Yes, the graphics are dated but the gameplay is absolute fire and it has the best enemy A.I. of any shooter I've played by a long shot. F.E.A.R. is I dare say a true masterpiece of the shooter genre. I cannot think of a single shooter in the last 10 years that comes even close to how good F.E.A.R. is.
It truly is scandalous how game developers 20 years ago and longer were able to create timeless classics that still hold up today (as long as you can get them to run on modern systems) but game developers of today can't even create decent games with completely overblown budgets.
Comparing the diversity of games of the late 90s and 00s with today is truly soul crushing. The shooter genre alone was incredibly diverse. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Counterstrike, Half Life, F.E.A.R., Unreal Tournament, Quake, Crysis, Max Payne, Painkiller, Dead Space, you name it. And don't get me started on the now almost extinct RTS genre.
It really is painful to look back and see how with the end of the 00s the games industry has turned into one big copying machine trying to recreate one smash hit over and over and shitting out abominations that get worse with every iteration until a new smash hit appears and the cycle repeats.
And if shitty gameplay wasn't bad enough modern games also have abysmal performance and blurry, smudgy, shitty graphics with constant ghosting and other artifacts because every asshole uses Unreal Engine 5.
I just want to play good games. Fuck.
Both FEAR and Halo enemy AI is pretty good. I have to give the win to FEAR though but that's because the level design and the AI designer worked together. The AI in Halo has good movement and tactics that they'll use against you. However in FEAR they will use aspects of the environment semi-unscripted. They will pull down book cases to use for cover and crawl through low hanging areas to try and get the flank on you.