I finished F.E.A.R. 2 last night, finishing off with a nice assortment of the achievements. Looking back, it seems that I missed one of the reflex boosters (not sure where) and five of the intelligence items (probably scattered about the same area). I also found it impossible to get the "Raining Men" achievement, which requires you to kill 4 soldiers with one grenade. This shouldn't be a hard feat, but since on Hard mode, a grenade blast doesn't necessarily kill everyone, it was difficult to manuever four soldiers into the same area and whittle down their health enough to kill them with a well-placed grenade without getting killed myself. I also got ... one of the multiplayer achievements. While the multiplayer maps are interesting, there just isn't a huge population playing this game online, making matches infrequent or grossly overmatched.

While the game itself was interesting, I found something lacking in the ending of the game, namely an ending to the game. With the Half Life series, I've grown accustomed to Sierra's tendancy to throw in a "Yeah? What do you think about that? Yeah, it's a sequel teaser!" behavior towards the end of the game, but F.E.A.R. 2 was a total letdown. The ending battle was pretty exhilirating, taking place in a surreal netherrealm, but afterward ... it just ended. It was kind of like beating a brutal ubervillain, only to have him fart in your face and run away. It kind of spoiled the taste of the whole game.

Anyway, while I continue making progress with Infinite Undiscovery, I'm adding a second Mature title to my Now Playing queue: Saints Row 2. I've played this title off and on over the past couple nights, but now I'm ready to button down and get to it. Some may say that it's nothing more than a GTA knock off. Well, I'm playing it precisely because it's a GTA knock off, and it's not ashamed to admit it. I love the way this game makes fun of itself, plus any free roaming game is awesome in my book.

Without spoiling the events of Saints Row, your protaganist is back on the streets and looking to take back his neighborhood not only from rival gangs, but also the Ultor Corporation, a huge company with ties to every part of the city that's squeezing the life out of the hood. Not sure that's not a bad thing, but since I'm the bad guy in this title, we don't like Ultor!! Maybe they're corrupt as well. Who cares? We're just gonna smash 'em! I haven't made much progress in the story, I've just been roaming about the city and taking on the little activity side missions. The added bonus to this is getting the awesome benefits from completing the side missions. For instance, I completed six levels of a mission called FUZZ, in which you impersonate a cop and resolve crimes in a violent manner in order to cast the cops in a bad light. Finishing this activity gave me unlimited pistol ammo for any pistol I pick up. How cool is that?!?

More on this title later!