Fear Effect

An action/adventure/horror game published by Eidos and released midway through the original PlayStation's life cycle, the game is the tale of three merciless mercenaries--Hana, Glas, and Deke. The daughter of a rich and powerful businessman has been kidnapped, and the trio has been hired to find her. Although, the three of them plan to ransom her back to her father if all goes well. However, everything is not what it seems to be, and the kidnapped girl in question is the key to an epic ordeal--possibly involving the fate of the world itself.

The game spawned a prequel, "Retro Helix", which shows how the three main characters met, and introduces Rain, Hana's love interest. Their mission in this game is to stop an epidemic of a highly dangerous disease.

The games feature typical action/adventure elements (run and gunning enemies, stealth sequences, keycard-fetching and puzzle solving). What is somewhat unique is each character you control has a "fear/confidence meter". Essentially your life bar, however, there are no medicines/health packs in the game. By solving puzzles and taking out foes quickly, your character's meter stays green for longer, or recovers if he/she took damage. When you screw up, the meter goes down. When it's red, your character has all the defense of wet paper.

There was to be a third game for the PS2 ("Inferno"), but it was cancelled.

No matter how fitting it sounds, Fear Effect isn't what you get for playing too much F.E.A.R., although coincidentally, they're both horror games.

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This series provides examples of:

