Review: Alan Wake

After the recent unveiling of the name and trailer for the next Alan Wake game, titled Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, I decided that now was a pretty good time to post a review about the first game.

            Alan Wake was originally announced at E3 back in 2005.  Back then it was supposed to have an open world for players to explore, however Remedy eventually decided that in order to maintain the story and pacing of the game they had to shrink it down and eliminate the open world element.  That being said the environments in Alan Wake are still fairly large, giving you lots of room to explore as well as great views of the rest of the very detailed world that Remedy designed.

            Alan Wake’s combat system works well and consists of two parts.  The first part is penetrating the darkness that surrounds all of your enemies and the second is destroying them.  In order to rid your enemies of their dark barrier you need light which you get from your flashlight and later on flares.  Once their barrier is gone in order to kill them you need to shoot them with one of your guns which will either be a revolver, shotgun or rifle.  There are multiple enemy types helping to change it up and keep combat fast and intense.  The battles that are the most fun are the ones when you’re totally surrounded and have to franticly switch between weakening some enemies’ barriers and blowing others away.  It gets pretty intense since you will have to constantly dodge and shine light on different opponents to keep away from them yet focus your light and weapons on specific enemies so you can actually finish them off.

            The game’s greatest asset however is the creepy and intense atmosphere that starts the very first time you battle with someone who is possessed by the darkness and stays strong all the way till the end.  I found myself constantly looking around in the trees wondering if I just saw something move in the corner of the screen of if it was just a shadow.  Now just so you know I don’t play many survival horror games, but of the ones I have played this is the one that kept me on the edge of my seat the most.  This brings me to something that I feel needs to be said, you should definitely play this game at night trust me it’s a lot more fun.  Closer to the end enemies and battles can get less scary because you do get better weapons but for me it stayed intense because I was afraid to waste them in case something big came along.

            Alan Wake isn’t without its flaws though.  The games facial models aren’t very good, I mean when you’re playing they’re fine (because they aren’t moving) but in the cutscenes when the characters are talking they just look weird; something about the animation just doesn’t seem right.  This is very strange since everything else in the game was rendered beautifully.  While this is distracting it isn’t anywhere near as bad as the collectibles.  There are four main things that you will be looking for while playing the game which is way too many.  Now I don’t dislike collectibles per say, they are fine in games like Gears of War (Cog Tags) and Halo (Skulls) but four different types is just too many.  The first of these items are the missing pages to Alan’s manuscript which is a part of the story and is just fine, cool even, if you choose to read them.  Then there are the TVs which show cool Twilight Zone inspired shorts.  Next comes the radios which are ok but they do more to distract the player then immerse them even though they discuss stuff happening in the town sometimes.  Lastly are the thermoses which are scattered around for no reason and just totally break immersion and ruin the great tension that the game creates.  I’ll be on my way to try and help someone, or I’ll be running for my life and then go totally out of my way down the wrong path just to look for a useless thermos.

However the collectibles actually aren’t my biggest problem with the game, no my biggest problem with the game is how it ends.  You see I like Alan Wake’s story a lot of it was cool, creepy, thought provoking and well written, just like I wanted it to be.  However at the end it just goes crazy and ruins everything it worked so hard to achieve.  Alan Wake’s ending is one of those where you get to interpret what it meant sort of things which I’m not a fan of, I prefer a definitive ending.  I mean usually in this position I just form my opinion and that’s it, but Alan Wake doesn’t let me do that.  Rather than having two possible endings and letting me pick, it has like eight endings and no this isn’t one of those your choices affect the ending games, they all happen no matter what you do.  Plus the ending cut scenes have parts of them that contradict every single possible ending.  After I finished the game I played the last level again the next day because I thought I missed something and that after sleeping I could figure it out.  It turns out I missed the last line, which adds another possible ending that has its own reasons not to exist and helps screw the others up even more!

All and all Alan Wake is a good game that is rather well put together.  It is fun, creepy and intense, just like a good survival thriller should be.  However it gets in its own way with too many distractions and is pretty short (around eight hours), not to mention an ending that will leave you scratching your head for days.  If you’re a fan of survival horror games I highly recommend you pick this one up. 

Score: 3/5

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Weekly Wrap Up: Dec. 12

Spike’s Video Game Awards

            I’m not a fan of Spike TV and I don’t put much credence in their opinion of video games.  I’m not going to talk about how disappointing the show was or how I feel about their award winners.  I’m writing about the trailers that game companies, for some reason, saved for this show.  Seriously I have no idea why since Spike isn’t a place for gamers and some of trailers were only on their website.  So here are the games that were announced or got new trailers this weekend.

