It must suck to be on the Bravo team—you only get sent in when things are looking really, really bad. In this case, “bad” means an enormous Russian whaling vessel adrift in the Bering Sea, where the only signs of life are splattered on the walls and floor of the upper deck.

Playing as action-starved Coast Guardster Tom Hansen, you’re drop-lined to the ship in the midst of a torrential storm; a couple monster waves are all it takes to drag you overboard from the constantly listing vessel. This will turn out to be the least of your worries; once you scamper through blinding rain into the ship’s interior, you’ll find that an infection has mutated the crew into murderous, shambling zombies, and spawned a menagerie of horrors beyond imagining.

Yes, it’s Resident Evil at sea, complete with the familiar cast (wisecracking hero, fearless female sidekick, remorseful scientist), the interminable loading screens, and plenty of scripted scares. But Cold Fear’s gritty atmosphere succeeds too well to be judged as a mere Resident Evil knock-off. Below decks you’ll have to out-shoot and out-maneuver your enemies as you attempt to gain control of the ship’s engine room, but above deck, it’s a frickin’ circus of fear.

Heavy rain blurs your vision, and the ship’s incessant heaving throws off your aim as you try to draw a bead on multiple foes—in front of you and behind. Even when the action turns to the slightly more stable ground of an offshore oil rig, Cold Fear hurls new menaces in your direction, including invisible muties who can be tracked only by their footsteps, and ceiling-crawling parasites that follow the shortest path from your mouth to your brain.

And to top it all off, there’s one, final, nearly invincible enemy: the game’s control scheme. Bred for the console, targeting is limited to two options—a fast-moving but horribly inaccurate third-person mode, or a sharper over-the-shoulder view that prevents you from turning quickly—both of which will frustrate PC gamers who enjoy the tension of survival-horror but expect the handling of a first-person shooter.
—Logan Decker

THE LOVE BOAT: A fine-looking, genuinely scary game.

THE TORTURE BOAT: Handicapped control; been-there-done-that story.

Month Reviewed: August 2005
Verdict: 7
URL: www.coldfeargame.com ESRB RATING: M

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