VU Games; PlayStation3; $59.99
ESRB Rating: Mature (17+) (Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language)
Score: 3.5 (out of 5)

When FEAR (First Encounter Assault Recon) was first released for Windows PC back in 2005, it was easily one of- if not the best shooter games of the year. Combining a psychological and physical horror story with conventional first-person shooter gameplay along with a modicum of tippy toe tension and tactical stealth, plus a whole lot of wickedly vicious artificial intelligence (AI), FEAR was (and remains) a tour de force. An expansion pack (called Extraction Point) and a free version of the game's online multiplayer component (called FEAR Combat) has kept FEAR at the forefront of the PC's best shooters.

A year after its PC release, FEAR came to Xbox 360 and similarly rose through the ranks of (too) many 360 shooters to sit righteously as one of the 360's better games, with Xbox Live's perfunctory multiplayer modes keeping it relevant to this day.

Now new again on PlayStation3, FEAR is naturally similar to the Xbox 360 version of the game -- same story, characters, weapons, same freakishly clever enemies (plus some tacked-on content exclusive to the PS3 version) --, but, oddly, sadly, actually worse in many respects, starting with pokier, hazier visuals, passing through excruciatingly long load times and ending with clunkier controls.

In fact, like the 360's controller (except gamers are used to Halo-like controls), the SixAxais controller seems ill-suited to the task of maneuvering, swapping out weapons, shooting, kicking in to bullet time, etc., because it's a handful trying to wrap keyboard and mouse conventions into a single game controller. It'd be passable except the SixAxis' squishy, bulbous, shoulder triggers make the hardboiled gun blazing feel a little limp, squishy and slippy and grenade tossing a random act of thumb fudge -- and there's no use of the SixAxis' motion sensing feature, which could have helped. Worse still, there's a noticeable lag between squeezing a SixAxis trigger and actually firing a gun in the game, which is actually a frame rate issue, but feels like faulty control.

Funny, but the last generation of consoles saw many good PS2 games making a half-hearted transitions to Xbox like residual spaghetti thrown at the wall. This go around it seems the other way around.

Still, if you only own a PS3, not an Xbox 360 or decent gaming PC, FEAR is one of the PS3's better shooters... not its best, however, and that's too bad, because, to date, there are only two shooters for PS3 to begin with.