Hitman: Absolution

            I’ve played Hitman before but never got into it.  Hopefully that will change this time since the trailer seems to imply that the game is faster pace and more action oriented.  I might be able to finally get into the series if it takes the same sort of turn that Splinter Cell did.  I know that some fans of the serious may say that changing it like that would be horrible, but it would just be my preference.  Plus there hasn’t been any gameplay shown yet so if you want it to stay the same you might be in luck.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD

            Tony Hawk is going back to its roots with a new game that uses the controller instead of that stupid board they put out last time.  The title may lead you to believe that this is yet another HD remake but it is actually a legitimate remake that will take the best levels from the first two games, expand on them, add new characters and use a totally totally new graphics engine to bring the game into this generation.  All of this will be included for just $15 on XBLA & PSN this summer.   

The Last of Us

            The Last of Us has been teasing us with small videos and pictures for the past week.  Now there is a real trailer for the game that shows off the two main characters; a father and daughter named Joel and Ellie.  The game is being developed by Naughty Dog and places these characters in a constant fight for survival amongst a world overridden by people infected with a plant virus.  I hope that Naughty Dog can manage to bring deep storytelling and characters into a zombie like (they are infected not undead (yes I’m one of those guys who differentiates)) apocalypse.

 

Tekken Tag Tournament 2

            The latest game in the Tekken series goes back to the popular tag team action and will be arriving on consoles Holiday 2012.  The arcade version is all ready out in Japan and it leads me to believe that the Tekken X Street Fighter game won’t be until 2013.  Tekken will also be releasing a game for the Wii U next year and another for the 3DS.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence

            Metal Gear Solid: Rising has been changed, quite a bit.  First off there is the obvious name change, which now includes “Revengence” which combines revenge and vengeance to let you know that the game will be badass.  Apparently they dropped the “Solid” part of the name to separate it from the rest of the series.  Not because it isn’t part of the story, but because the game is no longer stealth related and they don’t want people expecting something like the previous Metal Gears when they pick it up.  The game now takes place after MGS4 instead of between 2&4 like originally planned.  Lastly the game will no longer be developed by Kojima Productions; instead they will produce it while PlatinumGames develops it.  The game looks incredible; the action is fast, furious, devastating and incredibly over the top.

Command and Conquer Generals 2

            The newest game from Bioware will be an RTS following up the Generals branch of EA’s long running series.  It will be interesting to see how Bioware, a company beloved for their deeply story driven RPGs like Mass Effect & Dragon Age, will handle an RTS where you don’t get one on one interaction with your allies.

Mass Effect 3

            This is without a doubt one of my most anticipated games of next year and a gameplay trailer shows a lot to be excited about.  The combat seems to be faster and more fluid than before, they’ve even added a roll button like in Gears of War.  The trailer shows a battle between Shepard and a Reaper that gets interrupted by a ginormous worm. It was pretty intense but seriously no worm should compete with Reapers, since they always manage to wipe out all life without much effort.  My favourite part was in the beginning when you see Wrex on your squad.  I’m so glad I get him back; he is my favourite character in the series.

   

The Amazing Spider-Man

            The latest Spider-Man game is licensed after the movie but the trailer was focused on a different storyline, one that involved Oscorp and a lot of robots.  The big robot Spider-Man fights looked like a Reaper which is pretty strange.  While fighting Reapers as Spider-Man sounds like fun I really don’t think a game licensed off of a movie should try and draw comparisons to Mass Effect even if it is from the guys who made Shattered Dimensions.

Alan Wake: American Nightmare

            Alan Wake was a fun game with a very messed up ending.  Now there will be a downloadable follow up to the game, not DLC for the first but a new game, which will hopefully explain some things about what happened.  However the game could end up just being its own separate story and save the answers for Alan Wake 2.  I guess I’ll have to wait and see more to find out.

           

Fortnite

            Epic games the guys behind the Unreal and Gears of War series unveiled their newest property at the VGAs.  The game is cartoony in art style and features kids who build forts to protect them from the monsters that show up at night.  It made me think of Minecraft, which is not what I expect to be thinking of while looking at a game from Epic.  It hasn’t been stated yet but I’m kind of thinking it will be an XBLA game since I don’t see how they will make a tower defence game as deep as Gears.    

