Yelling in the living room: F.E.A.R.

My brain decides, on its own, when a horror game is too much for me and I have no way of predicting what will set that off as it’s based on zero logic. For some reason, the original F.E.A.R. did not mix well with my unconscious mind. At the time, I had recently acquired an Xbox 360 and was excited to give this game a shot after hearing so much about it from PC players. Next-gen (2005) graphics and bullet-time in an FPS? Sign me up!

But something about those Alma sequences was just too much for me. So, I decided the solution was to use the 360’s music feature to play literally anything else over it. I settled on two Frank Zappa albums I saved to the drive: Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch and We’re Only In It For The Money. Let me assure you that this game is nowhere near as creepy when “Harry, You’re A Beast” is playing in the background. Or, maybe it’s somehow worse? Either way, Zappa is forever my unofficial soundtrack for this game. – Claire Jackson, guides writer