Fear 2, which I worked on, comes out this week.

I didn't really talk about it on my blog, but now that I have had a lot of time to reflect, I should mention that I no longer work at Monolith Productions. Unfortunately, it was one of those things where the project ended, the budgets were made, and they realized they had a few too many people working at the company and I was laid off a little bit before Thanksgiving of last year. It was, as you can imagine, pretty hard at first to deal with. I enjoyed working there and I enjoyed the projects I made with them.

That said, when you make high profile games there is an expectation to work a certain amount. The game industry has been known to have "crunch" and it's inevitable if you decide to work in this industry, but it's even more so if you end up working at a developer with acclaim such as Monolith. As much as I loved working there, know that there is some serious blood, sweat, and tears put into Fear 2 from each and every person on the team, myself included.

Because of that, I don't feel that I was as prolific with my other artistic goals as I wanted to be last year. Happily, the game is good, so it wasn't a waste of time, but when it boils down to it, I only painted 2 paintings last year and I feel that is under what I want to be doing. So, it is for that reason...that I want to personally thank the folks at Monolith for allowing me to be a part of 3 great projects over the course of 5.75 years and most importantly I want to thank them for letting me go. I wouldn't have quit on my own because I liked the people too much, but now that I am gone I feel that I can really focus on my artwork and nothing makes me happier than that.

Anyways, if you liked the first Fear game, you'll like this one too. As unbiased as I can be, I gave it an 8.5 when I played it all the way through.

Check it out and let me know what you think!