There are plenty of games that try to be scary - but few provide genuine chills, beyond the 'jump factor' of having creatures and zombies leaping out at you from nowhere. However, Monolith Productions have got a real treat in store for Xbox 360 owners - a truly professional conversion of their PC classic, F.E.A.R. The title might stand for First Encounter Assault Recon, but it's more than a simple acronym, because you're going to be very afraid…

Taking the unsettling and disturbing atmosphere of Forbidden Siren and combining it with a weapon set to rival the best shooters around, some of the best AI enemies you've ever experienced and Max Payne style bullet time that's far more than just a tacked on novelty, F.E.A.R. really is something very special. Our story begins with strange visions of a creepy little girl in a red dress, surrounded in flames, telling a tormented looking man to "kill them all." Soldiers in futuristic looking full body armour (and masks) move in on the security forces within an office, blowing them away in showers of blood, and soon we see their tormented leader feasting upon the brains of one unlucky victim, turning to look at us with blood around his lips. The next scene is at a F.E.A.R. briefing where we discover that these events are the result of an experiment to create a clone army commanded by a single psychic commander via a telepathic link - and Paxton Fettel, the brain-eating man - is one of these commanders, although he's more psycho than psychic! As a new recruit to F.E.A.R. whose reactions are "off the charts", your mission is simple - find and neutralise Fettel, thus relinquishing his control over the clone army and ending his rampage.

You begin your mission in an industrial area, a theme that is prevalent throughout the game. Apart from the opening level at dusk and the finale at dawn, the entire game is played through one long night and you won't see any luscious, scenic landscapes or green trees here - a few bushes in an office courtyard is as close to greenery as you'll get! While many games would immediately fall down with such a dark, dingy and industrial setting, F.E.A.R. absolutely thrives in this environment, playing to its strengths and using the often desolate locations to build real tension and suspense, as you explore corridors where the only signs of life are the gorily murdered men and women you discover, whose blood is literally plastered over walls, floors and even ceilings. The only signs of life, that is, other than the disturbing visions you're experiencing - interactive flashbacks to some kind of pivotal event haunt you throughout the game; you run through a burning room and then down a corridor literally swimming in blood, towards a woman screaming behind the closed doors of some sort of research facility, each experience giving you a teasing glimpse a little further into this event, but cutting off before you can really understand what's going on.

As such you'll play F.E.A.R. the first time around in the dark figuratively as well as literally - but the story comes together as you play through each area, gaining tantalising snatches of information from phone messages you can play back and laptops you can access for more insight. Fettel also communicates with you, talking in his distinctive and sinister tone, telling you that his victims all deserved to die and taunting you with what he knows that you don't - about your mission, about the project you're investigating and about your past. There's a superb and quite unusual story here that blends science fiction and the supernatural with real style, and the revelations flow as you approach the finale hit you with a great impact, answering most of the questions that have arisen during your journey.

Back in the game, however, Monolith show their genius with every aspect of their design. As you move through empty corridors, a range of devices are used to put you on edge - time slows down a little and your vision becomes accentuated as apparitions appear before you, then slowly disintegrate into nothing. You catch many glimpses of Alma during the course of the game, the terrifying little girl who can kill you with one touch if she gets close enough - you'll see her appear right in front of you at times, or she'll run past and disappear around a corner, only to be impossibly vanished when you venture after her. Lights flicker, objects move of their own accord, strange noises bump and occasionally images of horrifically maimed faces flash up in front of you - all of which adds up to a supremely creepy and tense atmosphere that's one of the most psychologically frightening and genuinely uncomfortable gaming experiences you've ever endured. While long sections with no enemies would become dull in other games, in F.E.A.R. they're just as engaging as when you're battling squads of men - something that happens more than frequently enough to keep you hooked.

Your main foes in the game are the Replica squads, controlled by Fettel, and their intelligence is impressive to say the least. They move around whole areas searching for you in teams, they take cover, leaning out and shooting at you from relative safety, they can dive through windows and leap over low walls, they'll work together to try and flank you, throw grenades to flush you out and if you don't deal with them quickly you'll find yourself being snuck up on from behind when you least expect it. You really do feel like you're not only fighting a tangible intelligence, but one that is truly working as a team, directed by a singular mind. The Replicas are armed with a range of weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, machine guns and shotguns, and later on you come up against increasingly more powerful and dangerous weaponry. They come in different varieties too - some are wearing energy-charged heavy armour that's incredibly tough and takes a serious pounding before it finally crackles in a shower of sparks and they go down. Occasionally you'll come up against a 'walker', a two-legged robot that fires bursts of rockets at you, and the first time you come up against the super-agile, cloaked creepers, I guarantee you'll cry out in alarm when you get cornered in the dark.