Diablo 3

            The opening cinematic for Diablo 3 was shown off at the VGAs and it looks pretty awesome.  I can’t wait for this game; it has been so long since I had a PC exclusive that I was dying to play.  First Skyrim and soon Diablo, man my looting isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

            High Moon Studios did a great job on their first Transformers game and after playing it I was willing to try the follow up.  After reading about it in Game Informer I got super excited, it really made it seem like the studio wasn’t going to hold anything back for the climatic end of Cybertron.  Now the trailer, which is similar to the one for War for Cybertron, is out and is much darker and way cooler.  As a Transformers fan I can’t wait for this game and I will totally play it ‘Till all are one.  

Bioshock Infinite trailer

            The final game shown off at the VGAs is one of the biggest games of next year.  The trailer was flipping through a lot of different scenes so I didn’t like it as much as the E3 demo that Game Trailers showed off, but it still looks pretty cool.  All the trailers can be checked out here.

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards-2011/world-premiere-trailers/9bqhmn

Miyamoto changing jobs

            In news unrelated to the VGAs an interview on Wired had Miyamoto (the guy who made Mario, Zelda and just about every other iconic Nintendo character) saying that he was retiring from his current position at Nintendo in order to focus on smaller titles.  This lead to a drop in Nintendo’s stocks, which prompted the Nintendo to respond by basically saying that Miyamoto isn’t going anywhere.  I find it weird how Nintendo seems to be saying no to someone’s request to change position.  The way I interpreted the situation was that Miyamoto had no intention of leaving Nintendo, just leaving Mario and Zelda to younger developers who haven’t been doing those games for over 25 years.  He would then make small games that would test new ideas and might one day become iconic Nintendo franchises, which Nintendo should be extremely excited about.  However Nintendo feels Miyamoto has to be the face of the company so even if his job changes his title can’t because they can’t afford to lose any more confidence in consumers and share holders after the decline in Wii sales, the poor launch of the 3DS and the underwhelming reception received by the Wii U.

Serious Sam 3 Immortal Scorpion

            Serious Sam 3, a game that I hadn’t been paying much attention to, just caught my eye.  They have included a super fast immortal scorpion that will never stop attacking any player who pirates the game.  This is so much better than stripping content to be used as DLC and having people use online passes.  Watch and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91q5BtlxK0

Xbox 360 Update

            The Xbox 360 got a major update and after seeing it for myself and checking out some of the features I have to say, I like it.  The interface is a lot simpler; everything is in one line with the different subjects boxed in as opposed to multiple rows with a bunch of panels for different content.  The TV component was one that I thought was going to be pretty slim in Canada but it actually has a lot of cool shows and not just the past few episodes; you can buy entire past seasons over Xbox Live.  Unfortunately I feel the TV shows are too expensive: $2.75 an episode.  You can save money by purchasing the whole season but it has standardized rates, which means if the season is old it costs just as much as a new season and so does each episode.  If they lowered the price to $1 an episode I would probably watch some because my PVR screws up sometimes (first world problems) and I would want to find the episode quickly and easily and then watch it on my TV.  I suppose since it is buying the episode it would have to cost more but $2 for purchase $1 for one time viewing seems fair to me.  Anyway that being said if you do want TV or movies the new Bing feature allows you to quickly type in a search word (or say it using Kinect, which I don’t have) and it will bring up everything tied to that word.  This also works for games that you might want to buy or try a demo for.  Another addition is roaming profiles and cloud saves which allows you to quickly and easily transport your profile back and forth from a friend’s house (you don’t have to keep typing in the password) and lets you put the save files you want to use while there in the cloud and continue your game at their place without the use of a flashdrive.  The cloud data gives you 500MB of storage so you won’t be able to put all your games or any expansion packs up there to play with your friend but it is still cool and a feature that I will end up using.  My favourite addition is the Beacons and Activity section.  The Activity part keeps track of the most popular games your friends are playing.  It tells you how many have it as one of their last games played, who was on it and when they were last on.  All so that you can see what game might be easier to set up with friends.  Also if everyone is on one game you might buy it so that you can play alongside all of your friends instead of buying the game that nobody has.  The Beacons are the games that you decide that you want to play with friends.  So if someone clicks on you they can see that you want to play Gears 3 with someone and they might invite you to a game.  It also lets you know whenever someone on your friends list goes on a game you want to play.  These are great additions that I hope I will be able to use to set up more games with my friends since we are always on different things.  All and all the new dashboard is great and if you have Kinect it is even more tailored towards you so this is great news for everyone on Xbox.

For all the latest updates on the blog be sure to follow me on Twitter @Aeonofdoom360 and be sure to let me know what you think in the comments section below no sign up or registration needed.