I finally gave FEAR ASSESSMENT PLUS a shot after having it sit in my account, untouched, for 15 days. I got the game while it was on its big 100% off sale, and so, I claimed it, but it remain untouched in my account since then... until now.
And I've gotta tell you, this is the creepiest game I have ever played by far. I never thought that a game could traumatize and scare me like this. At first, it was weird, but later on, it got more and more disturbing, and I could feel a bad feeling in my stomach. I have never had a horror game do this to me before. I went in completely blind, and came out severely traumatized. It actually made me feel genuine fear the further and further I progressed in the game. The only thing that didn't really make me feel confused or scared was the fact it actually read my computer's internal system clock. Only a few games, like Hypnospace Outlaw, could do something like that. I just think it is a neat little touch.
Everything else, though? Complete confusion or fear.
The faces were some of the creepiest things about this game because of how strange and odd they were. They felt almost... completely unnatural. It's as if they weren't even actual humans, and they were specifically created in such a way for the test. The faces were almost on par to how strange and disturbing the faces were in the alleged "Wyoming Incident" hijack on ABC. To put it very simply, I was in fact very creeped out by the look of the faces on the screen. The first few faces just made me feel, sort of confused, but as the game showed me more and more faces, I could feel worried, because the faces looked sort of mutilated. How do you make someone scared at the sight of someone's face? I mean, they might not even be real, but FEAR ASSESSMENT PLUS managed to make me feel scared at the sight of just a face on a screen, which is well done game design.
When it turned on my webcam by itself, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. A really bad one. This game just, without warning, turned on my webcam. That moment definitely made me feel a bad gut feeling. I would have never thought that a game could creep me out as much as it did by just turning on my webcam automatically. While the effect while the webcam is turned on is pretty cool, I was more worried that the game automatically enabled my computer's webcam. I could literally see myself on the screen, with the effect on as well. It actually made me feel genuine fear. It truly scared me.
Not to mention, it listed one of my files from my own computer, and by God that made me feel uneasy. It's as if the game "hacked" my PC (the game doesn't actually hack your PC, by the way). The fact that this game could pull random system files from your computer, AND list them inside of the game itself, is incredibly scary. While there are some games that can straight up corrupt or delete files, even just seeing a file from your hard drive get MENTIONED inside the game is horrifying. The game just picks a random file to display in the game, and the file's path name is listed. Seeing that pop up made me freak out. A lot. There are some other games that mess with the game files itself, but messing with or even mentioning a random file on the user's computer is a great way to enact fear in them. It was so scary I actually clicked off of the game entirely during the moment it mentioned a file on my computer. It freaked me out so bad I refused to finish the assessment because of it. I physically did not want to continue beyond that point. It had already scared me bad enough, and this was the moment I just had to nope outta there.
I felt pure, genuine fear while I was sitting through this. No other horror game has ever been able to make me feel this way. I felt true senses of dread and fear through my entire initial playthrough. I definitely will be sleeping with the lights turned on tonight. This is the first time a horror game has actually scared me and made me feel a strong sense of uneasiness. I don't even think I will ever go back to finish FEAR ASSESSMENT PLUS because of what happened. This game has successfully scared me so much that I now will probably refuse to go back to finish it. No game has ever made me scared enough to outright refuse to play it or even touch it in the slightest. I have never, ever been this scared at a game before. And this is also analog horror. The fact I got scared at analog horror truly shows the power this game has to invoke a ton of fear in its players, which it has successfully done to me.
While it did in fact scare me, and the fact that I'll probably never, ever touch the game again, this is one of the best horror games I have played so far, due to how much fear it gave me. Seriously, the amount of fear this game gave me is on par with the amount of fear I got during my first playthrough of Slender: The Arrival, which just recently got a 10 year anniversary update that improves the game's graphics. No other horror game has ever been able to scare me so bad that I would refuse to touch it again. I mean, I might go back to it at some point, but right now, that is highly unlikely. I mean, I eventually went back to play Arrival, so its still possible for me to go back to this game later on down the line.
You sir, have done an excellent job with this. You have managed to scare me and shake me down to the very core. This is immaculate work, and this is 100% worthy of the praise it is getting. I refused to watch videos on this because it would've ruined the immersion for me, and once I eventually played it, oh man, it was scary as heck. You have done a splendid job on making the player feel alone and scared. A wonderful experience that definitely frightened me.
9.5/10