Once thought lost to time, Kronos Digital Entertainment's PlayStation cult hit Fear Effect is at last getting a rerelease in 2025, and it's coming to Switch.
Limited Run Games announced that the 2000 action-adventure, which is known for its striking cel-shaded visuals and motion video, as part of its LRG3 2024 showcase earlier today. The publisher is partnering with Square Enix — who took over former publisher Eidos in 2009 — to release the game physically and digitally.
In Fear Effect, you play as one of three mercenaries — Hana, Deke, or Glas — in the year 2050, after the disappearance of the daughter of a powerful Hong Kong Triad boss. The plan is to kidnap the girl and hold her for ransom, but things don't come to plan.
The game's name is a referenced to the pulsing EKG 'health bar', representing a heart beat. If you take damage, you need to calm your character down to essentially regain health. Stealth kills, sneaking, and other puzzle-based gameplay elements will affect this, too.
Fear Effect is beloved among PlayStation fans, and the game did get a prequel in 2001 called Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix, but Kronos shut down shortly after its release. The third game in the series, Fear Effect Sedna, switched up the gameplay in favour of an isometric perspective, and it didn't go down particularly well with critics. A remake of the first game was in development but was cancelled back in 2023.
Have you played Fear Effect at all? Will you be grabbing the game on Switch in 2025? Sneak down to the comments and let us know.
Comments 11
So the guess all the Eidos IP Square -Enix held onto for the Collective they're just outsourcing back to CDE's future problem, LRG. So now Square has to do even less work, and CDE has to pay them for the privilege AND the rest of us have to put up with the nonsense of the 2nd worst distributor in the world. A lose-lose for everyone except Square -Enix who get paid extra now.
Played through it twice on PSOne. Good game that has quite challenging combat (better than the original RE trilogy imo) and some nice puzzles/story/characters/graphics too.
Holy hell. I never thought I'd see the day. How's about some Vagrant Story, Dino Crisis and Parasite Eve? Maybe some Xenosaga?
Graphics look very iffy, if there's a filter that could clean it up a bit I may give this a look.
Huh, I never knew that they cancelled the remake.
Genuinely intrigued. Never owned a ps1 and never heard or saw anything about this series until now. I will probably be picking it up only for the nostalgia aspect to see what I missed out on back then. We see if the price is worth it…
Even in low-res the visual style of this game really holds up for me. And I'm saying that as someone who never even played it back in the day.
ill take this, dino crisis 1 2, RE 1 2 bring UM ALL! oh yea and Parasite Eve (b ' ' )b
I remember this being quite difficult. From memory the first puzzle was very hard, and an instant death when you didn't solve it in time
Nice, I remember this one, I played and finished the first game. I played the second one, but I didn't finished it yet, I'll finish it on switch next year 😃
@Papasears1982 Man parasite eve 1 & 2 collection will be great, just add widescreen and update the graphics to 1080p.
Wow, I was considering playing this on a PS1 emulator recently because I thought it'd never get a re-release. Would've been cool if it was 1&2, but still, I'm surprised.
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