Graphically, F.E.A.R. is without doubt one of the slickest looking games to hit the 360 so far. At first there's no huge impact - the quality of the graphics is subtle, although as you progress through the different locales, including a dockside storage facility, water treatment plant, high tech office block (with contrasting sections that are under construction) and an abandoned, decrepit town, among others, you'll become increasingly impressed with the way everything looks. Every brick wall, rusty pipe and metallic walkway is rendered with high resolution textures, every office desk is furnished with a monitor (complete with screensaver), keyboard, laser mouse, telephone, various folders and even stationery like a stapler, with photocopiers and water fountains dotted around the place. There are even Post-It notes referring to the 'TPS memo', which I'm certain is a wry nod to the hilarious US comedy movie, Office Space (if you haven't seen it then you need to track it down, and if you need incentive, Jennifer Anniston (Rachel from Friends is in it). This attention to detail is further enhanced by the best lighting effects yet seen on 360 - the dynamic lighting will have you jumping at your own very realistic shadow, while the eerier, dim lighting of industrial areas with concrete walls, metal pipes and large machinery casts an atmospheric glow upon proceedings. When it's dark you can use your helmet-mounted torch to illuminate your path; it has an energy bar that reduces until it switches off, but recharging only takes about five seconds - thankfully, because you don't want to end up alone in the dark while being stalked by your foes! Some lights flicker, some can be shot and swing around, and the lighting (or lack of it) without doubt enhances the atmosphere no end.

Adding to this already brooding atmosphere are superbly realistic ambient sound effects and some very eerie non-melodic music that's the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a classy horror film. The music isn't always there and it's barely even music at times, but it's so professionally produced that it enhances the experience at every turn and keeps you feeling as unsettled as possible. You're on your own most of the time, but in radio contact with your commander regularly, plus there are a few occasions where you have to rendezvous with your team or escort someone to safety. The voice acting is totally professional throughout the game - there's no cheesy dialogue or bad acting here, just an excellent screenplay and talented voice work, from the radio communications of squads trying to kill you to the radio broadcasts you hear along the way and the many phone messages you can listen in to - which over time give you real insight into some of the major players of the project that has resulted in this crisis. Fettel steals the show though, and is truly menacing whenever his voice echoes in your mind.

Regardless of the amount of attention to detail in the surroundings, it's the action that takes centre stage and will truly blow you away like a shotgun blast to the chest. Given that you have virtually superhuman reactions, F.E.A.R. uses a SlowMo function that allows you to periodically slow down the action - and it's ingenious. When you hit SlowMo, everything slows down, and when I say everything, I mean everything. Your vision focuses as your movement slows and you can see the Matrix-style trail of every bullet whizzing through the air. The important thing to remember is that while you have slowed down, your enemies have become even slower, giving you a big advantage - as you charge towards a foe, strafing around the bullets that you can see flying at you, then blast him with a shotgun or riddle him with machine gun bullets, blood spurts out, his body reacts to the impact of every hit and once he's dead he'll go flying backwards with wonderfully realistic rag doll effects.

It's not just the visuals that slow down though - it's the sound too; you actually hear a whooshing effect as all the sound slows down, then the weapons fire sounds thump slowly, voices are deeper and every effect is lower and more drawn out, until you hear it speeding up again when SlowMo deactivates. It's a truly incredible effect and such a brilliant touch. If you get a direct hit with a grenade, or a point blank blast with a shotgun, your enemy literally explodes in a shower of blood and flesh chunks, coating the nearby walls red, or sometimes you can blow off a leg, arm, head or even cut a body in two - in SlowMo this takes about ten seconds to occur and you watch in awe as gore flies everywhere! When a barrel explodes flames come rippling out, or when you zap someone with the Type-7 Particle gun its blazing blue beam sears their flesh as their skeleton flies through the air and the tatters of their clothing floats slowly to the floor.

Yes, you heard right - the Type-7 Particle gun! F.E.A.R.'s weapon set is astoundingly varied, including such treats as the railgun style Type-7 that gives you super gory one-hit kills, a sniper rifle, a multi-rocket launcher and a repeater cannon that's like a super shotgun with long range projectiles that create a kind of force bubble on impact. Arguably best of all is the Penetrator, which fires high velocity metal rods into enemies and pins them to the wall! You can carry any three weapons at any time, plus three grenade types - standard, which explode after a few seconds or on impact if you score a direct hit on an enemy, proximity mines and remote sticky bombs that you can stick to a foe then trigger as he runs back to his squad! Even better than this is the melee attacking - you can hit with your rifle butt or go into no-weapon mode, where you move much faster and do a series of punches, a roundhouse kick, a flying kick and even a sliding tackle! The inclusion of this range is very welcome and the first person immersion is all the better for it. Throw in some of the meatiest, most satisfying and thundering weapons fire you've ever heard and some fantastic effects for exploding barrels, sparking fuse boxes or electrical equipment and grenades that shake the ground when they go off nearby and you've got one of the best weapon sets ever created - in fact, I'm hard pressed to think of any game, including all the 360 shooters thus far, that has a better collection than F.E.A.R.

While F.E.A.R.'s single player mode provides a compelling and very eerie campaign of reasonable length, the online play is even better - so good in fact that I'm writing this section of the review straight after an eleven hour stint that lasted through the night! You know how it begins - you start with good intentions of not staying up too late (I'd already enjoyed a couple of hours online the day before, but hadn't had time to really get into it) yet as the hours passed I found that I simply couldn't tear myself away, despite having plenty of work to be getting on with (including writing these very words!) There's already a good following, despite the release of big hitters Call of Duty 3 and Gears of War and I anticipate this will grow over the coming months as word spreads as to just how magnificent this game really is.

