Alan Wake

[UndetectedButthurt]

It's not like halfway through some new york basement you don't get tired of shooting another junkie yelling "PAYYYYNE! WHACK 'IM!".

Actually, I don't. Gunplay in Max Payne games never stopped entertaining me. Alan Wake combat is just a lot less fun. I guess I can see how you'd find them similar though if you don't care that much for actual gameplay.

I guess that's the price Remedy has to pay when they turn focus away from ultra-violent awesum explosion slo-mo bullets.

I don't think Alan Wake combat was ever supposed to be entertaining the way Max Payne is with all the ultra-violence? You mostly get disoriented with limited supplies while 3 shadowy dudes try to walk around the flashlight beam.

Either way, it's just something to do to progress the game and soak in all the goodies Remedy wrote.

 

[Multidirectional]

Either way, it's just something to do to progress the game and soak in all the goodies Remedy wrote.

Well, it's something to do OVER AND OVER in large quantities. And while the feel of weapons is actually quite good, the flashlight mechanic becomes tiresome fast.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

You're not really meant to enjoy the combat in Alan Wake. Sure, it is shooting, but then again all third-person shooters boil down to that. Even the much lauded Max Payne series tell you to run in all guns blazing, and keep running around to avoid the enemy bullets. Alan Wake is much the same. Keep running, keep shining your torch and you'll get through.

My favourite part of Alan Wake is right near the end

Spoiler

when you have to get back to the lake. If you make it all the way without firing a bullet, you get an achievement. I stockpiled all my flares and got through it, on the highest difficult, and it felt good

Anyway, the point of Alan Wake is not really the combat, but the atmosphere, the story (B-movie though it is) and the attention Remedy put into the visuals, audio and level design.

 

[GrainWetski]

What you're trying to say is that Alan Wake sucks.

 

[Multidirectional]

You're not really meant to enjoy the combat in Alan Wake. Sure, it is shooting, but then again all third-person shooters boil down to that. Even the much lauded Max Payne series tell you to run in all guns blazing, and keep running around to avoid the enemy bullets. Alan Wake is much the same. Keep running, keep shining your torch and you'll get through.

What does this mean? Were you pretending to say something?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

You're not really meant to enjoy the combat in Alan Wake. Sure, it is shooting, but then again all third-person shooters boil down to that. Even the much lauded Max Payne series tell you to run in all guns blazing, and keep running around to avoid the enemy bullets. Alan Wake is much the same. Keep running, keep shining your torch and you'll get through.

What does this mean? Were you pretending to say something?

Tell me of a third-person shooter where the combat is more than what I described.

My point is criticise Alan Wake all you like, but if you criticise it for its combat then you might as well criticise every other third-person shooter out there.

 

[MapMan]

MEH. I'm so butthurt about what this game turned out to be and what it was planned to be

Spoiler

BEFOAR CONSOLEZ

.

 

[Western]

You're not really meant to enjoy the combat in Alan Wake. Sure, it is shooting, but then again all third-person shooters boil down to that. Even the much lauded Max Payne series tell you to run in all guns blazing, and keep running around to avoid the enemy bullets. Alan Wake is much the same. Keep running, keep shining your torch and you'll get through.

What does this mean? Were you pretending to say something?

Tell me of a third-person shooter where the combat is more than what I described.

My point is criticise Alan Wake all you like, but if you criticise it for its combat then you might as well criticise every other third-person shooter out there.

If every third person shooter has Alan Wakes gameplay then it's safe to say they all have awful gameplay.

 

[St. Toxic]

Eh, I don't know. Max Payne 1 had writing that was pretty basic, but some nice environments, challenging action, BULLITTIME, rewarding little comics that advanced the plot -- even now, it's a fairly effortless game to just pick up and play, more or less from start to finish without even giving a shit. You could have a Die Hard-a-thon going at the same time and sort of watch the movies while you kill dudes. The only annoying section as I recall it was the sort of docks -> boat area, but it was over fairly quickly. Really loved all the 4'th wall breaking easter eggs and all that jazz.

Max Payne 2 was a lot more story focused, but it also had a more fleshed out story, I'd even say better writing in general. Not sure I can count all the different locales in the game, but I remember the fun-house, mob quarters, construction site, police station bits, pent-house-esque something etc. It felt more like a bit of gritty 80's cop noir, whereas MP1 was the definite noir 'parody', and the world consistency really tied the entire package together. Started off with dark humor, introduced romance (at which I winced initially, but when all was said and done it wasn't even all that distasteful) and some sections managed to be downright creepy or add a lot of suspense to the game. Just an overall polished product with surprisingly good writing.

With Wake, my memory gets a lot more fuzzy. I remember you had to explore fairly small environments for counterintuitive entrances or exits, the thermoses and cool TV-show rewards, scavenging for weps in a cave and getting trapped in there by the zombies or whatever, collecting papers -- felt like there was a lot of this collecting shit nonsense and achievements. Occasionally, I'd misunderstand what the game wanted me to do, whether it was another run sequence or fight sequence; I mean, that's how it worked right? Sometimes you had to leg it jumping from lamplight to lamplight, and other times you couldn't progress until all the lumberjacks were dead. Can't recall what the main plot was about even, some ancient evil of the lake which was also his wife or some shit like that? I basically beat the game in two sittings, took in the Twin Peaks homage, and forgot all about it. I'm almost considering giving the expansions a try.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Oh damn, this game is so aggravating!

