Ubisoft has a generally solid track record. At the best of times we've enjoyed games like Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia, and who could say they're not legitimately excited about Assassin's Creed? Not me! But there have been points where I could do naught but curse them to the grave, Beyond Good and Evil seems to be a pretty good example of that (though I know I'm in the minority, I am one of a stalwart few who hate that game to its very core). Though Ubisoft did no wrong but publish this game, would the stink of evil still stain their hands for their part in letting it see release? If I was forced to make a choice, I would say that Cold Fear falls smack dab in the middle. It's not the worst game I've been forced to slough through, it's more bearable than Beyond Good and Evil, but it's no Prince of Persia either.

Well, maybe Prince of Persia 2.

Cold Fear lies resoundingly in a place between reasonable and awful, a scary nowhere zone where half-assed games by half-assed developers eschew innovation and interesting gameplay in lieu of aping the trends of whatever came before them, regardless of whether or not said trends have already come and gone. Should you avoid my warnings and actually buy the game, to track down the number of cliches that belong in survival horror games of six, seven, or ten years ago.

The story is this: there are zombies on a Russian boat, it's a conspiracy, and you're a helpless coast guard stuck in the middle. I won't ask you to stop me if you've heard this before because I know you already have heard it, probably a dozen times over. I don't want to spoil it for you either, but there's a girl too. Paint by numbers survival horror, but then any survival horror game worth its salt is bound to have cookie cutter plot, so let's not hold it against them just yet.

[img_assist|fid=788|thumb=0|alt=Cold Fear 1|caption=Help! Generic zombie-like beasts are attacking!]

The gameplay is similarly rote. They get extra credit for peppering the landscape with explosive items, but it was better when Resident Evil 3 did it and it actually seemed to serve a purpose. In Cold Fear most enemies are easily dispatched with two or three pistol bullets, and the ones that aren't usually don't spend a lot of time standing next to fire extinguishers and gas valves. Compacting the pointlessness of your terrain-based arsenal is that exploded bodies don't yield any ammo, and ammo is the lifeblood of survival horror.

Problematically, exploding barrels are basically the only "big deal" aspect of the gameplay. There's a lot of shock and awe that makes you think the environment is out to get you. There are environmental hazards like rolling waves that threaten to tumble you overboard and loose cargo that... also threatens to tumble you overboard, but this is most inconsequential. After the first hour of the game you'll only be dealing with the outside world in spurts, and the danger posed by the horrifying tempest in the middle of the ocean is pretty menial. In theory, you could be flung from the boat by an errant slam of Poseidon's fist, yes, but I really only died from environmental hazards twice during the game, and once was because I was dumb enough to think that electrified water "probably" wasn't dangerous.

[img_assist|fid=791|thumb=0|alt=Cold Fear 2|caption=Electric water: surprisingly fatal]

Besides these two mediocre innovations, everything else is as routine as it's always been with survival horror. Following some of the same traditions of Resident Evil 4, which was released at basically the same time, Cold Fear equips you with a laser sight and over-the-shoulder aiming mode for dispatching your prey, whose weak spot is, naturally, the head. In Cold Fear the zombies are infected by a parasitic organism known as the Exocel and are wholly impossible to kill without first putting one or two bullets in their head. Once that's accomplished you're forced to put two more into the parasite that will often roll its way out of their decaying host completely unharmed. Repeat this ad nauseum and you've got yourself a game!

[img_assist|fid=794|thumb=0|alt=Cold Fear 3|caption=Hey guys, I think I took a wrong turn. I'm looking for Resident Evil 4...?]

A more accurate title for Cold Fear would be "six hours worth of headshots". The story is as non-existant as any other survival horror game, so I won't call it to task for extraordinary lack of effort, but it still sucks to spend six, or seven, or eight hours of your life on a game only to be rewarded with a five second "The big monster's dead! KABOOM!!" cutscene followed by a 10+ minute long credit roll. Story advancement during the game is there, but only nominally so. I hope I'm not ruining the plot for you when I tell you the Exocels were discovered by accident and then the shadowy, evil government decided they wanted to use them as a weapon. There you have it. The cutscenes are certainly longer than my interpretation, but they don't add anything with their meandering.

Cold Fear is the ultimate in mediocrity: it's good enough to keep you playing, bad enough to disgust you while you're doing so. There's always the hope of a cool gameplay gimmick lurking around the corner -- the game says you can hold onto handrails to steady your aim in the stormy weather, but I was never able to do it -- it just never ends up being enough to satisfy you. If you -really- like shooting zombies in the head for six hours, and the creators do give you plenty of guns to do it with, then Cold Fear should provide a reasonable stopgap against the drought of summer gaming, but those searching for the next level of survival horror are probably going to have to wait for Resident Evil 5.