Shine Your Light Into The Heart of Darkness
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Xbox 360 | 9.00 |
| Overall | 9.00 |
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Finland may be known to some of you for its hot volcanic springs. To some others maybe for its vodka. It's not very well known for its game developing studios, however that is where Remedy, the developers of Alan Wake (and previous hits Max Payne and Max Payne 2) are from. Alan Wake is a game that came at the end of many years of gestation, many delays and a lot of promises. Luckily, this reviewer was largely oblivious to all of that so I took the game pretty much at face value, ignoring all the hype. As you have guessed in the game you play the role of Alan Wake, a successful writer of thrillers, who goes off on a vacation with his wife to the idyllic village of Bright Falls somewhere in the Pacific North West in an attempt to fight off his writer's block. The plot then unfolds much like a Stephen King novel or, if you like, a David Lynch movie. Somebody gets kidnapped, reality and nightmares get intertwined and nothing is as it seems. The story is very good (especially for a game) and the way it's told is also rather wonderful. The game plays like a third-person action game/shooter for the most part. The action is like a very successful marriage between Resident Evil 4 and Max Payne. It takes the somewhat slow, meticulous over the shoulder aiming and shooting from RE4 and couples it with the cinematic aspects and choreography of Max Payne. While you don't exactly have "bullet-time" as such, the game does go for a few moments into slow motion when you do a near dodge and gives you the chance to react faster and turn around, take aim and put a couple of well positioned shots into one of the many nasties that are chasing and surrounding you. Fighting "The Taken" (as the bad guys are called) is what you will spend most of your time doing. While there isn't a huge variety of enemy types and action scenarios tend to repeat themselves quite frequently, you will never ever get tired of killing another batch of Taken as it feels so very satisfying to do so. The Taken are (like much of Bright Falls and the surrounding areas) are shrouded in darkness, and the darkness protects them. In order to take them off you need to shine your flashlight at them for as long as it takes to eat away their protective darkness shield, and then shoot them with your revolver or shotgun. This mechanic is partly what makes the combat so satisfying, especially when you are asked to manage half a dozen Taken coming at you from every direction while you are only able to shine your light at one of them. I could go on about the greatness of the combat system but I won't. There is also some very limited puzzle solving but it's not worth mentioning even. Visually the game is incredible. While environments are not extremely varied, and they are all very dark (they have to be for the game to make sense) it really is a beautiful looking game. The sound is really good and the soundtrack is just marvelous. It is all incorporated in the game, at no point do you get any cheesy music cues for whatever strange reason. For example there are radios which you find at various locations which you can switch on and you are greeted to some chatter by your friend the local dj and usually a really good tune. The songs are so good and so fitting to the atmosphere and the mood that I just stayed there for the three-four minutes it took to listen to the whole thing. Very very impressive soundtrack. The game lasted me about a dozen hours. I tend to be a somewhat slow gamer though. I should also mention that I played the game on the difficult setting (in hindsight - a good choice) so I had to repeat some situations a few times. There is replay value in the form of a nightmare difficulty setting and in trying to discover all the collectibles which give you nice little insights into the story. There are also two episodes in the form of premium downloadable content at the time of writing. I haven't played those so I cannot comment. It's a really good game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The whole package feels very complete and even though one can have a few gripes and complaints when looked at holistically it's much more than the sum of its parts. It left me wishing there were more games of this type. I think everyone with a 360 should play this. |
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Posted by bugsonglass Fri, 24 Dec 2010 18:35:36
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travo (2m)
The story in these to episodes doesn't add anything to that of the main game which is concluded very satisfactorily. As Remedy themselves have said, what the plot in the two added episodes does is to lead the way up to a sequel.
I really hope Microsoft gives the go ahead for that if they haven't already. Brilliant game.
Still reviews were mostly around the 9.0 mark so it's not like this game was trashed or anything.
What are your thoughts on the things most reviewers complained about?
I didn't notice the lip synching being off but even if I did I wouldn't consider it significant.
Poor and cheesy writing ... that I would have to disagree completely with. I don't think it's a fair criticism at all. Compare this to the plot of something like Resident Evil or Uncharted and it should be an oscar winner. Seriously, it's a pretty good plot for a game, it has the whole Stephen King/David Lynch vibe going for it. Not bad at all.
And I thought it was five years in development, not five years late, but anyway I can't say since luckily I wasn't even among the people anticipating the game. I am anticipating the sequel though *fingers crossed*