 * Absolute Cleavage: Hana's green party gown in Fear Effect 2. As Rain said, "You're wearing that?! Why don't you just walk in there naked."
 * Action Girl: Hana
 * An Arm and A Leg: Not all of gets out of the first game intact.
 * Belligerent Sexual Tension: Hana and Glas have something like this. They have a habit of pointing guns at each other and giving tough talk to each other. Glas is the one who gives her a hand and helps her up in various situations. Hana did give Glas a hand and help him up in the first game. Also, the one female of the Eight Immortals says to Glas about Hana being his friend, which he tries so very hard to deny.
 * The Big Guy: Deke
 * Bilingual Bonus: Both games are loaded with untranslated Chinese characters. As an example, the first game begins with a funeral procession, with a picture of a woman being carried as well as a sign that says 名垂千古. In Mandarin Chinese, this says "míng chuí qiān gǔ", and this can be translated as "(Her) name (is) Chui Qiangu". For those who are curious, Chui would be her last name and Qiangu would be her first name. Additionally, its actually a Chinese idiom which means a person's name being remembered throughout history.
 * There is a door in the first game that has a sign saying 立入禁止 posted on it. In Mandarin Chinese, this says "lì rù jìn zhǐ", and this can be translated as "stand enter prohibited".
 * As Hana moves around in Mr. Lam's building, she will come across huge neon characters that say 林氏企業 (In Simplified Chinese, this would be rendered as 林氏企业). In Mandarin Chinese, this says "lín shì qǐ yè", and this can be translated as "Mr. Lin('s) Company". Note that 林 is pronounced as "lam4" in Cantonese.
 * Cain and Abel:
 * Catch Phrase: Glas definitely has one. It goes like this: "You draw on me? You better be prepared to face the consequences!"
 * Cel Shading
 * Chinese Vampire: In The Temple of Xi'an in the second game.
 * Curse Cut Short: Deke tells Glas "You need a shave and a haircut, mate." Glas says "You mother-" before Hana interrupts him. It is likely that she did not interrupt Glas because of his cursing (Hana can curse, too), but because she needed to ask Deke questions and she could not do that if a fight broke out between Glas and Deke.
 * Did You Just Shoot Cthulhu:
 * Distracted By the Sexy: An effect that saves Hana's life from time to time.
 * Distressed Damsel: Rain
 * Doppelganger Spin + Evil Twin: Part of the prequel's climax and determines whether you get the good ending or the bad ending.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: And they do.
 * The students in the aquaducts will leave you alone if you don't go around actively shooting them, the Immortals will not fight you if you make the right choices (i.e. NOT shooting the students), and the girls in the yellow suits will ignore Rain for as long as she doesn't have her weapons armed.
 * Fire Forged Friends: Hana, Glas, Deke, and Rain start out like this in Retro Helix. The problems associated to this come up in the first game.
 * Freudian Trio: Hana is the leader who tends to drag Glas into situations he does not want, which would put her between Id and Ego. Glas has been a leader, tends to be concerned about his profits, and he tries to figure out all the angles, which would put him in Superego territory. Deke has little problem working with Hana and Glas, and he tends to kill people left and right when he is alone, which would put him in Ego and maybe towards Id. Of course, this is before you put Rain in there.
 * Fridge Brilliance: Some might wonder why Madame Chen keeps calling Hana her daughter when she is not. That is because Madame Chen is a female pimp, and female pimps refer to the prostitutes working for them as daughters. So Hana denying that she is Madame Chen's daughter has less to do with biological relations and more to do with Hana making it clear that she is no longer working for Madame Chen as a prostitute.
 * Fridge Horror: Here's a big one...Hana was 5 years old when her parents were murdered in front of her. She is taken to a brothel that is also a restaurant. She escaped at some point, and she had to have sex with Jin in order to get him to help her in escaping. She is 18 years old by the events of both games. Can you imagine what she experienced in that brothel?
 * Here's an even bigger one...at the end of the first game, the King of Hell reveals that he intends to destroy the world because Hell has gotten too full. How did it get too full? Some might say that it's a combination of Crapsack World and Humans Are Bastards. However, that can't possibly be the answer. While Hana is going through Hell, she encounters none other than her 5-year-old inner child, the girl she had been before she was taken to the brothel and raped. That's right, her 5-year-old inner child literally died and went to Hell, forcing Hana to reinvent herself! Indeed, the game shows that there are good people in the world, the world itself doesn't seem to be entirely a Crapsack World. For some reason, however, there is no Heaven...or it is blocked off somehow. Whichever the case, lots of people are dying, going to Hell, and a number of them could not even have a reason to go there!
 * Fridge Logic:
 * Why do none of the characters use their fists?
 * Why does Hana talk like an American? If she was born in Hong Kong, should she not be speaking English with a British accent?
 * Here is a good one for you.
 * Does anyone find it odd that Glas pronounces Hana's name as /'hɑnə/ in the first game and as /'hænə/ in Retro Helix?
 * Why is it that there is a Chinese hell with its own king, but there is no mention of a Chinese heaven? That seems to fly in the face of Chinese beliefs about balance and opposite forces.
 * Girly Run: Rain definitely runs like this. Hana does not. This serves as a contrast between the characters, with Hana being more masculine and Rain being more feminine.
 * Gorn: Both games have death sequences that are oh-so-lovingly crafted (and happen often), you'd think the developers were shooting for this trope.
 * Guns Akimbo
 * Have a Nice Death
 * Jerkass: Arguably every single playable character.
 * Arguably every playable character? Try Deke. In his profile for both games he's described as a "borderline psychopath". Hana and Glas get several Pet the Dog moments, with Rain being a borderline Woobie.
 * Left Hanging:  As you can probably guess, so very much of Fear Effect Inferno is Left Hanging.
 * Les Yay: Hana and Rain again, in Retro Helix
 * Loads and Loads of Loading: A real annoyance in the first game (particularly after death scenes), but was fixed in the prequel.
 * Losing Your Head:
 * Just enough to be really, really gross.
 * Love Triangle:  Talk about complicated relationships.