So, what makes this the best online shooter I've played on the 360 so far? What makes it better than Ghost Recon, Quake 4, Perfect Dark Zero, Battlefield 2 and Prey? Initially it doesn't seem like anything that special - there are ten maps ripped straight from the campaign but tweaked to offer a mixture of labyrinthine corridors and a few open areas, with three dedicated maps for the Capture the Flag mode, all of which are very well designed, but that's not exactly groundbreaking. The modes are pretty standard too - Deathmatch, Elimination and Capture the Flag, with team variants of each. Nothing special, right? Wrong! Every game to use any kind of slowdown or bullet time mode in single player drops this for online play - but not F.E.A.R. Oh no, there are SlowMo variants of each mode (bar elimination) and this is one of the elements that makes it such terrific fun.

The concept is ingenious - each mode works as you'd expect, but there's a marker on-screen at all times to represent the current location of the booster, which starts off in the middle of the map and is then picked up by a player. Once you've got the booster you have to survive about a minute for it to charge it up, then you activate it and everything slows down, but as with single player, you and your team move faster than your opponents. Time the activation of SlowMo just right and you can take out four or five players in one hit, watching as their bodies explode in a shower of blood from a point blank shotgun blast or in flames from a grenade or rocket, every bullet tracing through the air Matrix-style as you fire. Not only does this provide a great tactical advantage for whoever has the booster, but it means that you're never stuck wandering around trying to find players when you only have a small number in the game; you just home in on the booster, knowing that everyone else is too, and many battles ensue to grab and keep hold of it.

It's hard to put into words just how satisfying this element is - and when combined with the superb weapon set, as well as the fast pace of movement online, you've got a truly sublime experience. Unlike almost every other game I've played, the weapon balancing in F.E.A.R. is literally perfect - there is no one weapon that is useless and none that are unbeatable. Sure, some like the Penetrator and Type-7 are stronger than others, but you can easily dodge their fire and take out someone wielding these heavy-duty weapons using only dual pistols. With a game achievement available for 50 kills with each weapon, including grenades and melee attacks, you're encouraged to use those that aren't as accessible as others and while at first it's tough to get kills, soon enough you're shooting heads with the ASP or blowing people into chunks of flesh with the shotgun - and loving a weapon you previously didn't care for, and there's little as satisfying as sliding under the bullets of an oncoming foe and taking them out with your feet, or landing a well-anticipated grenade on their head as they run around a corner into sight.

During my marathon session I met a bunch of great folks that kept me company and I hosted ranked games for most of the time, making the announcement for them to join me once more at the end of each match, so they could easily find me again. Deathmatch is a wonderful free-for-all, Team Deathmatch is fantastic when you have a talented team working together, Capture the Flag (despite the limited range of maps) have truly brilliant levels that provide a great challenge, and Elimination is as always the most slow paced and tactical of the bunch. Anyway, I want to give a shout out to my guys, so thanks a lot to MEGAJIMZ, DR Death 56 and our silent partner TheOminousThing for a superb session, with special mention to FR8TRAIN13 (my budding protégé, he knows what I mean, choo choo!) and the highly excitable but always entertaining stuckonhigh; you guys really made my day! While I only played with them a couple of times, UptightWazzer and Hole E Crap go into my top ten funniest gamertags list too!

There's really nothing to criticise about F.E.A.R. - there is the occasional glitch when you knock over an object and it doesn't stop bouncing around (the sound effects for things like vases and containers can go a bit mad when this happens) and the dark setting might not be to everyone's tastes, but the changes in location keep things fresh throughout, while the tension never lets up for a moment (and without the darkness it wouldn't be half as scary). As for the lifespan, the campaign feels epic even though it doesn't last more than a dozen hours (and that's if you explore thoroughly) and there are four instant action levels to play through, with new areas to access from existing single player locations, while the range of four difficulties accommodates everyone from the novice to the masochist! There's a good range of achievements too that'll take a while to beat - including surviving the whole campaign without dying, completing it on Extreme, killing every enemy, finding every phone message and laptop, finding every health and adrenaline booster (power-ups scattered around the game that increase your health maximum and SlowMo bar), and plenty more.

F.E.A.R. really is a shooter with everything - exceptional enemy AI, amazingly detailed graphics with truly entertaining rag doll physics and proper reactions when you land a hit on an enemy, a fantastic range of weapons and an online mode that's tremendously addictive. Every aspect is dripping with class, from the care and attention in each sound effect and line of dialogue to the stylish implementation of SlowMo that raises the bar for bullet time effects. Throw in an excellent story and lots of psychological trickery to raise some genuine scares and discomfort (I must've actually cried out more than a dozen times while playing this in the dark!) and you've got the best shooter to hit the 360 so far - whether that'll still be the case with Gears of War just released I don't know, but regardless of which is best, the biggest thing you need to be afraid of with F.E.A.R. is overlooking a true classic because other big hitting shooters are on their way.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).