While debating on a local forum on whether multiple-disc games has already become a relic of past generation gaming, i can't help but to reminisce about Fear Effect on the original Playstation. Heavily influenced by the films of Hong Kong cinema which i also happened to be a long-time fan of, Fear Effect was probably my first love affair with cel-shaded games. Long before Suda51 was pushing the envelope on sex and violence portrayed in cel-shaded games, Stan Liu and his team of talented designers at Kronos Digital were already giving it their best shot on Fear Effect.
Aside from the eye-catching cel-shaded graphics they had another ace up their sleeves, pre-rendered backgrounds unlike any you have seen in the 32-bit era. Often critised for looking static, Fear Effect featured a looping-effect on their pre-rendered background where a bunch of effects could be incoporated into the background, making it lively instead of having your character just walking through a painting. That all came at a price of having to put up with four discs to swap through an essentially one disc long game with these looping-backgrounds taking up all the space. Fear effect had a trio of interesting and very likable leads and they would proceed to add another female to the mix in their follow-up prequel, Retro Helix also on the Playstation. With two successful outings on the original Playstation, Fear Effect was set to make the jump to PS2 and indeed, screenshots released indicated that a third title was well in the works however it never saw the light of day.
Apart from a movie adaption being developed with Uwe Boll and Stanley Tong participation very little is known of the fate of the Fear Effect series. However Fear Effect remains as probably the best game to pay homage to HK cinema, a generation before the likes of Jet Li's Rise to Honour and John Woo's Stranglehold. It has all my favourite elements which i still hold dear to me now; survival horror, cel-shaded graphic sand HK cinema so it's little wonder why i still reminisce fondly about Fear Effect.
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