 * Male Gaze: We get several close ups of Hana's T'n'A in both games. An in universe example is averted when Hana threatens to kill Deke for peeking at her.
 * The Man Behind the Man:
 * This troper is not so sure of that. In Retro Helix,
 * Mexican Standoff: Part of the first game's climax.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Hana, from gratuitous shower scenes to stripper disguises to running around in nothing but a towel.
 * The solution to one puzzle in the first game (Hana having a gun pointed at her point-blank, any mistake gets you shot), while you're only wearing said towel? Go into your inventory and use the towel - she takes it off. Nice butt, Hana. (The guy with the gun? Deke breaks his neck while he's distracted.)
 * Try Rain. She can easily match Hana in terms of being Ms. Fanservice.
 * Money to Burn: Damaging in the final battle involves shooting his minions, then grabbing the "hell money" (Chinese paper money burned as offerings to one's ancestors) they drop and tossing it in a fire.
 * Wee Ming even lampshades the trope herself. She  She actually says that Lam truly has Money to Burn.
 * Nintendo Hard: Goes without saying.
 * No Canon for The Wicked: The first game had 3 endings, depending on if you picked Hana or Glas in the stand off, would result in every character but the one you picked being dead. The cancelled 3rd game would've gone with that ending.
 * And in Retro Helix, you could pick an ending that would have resulted in everyone but Deke and possibly Rain being killed. Since it's a prequel, it's obviously not canon.
 * One Hit Point Wonder: When the fear meter is red (or damn close to it).
 * Pixel Hunt
 * Poor Communication Kills: Glas is the poster boy of having little to no communication skills. In Retro Helix, he could have explained to Hana why he is so opposed to having faith in someone else. In the first Fear Effect, he fails to explain to Hana why he thinks Wee Ming is the cause of the problems they faced so far. A lot of grief could have been spared if he just explained rather than go on a wild rant. Then there is the fact that he does not try to find out the significance of  or even mention it to anybody. At least Deke handled the matter of   than Glas ever did. Oh, and Glas also reveals that he does not speak Chinese. Honestly, does the army cause or teach people to have no communication skills? At least in Fear Effect Inferno, Glas tells Hana to be careful and he clearly shows that it was very hard to get that out of his mouth (i.e. Cannot Spit It Out).
 * Prequel: Retro Helix
 * Running Gag: Each character has a sort of Brick Joke in terms of what their missions are like. Deke just can't stop falling off things, Glas has an unfortunate tendency to get caught on fire, and Hana seems to have a compulsion to strip once a disk.
 * Shout Out: Glas encounters  and they have a short dialogue that was clearly taken from Ghostbusters and paraphrased a little bit. When Glas fights this fellow, said fellow uses an attack that was clearly lifted from a certain black-robed figure in Return of the Jedi.
 * The Shop, the organization that Glas used to work for, is almost certainly taken from the books of Stephen King.
 * The scene where  may very well have its roots go back to Batman.
 * The disease EINDS is similar to the disease AIDS. AIDS really does exist in real life, by the way. Also, AIDS is not that big of a problem when compared to EINDS. Oh, and AIDS has yet to be cured, unlike EINDS.
 * One website said that.
 * In the second game Hana suddenly gets a Distressed Damsal female love interest. Given the timing it's remarkably similar to Willow getting s lesbian paramore.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Okay, this is a tough one. There are points in the series that are certainly cynical. However, there are points that are idealistic. One good example is the contrast between Hana and Glas. Hana proves to be the idealistic one, while Glas proves to be the cynical one. In fact, the ending of the first game could be viewed as the result of a battle between idealism and cynicism. . In Retro Helix, the manual claims that EINDS is a worldwide epidemic and causing theft, murder and terrorism to become big business. However, the first Fear Effect shows people going about their daily lives and not at all acting like the world is coming to an end.  . The series could be put in the middle of idealistic and cynical.
 * Sprite Polygon Mix: Real-time 3D foregrounds, pre-rendered animated 3D backgrounds shown as FMV.
 * Survival Horror
 * The Other Darrin: All three protagonists changed voice actors between games.
 * In the first Fear Effect, Elyse Dinh voiced Hana, Braeden Marcott voiced Glas, Anthony De Longis voiced Deke, Rob Monroe voiced Jin, Julie Schaller voiced Wee Ming, Kathie Barnes voiced Madame Chen, and two people named Geoff Hoff and Patricia Ayame Thomson did additional voices.
 * In Fear Effect Retro Helix, Wendee Lee voiced Hana, Anthony Gayle Marcotte voiced Glas, Lex Lang voiced Deke, Dorothy Elias Fahn voiced Rain, and Rob Monroe reprised his role from the first Fear Effect.
 * In the trailers of Fear Effect Inferno, Wendee Lee, Anthony Gayle Marcotte, and Rob Monroe reprise their roles. Youtube comments claim that the voice actor from the first game (Anthony De Longis) is voicing Deke in this one. It is not clear who is voicing Rain, and a couple of other characters. If anyone knows who they are, please comment!
 * To Hell and Back: The end of the first game takes place in the Chinese version.
 * Too Good to Last: Fear Effect Inferno was going to be the third game for the series, but Kronos folded. There are clips showing things that were supposed to happen in this game. This is the first clip. This is the second clip. This is the third clip. This is the fourth clip. This is the fifth clip. This is the sixth clip. This is the seventh clip. This is the eighth clip. This is the ninth and final clip.
 * Took a Level In Badass:
 * Trial and Error Gameplay: Practically breathes the trope.
 * Trippy Finale Syndrome: It seems normal enough at first, and then suddenly it starts turning into a precusor to Eternal Darkness...
 * Use Item
 * We Have Reserves:
 * What Could Have Been: The game was going to be titled Fear Factor. Some think the name was changed because of the TV show Fear Factor, but Wikipedia claims that the title was changed because it was too similar to the popular heavy metal band Fear Factory.
 * What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Hana says this at the end of Retro Helix. It shows the King of Hell surrounded by fire and laughing hysterically. Those who have played the first game should know exactly what happened.
 * What Happened to The Mouse:
 * Word Salad Title
 * What Happened to The Mouse:
 * Word Salad Title