I've been putting off this review for as long as I possibly could, because little girls who giggle devilishly and are impervious to fire is one of my biggest fears, only rivalled by big, red-cheeked clowns. Saying that, I wouldn't have a strong preference if it came to facing a clown or having this little girl follow me around and mess with my mind, so let's just say that F.E.A.R. really does play on every man's fear - and that's having kids! Well, okay, that's slightly unfair - the main fear here is not having kids as such, it's just having a daughter who spontaneously combusts at the tender age of ten. Imagine when she goes through puberty - I'd have to go into hiding at certain times of the month, or risk becoming the latest delicacy at Burger King. Flame Grilled, baby!

F.E.A.R. comes to the Playstation 3 at last after doing the dirty with both the PC and the Xbox 360 formats, ever popular with the PC crowd, and then later pleasing the Xbox 360 gamers, especially editor Geoff Holland, who gave the Xbox 360 version an extensively praised 10 out of 10. However, F.E.A.R. on the PS3 gives you more to fear than that scary girl and those zombified men hitting you around the head with a 4-by-2 - and that's the glitches, bugs and graphical jaggies that plague this very version. I hate to start reviews on a bad note, but it's best that I get most of the negative points out of the way and equip you with knowledge as to what you might be getting yourself into. Hold me - I'm scared!

With a powerful rig and the technical know how, PC gamers were able to squeeze the best possible configuration out of their version of F.E.A.R., and coupled with a high-refresh-rate monitor with low response times and a shiny screen finish, this is by far the best way to scare yourself senseless. The Xbox 360 version pleased our editor on the graphics front too - clearly F.E.A.R. was properly ported onto this platform from the PC, and if you can't afford to invest the money and time into the first option, the Xbox 360 is a close second. But the PS3 version is by far the worst of the bunch, and you have to wonder why. With HDMI connections and a Blu-Ray disc that should harbour both uncompressed graphics and audio, this version should at the very least surpass the Xbox 360.

The truth is, it appears as if this version was just a bad port of the Xbox 360 version. A port of a port? Maybe. As a result, the game is beleaguered with washed out textures, jaggy edges on boxes, walls and doors, last-gen firing animations and a whole host of graphical glitches that might involve your shadow flickering, or things coming through the wall when they're not supposed to. You have to at least commend the slow motion heightened senses that our hero has access to; enemies look brilliant when they die in slow-motion, with litres of blood flying in all directions, making a mess of the industrial environments, but some of the problems are inexcusable, rendering the PS3 version of F.E.A.R. as the last choice of the three available platforms.

With that out of the way, let me invite you to try one of the scariest hybrid games I've ever played. Typically, all my favourite horror games consist of puzzle solving, mansion searching, rabid dog avoiding romps, but F.E.A.R. manages to combine one of my favourite genres, the first person shooter, with one of my most cherished love-hate genres, namely survival horror. The result is that you want to carry on playing through the excellent gunplay scenes to uncover a movie-like story, but at times you can be too petrified to take those next five steps to climb up the low-lit ladder because you know Alma (the little girl) is lurking somewhere nearby…

Unlike many hybrids, F.E.A.R. does each genre particularly well. As we've established already, F.E.A.R. has almost made me crap my pants on numerous occasions, but the FPS side of this game is what a lot of dedicated FPS games set out to be but never come close to. Firstly, the AI on this game is fantastic; it's amazing to see how enemies react differently depending on what you do. Naturally I died a few times in F.E.A.R., so I'd restart from a checkpoint, and perform the same fights a few times over - and no two fights in the same area have ever been the same. Where you move, when and where you shoot and generally everything you do has some kind of overall affect on the AI - they hide, group together, come looking for you, talk to their comrades on the radio, swear compulsively and use the element of surprise to their advantage, first messing with your mind when you hear faint footsteps and then giving you one hell of a fright when they jump out at you and start pistol whipping your ass.

There are a large number of weapons and grenades in F.E.A.R. that make killing supernatural beings a pleasure too; from pulse grenades to super-shotguns, murdering has never felt so satisfying - but that's largely because you're scared of the people you are killing. Something that F.E.A.R. has in play to elevate a little bit of your own personal fear is bullet time. Max Payne made this famous, slowing time to jump and shoot, but F.E.A.R. makes better use of it - our hero has an auto-replenishing heightened-senses bar, and when you activate it, the game slows right down, yet you still can still move your crosshair around quite rapidly, giving you a massive advantage over the enemy for a short period of time, as you can take two or three people down at a time before any one of your enemies has time to even scuff your armour with one of their bullets.

F.E.A.R. is just so atmospheric and spine chilling that you can safely say that there's nothing else quite like it. When you're walking down corridors, hearing whispers, footsteps and high pitched reverb sounds, then suddenly enemies in gas masks drop from the ceiling and start shooting at you - you can't help but to go into panic mode. This means you'll hit your slow motion button to keep up with the action, and to buy you a second to think about what to do - then you'll act appropriately, maybe taking a step back before throwing your grenade, or even crouching down and shooting their legs, slowing their movement. If you decide to go down the grenade route, watch how your foes fly into the air with beautiful ragdoll grace, then watch closer next time at the almost touchable (but fortunately not) fire. The explosion effects on the PS3 are brilliant, so while it might not be very capable of making the game look good as a whole, it's definitely functional when it comes to making fire look real.

The campaign is a very strong reason to own this game. The story is involving, the whole thing is a challenge and, of course, the gunfights are amazing. However, F.E.A.R. shows signs of some pretty good online play for those who are connected. I managed to get into a game in a matter of minutes - and before I knew it, I found myself accessing the options to create my own character from the limited customisations available. F.E.A.R. has a small but very functional set of maps to play on, filled with health kits, secret weapon stashes and nooks where you can hide. The only downside is that nobody talks - mainly because nobody has a headset - but going online for a shooting session is definitely worth a look - and surprisingly the suspense and thrill carries over to the online mode too, with the same moody music playing in the background, and you're filled with dread as you see a shadow creep around the walls, knowing full well that your human opponent is sticking close to his own shadow and won't be far behind.

I haven't really talked about sound that much, apart from the fact that it's mostly atmospheric and haunting, with Alma giggling, gas-mask-wielding enemies swearing and reverb sound effects sending chills down your spine. There are sound effects for everything in this game - right down to the phone you accidentally shoot off the hook, so you can only hear the "Beep_Beep_Beep not recognised" dial tone. Unfortunately there are a couple of audio glitches I discovered, one of which was when I shot my gun and the sound effect for the shooting just looped for a minute after I'd stopped shooting. Oops.

There's also Instant Action mode, which allows you to jump right into the midst of the action. Choosing from four different stages, spanning over four distinct environments (taken from the Campaign), you're given fifteen minutes on the clock, a decent weapon and hordes of enemies. No story - just fast, quick-witted shooting - and if you're good enough, you can upload your stats for the world to see. Instant Action is a nice little bonus, especially if you're not online and have no desire for multiplayer, but still want a quick blast on F.E.A.R.

The PS3 version of F.E.A.R. isn't bad by any means, but the poor graphics and occasional glitches makes it far from perfect. Some people may find the loading times on the PS3 version unbearable too; it does take a long while before you can continue to the actual levels, whether in single or multiplayer modes. But if you've only got access to a PS3 then F.E.A.R. is worth playing just for the thrill of the FPS and the chill of the survival horror, beautifully blended into one highly playable title!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).