Monsters I can do. Witches, bears, black magic, lunatics with machetes are fine by me. What I can't tolerate, no matter how comfortable my surroundings might be, is little girl ghosts. Worst still little girl ghosts with a massive cob on. Add a bright red dress and lank long black hair draped over a dreaded face - see The Ring - mixed with that little freak cloaked in a red rainmac from Don't Look Now and you've royally got me. Computer games are supposed to be about fun and full of joyousness, not grown men being obliterated by ghosts. What's the world coming to when a little girl craves to see such anguish in the faces of men? These are strange times, strange times indeed.

Bearing all that in mind there is one job that I wouldn't do for all the women on the internet - be a member of For those unfamiliar with such an unnerving acronym it means: First Encounter Assault Recon. These bad boys don't muck about with terrorists or rescue hostages from jungles and all the rest of it. No. Members of F.E.A.R. are elite soldiers trained to deal with situations that normal people just wouldn't be able to handle. So if there's a mean supernatural force of gargantuan proportions posing a threat to national security, who you gonna call? F.E.A.R. I'm not talking Most Haunted here either - Derek Acorah would be splashing his pants within minutes of playing this - sadly so was I.

Predictably you play the new kid on the block. You don't speak and your colleagues doubt you - although bizarrely despite being a part of a 'team' you spend the entire game fighting alone. They think you're not made of the right stuff, that under pressure you'll do a runner faster than Thierry Henry on speed. Very little about the plot is given away initially - you're a bit special - you're training results scored off the charts - there's some evilness to be dealt with and that's about it. Rather pleasingly one of F.E.A.R.'s strong points is the narrative, but more importantly how it is delivered to you. Where most use cut scenes to move the plot forward F.E.A.R. is subtler. You'll hear whispers that suggest future events, characters will react to you in a certain way suggestion something isn't right. Messages on phones, note books and the occasional cut scene - however these never really feel traditional as they link seamlessly into the action, so much so that you barely notice that you're not in control anymore.

Within minutes of starting you're running down corridor upon corridor while being treated to the kind of subtle psychological scare tactics usually found in far eastern horror - glimpses of people behind doors, flashes of gore and evil innuendo. Similar to the excellent Condemned in atmosphere, F.E.A.R. tightens the vice on your nerves and builds tension like the very best horror movies. While the physics engine pales compared to Half Life 2, the world you're a part of is tangible - objects can be manipulated and you'll often mess your pants as inane objects are placed in your path as you run down dimly lit corridors. Such is the tension that you'll scream when you bump into an empty drinks can and it goes flying.

See through F.E.A.R.'s horror niche and you'll find a pretty decent in there as well. Next-generation perhaps it isn't, but the lack of any slowdown despite the barrage of explosions and bodies flying mean that you can play a highly demanding game smoothly on the 360. F.E.A.R. has another trick up its sleeve in the slow mo feature - there is nothing original about it, was doing the whole bullet time thing back in 2001. On the 360 however it's a different kettle of shrapnel - a visual spectacular that looks so good it could have been taken straight out of The Matrix. Bits of debris fly out, dust is thrown up and walls crumble as you blast your way through your enemy. The point being that when you're overwhelmed with enemies you can use your 'special abilities' to dish out the pain. The combat system is something to marvel at - going in guns blazing is going to get you capped and shooting from behind cover is equally perilous as the AI is such that they will flank you and pop you one before too long. In order to progress through the battlegrounds you have to combine the slow-mo feature with melee attacks as well unleashing a barrage of lead.

For all the explosions and slow-mo arse whipping F.E.A.R. remains a generic FPS. The AI is superb and the scary bits are nothing short of cinematic, but there is an awful lot of running and gunning. While this might not be a negative factor for an hour or two, the similarity between weapons only illuminates the lack of diversity on offer. F.E.A.R. is also a short game, but with the said lack of variety this isn't necessarily a bad thing - imagine one big kaboom as opposed to a peppered drawn out series of explosions. These days longevity can usually be found anyway - F.E.A.R. offers an array of game types all familiar to the genre: capture the flag, deathmatch, etc.

However any frustrations that you might have with this will be easily overshadowed by the emotions it invokes within you. F.E.A.R. made me react like no other game can - one particular nerve shredding point literally forced me to involuntarily throw the pad from my hands - the glorious thing about this is that very little happened on screen, it was all about suggestion and even the world's greatest horror movies would do well to learn from Monolith's creation.

A game that fashions such primal fear and mixes it with an always-compulsive if a little generic shooter can only be a positive thing for gaming. What's on offer here is sheer ingenuity in manufacturing an atmosphere that creeps right into the room you're sitting in - and that's playing it in broad daylight at three in the afternoon. If you like you shooting with a dollop of tangible fear, F.E.A.R. is for you.

89%

By Gary Flavell