayer Maps.
- 12 different weapons.
- Punkbuster support for anti cheat support.
- The capability to download user generated content.

I've had a blast with the multiplayer demo, but just couldn't get into the story mode. Sounds perfect for me, eh? That and people who are looking for a good, free game with a decent community.


Anyway, to join in on the fun simply hit up the registration site (http://www.joinfear.com/us/), get your key via e-mail and wait for them to open up the download!

EDIT: Fixed the URL problem. Sorry for the confusion, folks.

[nvidiaOCmaster]

Awesome info! Hopefully this will bring more people to the fear online!!

[beau_safken]

Beat me to it...by a couple seconds :D

This will be great

Hopefully the community will run with this like enemy territory.

[da_spork]

Yeah, saw this earlier. I can't wait, nothing like a good looking game with free multiplayer :D

[SolidxSnake]

Wow, can't wait... I played through the demo, seemed pretty fun... Don't have cash to spend on games sadly ;)

[SuperDave1685]

Do you have to have the retail game already to install this or is this a complete download for people without the game (that happens to be free :) )?

[hibner]

Nice find!

Now everyone prepare to be dominated by us poor people.. ..mwahahahaha

[deathman20]

Thats one way to get the community to play there game online. Very sweet I might say.

[Fathom1990]

Do you have to have the retail game already to install this or is this a complete download for people without the game (that happens to be free :) )?

It's a complete free download for people without the original game. Should get loads more people playing.

Will you be able to join a server and play alongside someone with the full game? Or will there be special servers? If it's the first one then we'll probably see a load more servers popping up.

[Elif Tymes]

Holy crap. Now I want to buy FEAR, just to support Sierra. If they get good market signals from this (I.E. INCREASED SALES) I can see a huge influx of other producers doing this.

Amazing, truly amazing.

[evancold]

great info guys

[Stavros]

I wonder if they'll let players create their own maps....not that I want this to turn into a wannabe Counter-Strike.

[KillrBuckeye]

Holy crap. Now I want to buy FEAR, just to support Sierra. If they get good market signals from this (I.E. INCREASED SALES) I can see a huge influx of other producers doing this.Some companies have already done this. Splash Damage released the standalone multiplayer game "RTCW: Enemy Territory" for free after the single-player campaign didn't turn out as they had hoped. I think it will pay off big time for them when they release "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars", because the quality of their work was exhibited in RTCW:ET (it's still my favorite multiplayer game). For this reason, I'm definitely going to buy "ET: Quake Wars".

[Kibokun]

Oh my goodness, I read this 5 minutes after I order a video card capable of rendering this beauty. Great news!

[Atari]

Meh, it's got starforce so I think I'll pass.

[Zulu-1]

this is awesome for me.. i thought the gameplay was decent.. but the storyline blew imho.. that's why i didnt buy it.. should be freakin sweet for LANs

[da_spork]

Meh, it's got starforce so I think I'll pass.


I think FEAR uses uses securom 7, not starforce. Putting starforce in a freely distributed version of their game seems just silly to me.

[deathman20]

FEAR doesn't use starforce otherwise you wouldn't see nearly as many players here touch this game because quiet a bit are anal about it not using starforce.

It got a bad rap early on its existance. While I do find it annoying I will still play games that have it.

[ilikepie]

Link dead. I really should get a new video card...

[Mr. Roboto]

Link dead. I really should get a new video card...

you just have to delete the ')' at the end of it.

and this is cool news. I just wish they had some kind of ranking system like bf2.

[twEEkerAreUs]

Not bad at all :bday:

[Nautica]

what type of anti cheating protection does f.e.a.r use? Ive been playing through it single player but never had the time/desire to check it out multiplayer.

from past experience it seems that when they open things up to the public like this it will increase the number of people playing it but it also opens the flood doors for cheaters and the like as they can afford to get banned and just dl/get another key at anytime.

[welco]

F.E.A.R., like a lot of games in its genre, uses PunkBuster.

[KillrBuckeye]

from past experience it seems that when they open things up to the public like this it will increase the number of people playing it but it also opens the flood doors for cheaters and the like as they can afford to get banned and just dl/get another key at anytime.Punkbuster is used in RTCW:ET, and while there are definitely obvious aimbotters from time-to-time, I don't consider cheating a big problem in the game. This is especially true if you play on servers that have good ref/admin coverage. Usually the cheaters are detected and kicked/banned within minutes on these servers. When a hardware ban is given to a player, I believe he must reinstall Windows before he can play the game again on PB-enabled servers. Of course, this is easy for some people, but still a deterrent to many.