A lot of people still don`t fully understand why there is no Gore in the Whitehouse. I can now say that putting aside all theories of dangling chads, Supreme Court malfeasance, and shady recount strategies, the real reason is that all of the available gore in the world is apparently packed into Sierra/Timegate`s new "stand-alone expansion pack" for their F.E.A.R. series, along with a more than adequate helping of spilled blood. I don`t consider myself particularly squeamish, but the things I`ve seen over the last few evenings of playing this game have, not to put too fine of a line on it, pretty much turned me off of the idea of pursuing a career as a futuristic mercenary commando. Truth be told, the probability of the wife agreeing to such a mid-life career change as that was vanishingly thin in the first place, but now it`s completely off the table.

The full name of the game that has forever closed that career path to me is F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate. It`s called a "stand-alone expansion pack" for the principle reason that it doesn`t need any previous installations of a F.E.A.R. title to be present on your machine, which naturally begs the question as to why it is referred to as any kind of expansion pack at all. In other words, why isn`t it just considered a sequel to the original F.E.A.R. game? I can only guess at the answer to that, but my guess would be that it is because it uses the same two year old game engine as the original title, and the expectation in the gaming world is that a "new" title will be built on an improved engine. Fair enough, and in my case, actually beneficial. My PC is now getting to be three or four years old, which is somewhere around 75 to 80 years old in people time. Exhibiting the classic traits of memory loss, slowed reflexes, and resistance to change, the old box simply cannot keep up with the newer titles hitting the shelves these days.

You`ve probably inferred from the above that I never played any preceding F.E.A.R. game(s), and you`re right. I remember seeing the title a few years ago, but I`m not very good at fast-paced FPS games (or in this case, FPE for "First Person Eviscerator") like Halo and the like, so I never gave it a look. This admittedly could be considered a detriment to reviewing what amounts to a sequel, but I contend that someone that never saw the first Shrek could still credibly and accurately state that the third in the series is a completely terrible movie. If you disagree (not about Shrek, mind you, but about whether or note I can possibly have anything pertinent to share about Perseus Mandate), look up in the upper right corner of this window for a red box with a white X in it. Click on it.

If you`re still reading, you`re probably like me when it comes to these things. You realize that I won`t be able to tell you how the story in Perseus Mandate compares with the story in the earlier game, and you don`t care because for us, when it comes to FPS (or FPE) games, the story doesn`t matter. The stories, such as they are, are only there to fill the time between when you get to shoot at (and hopefully eviscerate) enemy bipeds and the time you spend looking for them. There is a story in PM (which from here on out will be my short-hand for the game`s name since I`m so very tired of typing the word `Perseus`), but it doesn`t differ very much from all of the others. It`s the future, and someone was fooling around with biological stuff (or DNA - the net result is the same) and created some nasty, non-human targets. As we all know, the targets have to be non-human, or at a minimum no longer completely human, so as to avoid the trap that games like Manhunt fall into when the kind of people that still cluck over the cruelty of Uncle Scar tossing Mufasa over a cliff get all high and mighty about "what our kids are playing." So, as is nearly always the case, an evil corporatio...