Joe Wintergreen

The horror was something that built up for me over time. It was a nice contrast to horror games where the scares peak and then it turns in to a lukewarm action game. FEAR felt backwards in a good way -- great action where you slowly feel the atmosphere creep over you. Great vibes of being somewhere you're not supposed to be after hours.

I feel like whether horror elements land or not comes down to player interpretation: It's either "this little girl isn't scary, I just took down a whole army" or "I just took down a whole army and I still can't frag this little girl, I'm terrified"

I played F.E.A.R when it came out, I was a late teen who hadn't played any horror games before that (and there hadn't been any horror FPS games like that before). It was a visceral experience - I was so immersed it was like I was there. The graphics blew me away at the time, but I had only just gotten an upgraded PC around that period; I would stand under a light and turn my viewpoint around, mesmerized by the bump mapped textures on the guns and the mind blowing parallax mapping from the decals.
The story kind of flew over my head mostly, but I loved the sense of being in a X-Files like setting. The scares genuinely terrified me (especially the one where you go down a latter and the animation makes you look up, if you know you know), but I kept pushing driven by morbid curiosity.
Weirdly enough, I wasn't initially blown away by the combat. I found it tedious and it interrupted the part that I actually liked most - the suspense, mystery and horror. While I really enjoyed shooters, I wasn't very good at them, so what I tended to do is abuse the slomo ability. I would just hide in a corner until it recharges, then activate it and gun everyone in the head. Years later I learned a more "proper" way to play the combat for a much better experience - ignore the slomo! The (still awesome) environmental destruction and John Woo "if you shoot a stack of paper it must explode into 10 stacks of paper" particle effects create an amazing action set piece every time.
I love F.E.A.R. I still replay it once every few years. Every time I gain an appreciation for some elements that don't notice or completely take in with each consecutive playthrough. And while the scares don't phase me as much as they used to, the final escape with the ghosts still gets me a bit tense. It aged like fine wine.