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Cold Fear
01/09/2005 . Source: Phil Jones 
Computer game: Ubisoft available for Xbox PS2 and PC. £39.99 (UK) - shop around as you can probably get it for under £10. BBFC rating: 18. Buy Cold Fear in the USA - or Buy Cold Fear in the UK  If there are any survivor-horror fans out there who is seasick or have an aversion to boats then this may be one to avoid. Set on a Russian whaling ship, a naval seal team is dispatched onto said ship and promptly wiped out by an unknown (only seen in silhouette) adversary.
It is left up to you, Tom Hansen, a US lifeguard to board the ship and look for any survivors. It is not made clear how, but you have a certain perchance for weapons of a high calibre firearm nature. You promptly come across frantic Russian crew members who start firing at you. The whole ship seems to be beautifully decked out with various body parts, dismembered bodies and pools and streaks of blood. Any survival-horror fan will feel right at home. The main distinction, though, is as you are on a ship in heavy seas in the middle of an Arctic storm. The ship moves (a lot), we have full rolling, especially when you're outside on deck but even inside the world moves.
It is not until you find your colleague who has the radio frequency for your extraction that things really go from bad to worse. You find (what's left of) him in a toilet and it is a this point we experience the whole zombie, re-animated situation. You rapidly discover that the crew has been infected by life-forms called exocels that have come up from a Russian drilling rig. These little blighters are a bit like face huggers and crawl into their victim/dead corpse and re-animate them. These zombies then proceed to rush at you at high speed.
The game itself will be familiar to any survival-horror fan. There are sections and plot elements which seem far to deja vu for my liking. It is a familiar plot with the military trying to use the exocels as weapons and it all goes a bit Pete Tong. The dialogue and speech acting are the usual tacky crap level you come to expect from these types of games. The gameplay itself will be familiar to fans of 'Resident Evil' of which this game borrows heavily. The control system lacks auto-targeting which especially on rolling seas proves cumbersome when trying to get that definitive melon popping shot to the cranium of the infected Russian crew member. The controls on the whole are OK and the game dispenses with an items menu (albeit you can pick up objects such as keys/door handles etc) you can't keep any medi-packs with you. You just have to remember where they are and go back to them when needed. Speaking of back and forth, you do a lot of wandering over the same ground, which over time does get a bit tedious along with the usual locked door, find key routine. All this wandering is also inhibited by the lack of a map, even one just showing where you have been would have useful. The sound effects though are rather good but could have done with being in Dolby surround for more effect. The sound of squashing fallen zombies is rather effective though.
So is it any good? As a stop gap between 'Resident Evil' and 'Silent Hill', etc, it's not bad. You kind of know what you're getting although the game is rather short. It does feel like certain elements have been rushed such as the cut scenes, story and ending. Speaking of cut scenes, the pre-rendered cgi ones are dire. Why on earth they didn't just use the game engine for all of them I don't know.
Where this game does shine and lift it above the quagmire is the environment and weather effects. Along with detailed rooms, some of which seem to serve no purpose, which makes me think this game may at some point may have been planned to be a lot larger. This game was developed by the French company Darkworks whose previous game was 'Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare'. It's a shame that, for whatever reason, the game feels rushed. I do not know whether it was pressure of deadlines or another reason, but this game could have benefited from a much longer development period. It could have turned an average game into a gem. Shop around though as you can pick up a copy quite cheaply or it may be one to rent.
Phil Jones
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