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Upon release, reviewers mostly praised F.E.A.R., but had issues with its repetitive environments. The offices were bland, the industrial work sites and urban environments likely a result of a raw computer processing power over aesthetic sensibility. Its later underground labs and future-tech reactors were hardly any better. Where was the variety and storytelling that made Half-Life 2 so enthralling? The outdoor combat? The fire level or platforming puzzle?F.E.A.R. didn't need any of that. It got by on the pure rush of its combat, which admittedly now feels a bit dated. But it managed to create a startlingly real sense of doom in those saccharine, carpeted offices. The haunted office buildings, bland as they were, were a perfect stage to dredge up memories; to create an even scarier phantom by making me believe the outlandish things that happened in video games could happen in my own life.For someone who's always seen video games as a way to visit other realities, facing the "scariest fucking game ever" meant facing something worse than virtual ghosts. It meant revisiting my own.Follow Suriel Vazquez on Twitter.New on Noisey: Watch Lionel Richie Get Curved By Adele