Alan Wake

[Calemyr]

I recently picked up the game Alan Wake for the XBox and I was wondering what everyone's opinion of the game was.

For my part, the facial graphics are pretty weak and the game is rather linear (thus far), but the game does come through as advertised. The game creeps me the hell out, far more than the Bioshock games ever managed, and I'm not talking about cheap scares like grotesque imagery and monsters that spawn behind you and then attack before making a sound. Instead, the game keeps you off balance by constantly making you wonder what's going on and never staying in one mode (day vs night) long enough for you to get comfortable in either and then enhancing it by placing aspects of one mode into the other to force you to wonder just what is real, what is illusion, and what is delusion.

To make matters worse (or better), the AI is rather unsettlingly fond of flanking manuevers, making fights with groups a lot more tense than simply picking off one after another. The inclusion of the flashlight as your primary defense is rather interesting as well, and the understated things the flashlight can do (ranging from exposing directions to hidden weapons caches to making televisions display episodes of the Twilight Zone-esque "Night Springs") are quite cool.

In short, the game elicits its scares less by startling you and more by playing with your mind - an approach that is far more effective with certain mindsets such as my own.

I haven't won it yet (heck, I'm only in the second chapter), but I'm enjoying the ride. I'm curious what other people think of the game, especially since I'd never heard about it until the day I found it on the shelves.

[psilontech]

I vaguely remember there being some big thing about it long before it came out, then "Console Exclusive, suck it PCf*gs" and immediately lost interest.



In short, the game elicits its scares less by startling you and more by playing with your mind - an approach that is far more effective with certain mindsets such as my own.


That DOES sound interesting, though...

Dangit, time to play through Silent Hill 2 again.

[Calemyr]

Here's the setup in a nutshell:

You play Alan Wake, a writer in the vein of Stephen King who hasn't written anything in the two years since he published his last best seller. So he and his wife decide to go to some podunk town and relax in a lakeside cabin for a few weeks, maybe recharge the batteries and get away from obnoxious fans. Somehow, however, things are getting really freaky in Bright Falls and a missing wife and a week of lost time quickly become the least of the writer's problems.

Your main enemies are insane people who are covered in shadow who are invulnerable and relentless. You fight them by using light (flashlights, flares, street lights, headlights, whatever is handy) to burn away the shadow and render them vulnerable to gunfire. The battery on the flashlight recharges slowly (allowing you to always have a form of attack), but can be recharged quickly by replacing the batteries. Revolvers and revolver ammo is common enough to be relied on but not common enough to waste, while shotguns and flares are precious commodities.

While the dialog the enemies spout is frequently bizarre, the effect is made even more jarring by the fact that their voices change speed from "broken tape recorder" slow to "Alvin and the Chipmunks" fast, while they're talking. And since they are usually talking while stalking you, the result is nicely disconcerting. When you figure out what the enemies are talking about, however, it can prove rather hilarious - one early enemy turns out to be quoting from a treadmill poster you find in a store later.

One of the weirdest parts of the game has to be one of the collectibles in the game, however. Besides collecting coffee thermoses, you also collect pages of a manuscript with Alan's name on it that Alan doesn't recall ever actually writing - a manuscript detailing his current adventure! It's kind of cool, really, because each page is narrated by Alan and often gives you a perspective on scenes that aren't immediately visible when you play them.

Anyway, the game classifies itself as a "psychological thriller" game rather than a "horror" game and it stands up to that classification. I'm enjoying it greatly.