There are two main problems with Cold Fear.
First is unintuitive navigation. While Resident Evil is a maze you need to learn, Cold Fear is maze you need to unlearn, because it would constantly block paths behind you, forcing you to find new paths. You can mock Resident Evil for its thematic locks and keys, but remembering which door can now be opened in Cold Fear is far more difficult task.
The second problem is… lack of inspiration. Your weapons are: pistol, AK, shotgun, and a speargun that shoots capsules that distract enemies. The enemies are: zombie with cleaver, mercenary with pistol/AK and spider-like parasite. There isn’t much to go on.
At some point you decide to crash the whaler back into the platform it sailed from. You loose all your weapons and get infected by the parasite, but both resolved in a matter of 10 minutes, I’m not even sure why they bothered.
On the platform, we finally get our first boss fight. And it’s just shooting a russian dude until he dies. Hansen also removes his eye from the corpse for retinal scanner. Those Coastal Guards are sure hardcore.
You find more weapons on the rig: MP5 (why, if we have AK?), M79 grenade launcher, flamethrower (useless, unfortunately). And more enemies: hunter-like enemies that take far too many shotgun blasts to die, and frog-like invisible enemies.
Hansen infected again, in a span of an hour. And Anna is first rescued, then purposefully infected by her now mutated father, which of course reminds of Birkin from Resident Evil 2.
