| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Xbox 360 | 7.20 |
| Overall | 7.20 |
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Within the first few minutes of Alan Wake a dark entity taunts Alan Wake, an author in the vein of Steven King, for being a terrible writer. This scene was delivered so poorly I found it to be quite ironic as the rest of the game does not fair much better in terms of story. Alan Wake the game is a story driven third person action adventure game where the story driven aspect is not very compelling. The game is structured like a TV show with multiple "episodes", each ending with a cliffhanger of sort. I found there to be a lack of compelling characters and basic elements of a thriller like suspense. All the elements for a mindbending story are there; a missing wife, a mysterious town, but none of it is very engaging. The ending episode cliffhangers do a terrible job of surprising you or even creating the want to continue. I have played my share of games with crappy stories but many of them know they are cheesy, like Resident Evil. This game takes itself too seriously for a story that is basically absurd. To make matters worse it ends with no real closure so that it may continue on DLC and future titles. While the story driven aspect of this title is mostly a failure, the gameplay hook where you must use light as your weapon is a compelling mechanic that works well throughout the entire game. All enemies must be blasted with light to lower their dark force field allowing you to kill them with the usual firepower. Unlike a traditional third person shooter this game is not about aiming your guns in fact as long as you aim in the enemies general direction you will do the same damage no matter where in the body you hit them. The core mechanic is aiming your flashlight to keep enemies at bay while their defenses are lowered. Enemies come at your from all directions, charging at Wake forcing you to manage the distance between Wake and a pickaxe to the face. It feels different than any TPS I have played, instead of taking cover or simply riddling enemies with bullets you really need to manage your spacing using light. Flares add a whole different dimension by allowing you to create a sort of light force field instantly pushing back all enemies near you. Throw in flashbang grendaes and a flare gun, which act as a screen clearing weapon, you have a nice mix of light weaponry to use on top of your regular guns. The strategy is in how to manage all options in the best way possible. Do I waste a lot of ammo on one of the tank like enemies or use a flashbang to quickly take him. Do I use a flare now or save it for later. The level design starts off very repetitive taking place in bland woods. After the first 4 hours the game really opens up and begins to vary up the locations and gameplay scenarios. New enemies show up as possessed objects, so prepare to have a tire or a truck come alive and try to kill you, the only way to stop them is to shine light on them till they disappear. For some reason there are vehicle moments in the game, many are just there to traverse large empty areas but a few are used in combat situations where you go up against other possessed vehicles, I wish there were more of those. You'd think a game all about light would have some sort of light based puzzles but no, any "puzzle" is basically pushing a button here to move an object there. There are daylight moments where you basically explore a small area of the town and talk to NPCs but these moments served to remind me how terrible the story is. There is no true exploration, no meaningful conversations to have or secrets to find, these sections only serve to move the story forward until the action picks up again. If they really focused on creating a more detective like mode where you may have to explore to look for clues or do anything other than simply walk to your objective these moments could have elevated the game to a different level. There seems to be so much potential for this game to be something so much bigger and better than it is but the developers were content making this a very linear action game. I was surprised at how long this game is, each episode took over 2 hours and there were 6 of them. The middle chapters were excellent, doing everything a great action game should do with ever changing scenarios and providing thrilling moments. The first two and final chapters were very basic and repeitive. Then there is the free DLC chapter my copy came with which is by far the best episode in the entire game. I will include this DLC as part of my review and score simply cause it came as a free pass, I will say if the entire game was like it the score would be much higher. The DLC episode takes place in a nightmare sort of world allowing the environments to become all surreal. Floating words appear in the game world, words like "ammo", "flare", hit them with light and the word will become that actual item. Soon these words begin to be used in very interesting ways like a huge boiler room with the words "blast" all over. Hit blast and a huge gush of fire comes out of the boilers, now add an onslaught of enemies and you have a recipe for awesome gameplay. Another area is basically a word minefield with words that release enemies if you accidentally hit them with light, of course you get attacked during this area forcing you to make the decision to unleash all these enemies or not protect yourself. This entire episode is filled with incredibly compelling gameplay scenarios not present in the core game. Alan Wake is a beautiful game with some incredible sights to see. The location is very unique for a game like this and I was amazed at the detail that went into the town even though most of it is not interactive. The lighting system is of course incredible, the game would simply not work without it. The voice acting is pretty bad and the music is not memorable at all. The interesting gameplay mechanics make this a game worth playing but all the elements around it are lacking. Alan Wake is one of those games with huge potential handcuffed by the limited vision of developer. If you are going to make a very linear story based action game make sure it can live up to the best, this game does not. |
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Posted by Dvader Sun, 12 Aug 2012 17:51:15
Recently Spotted:
travo (8m)
Sounds like a bit of a waste overall.
Unless you mean really do mean the DLC. In which case I think Vader said exactly that in his review.
YODA! Bring on quotes in reviews...gogo master plan.