Spoilers ahead:
Hated the tutorial sequence (overdone, blunt, stupid lines, not at all scary), loved the peaceful parts after arriving with the ferry and hoped for some nice creepy horror adventure where things slowly went Shining. But nope, after losing my wife at the lake I woke up in that damn car again and started to fear for the worst, because that reminded me of the shitty start of the game. And it seems I was right. Lots of incredibly repetitive action sequences and no other noteworthy gameplay elements besides searching the scenery for thermos bottles and boring to read book pages - I'm just tired of this whole affair. The only sense of satisfaction I get from those banalshitboring fights is that surviving them forwards the story (respawning enemies do that to me). But given the in your face nature and missing subtlety of it I don't know why I should even care about the story. It's not like it's scary or anything and I don't give a rats ass if this boring mess of a story is tongue in cheek since it just fails to entertain me.

Guess I'll uninstall it, this is as exciting as watching paint dry. Too bad, could have been an amazing horror adventure if they just would have copypasted Alone in the Dark gameplay.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Yeah Alan Wake is not a horror game. It's a pulpy tongue-in-cheek adventure with some shootan. I mostly enjoyed the hell out of all the little radio/tv things. Manuscripts were done pretty well. The heavy metal bit with the stage in the middle of a farm was amazing too.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Yeah Alan Wake is not a horror game. It's a pulpy tongue-in-cheek adventure with some shootan. I mostly enjoyed the hell out of all the little radio/tv things. Manuscripts were done pretty well. The heavy metal bit with the stage in the middle of a farm was amazing too.

Huh? Where exactly is the adventure part of the game? Did I miss something? To me it feels more like a crappy one trick pony shooter (flashlight gimmick) with not much else to it.

Btw, I just found an article by Leigh Alexander about it.
Funny how she feels the need to give a lengthy explanation why this fails as a horror game when it's pretty clear as day from the 2. chapter on that it doesn't even try to be one. She even titled the whole embarrassment "Analysis".
That gurl is unfuckingbelievable.

 

[TedNugent]

This guy was the only good part of the Alan Wake series.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Huh? Where exactly is the adventure part of the game? Did I miss something? To me it feels more like a crappy one trick pony shooter (flashlight gimmick) with not much else to it.

I dunno? It's not really an adventure game and it's not really a shooter. It's diluted on both ends. Again, the setting/style seems much more important.

 

[St. Toxic]

Guess I'll uninstall it, this is as exciting as watching paint dry. Too bad, could have been an amazing horror adventure if they just would have copypasted Alone in the Dark gameplay.

I felt the same way after a while, but it's short enough to finish and completing it did change the overall negative opinion I had of the game, so I would certainly recommend it. It's definitely not an adventure game, but perhaps it should have been. The story and environmental design wouldn't exactly have suffered from getting rid of the gimmicky shooter gameplay and replacing it with more exploration focused puzzle solving. The game does expect you to explore to find weapon caches, pages, thermoses, tv-sets but then it also throws enemies in your way making it a bigger chore to stray from the main path. It wouldn't have been a problem to include enemies and still focus on adventure gameplay; seeing as you play a writer fighting his own creations, you could have situational solutions for destroying them by writing them out of the world, either by letting the environment have a go, or using a shadow protagonist, or creating a victim for them to follow -- any number of solutions that don't include a direct confrontation. And on top of that, you could still have a handful of encounters using guns, but as a rare occurrence they would pack a bigger punch and actually add some excitement rather than tedium. Honestly, some of the fights in AW were pretty awesome.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Guess I'll uninstall it, this is as exciting as watching paint dry. Too bad, could have been an amazing horror adventure if they just would have copypasted Alone in the Dark gameplay.

I felt the same way after a while, but it's short enough to finish and completing it did change the overall negative opinion I had of the game, so I would certainly recommend it. It's definitely not an adventure game, but perhaps it should have been. The story and environmental design wouldn't exactly have suffered from getting rid of the gimmicky shooter gameplay and replacing it with more exploration focused puzzle solving. The game does expect you to explore to find weapon caches, pages, thermoses, tv-sets but then it also throws enemies in your way making it a bigger chore to stray from the main path. It wouldn't have been a problem to include enemies and still focus on adventure gameplay; seeing as you play a writer fighting his own creations, you could have situational solutions for destroying them by writing them out of the world, either by letting the environment have a go, or using a shadow protagonist, or creating a victim for them to follow -- any number of solutions that don't include a direct confrontation. And on top of that, you could still have a handful of encounters using guns, but as a rare occurrence they would pack a bigger punch and actually add some excitement rather than tedium. Honestly, some of the fights in AW were pretty awesome.

Ok, finished it now.
I dunno, all fights felt samey for me, up until the very end. And no, completing it didn't change my opinion. I found the story very dull, lacking twists and surprises. You always know who is a baddie, the puzzle pieces are beyond retarded, the fights are all the same, running around, avoiding attacks and trying to turn on some lights to help you. I'm a bit confused about some of the things said in the ending sequence, guess you have to play the DLC to find out what the heck the ocean part meant (no thanks).
Overall a complete waste of time for me. This was no horror game and at times the "fear the darkness" lines got really annoying, even ridiculous. The story didn't grab me either so what's left there to save it? The fights? Doing the same stupid-ass maneuvers over and over again while running through these boring fucking woods for the umpteenth time?
Fuck this shit, this game just sucks.

 

[St. Toxic]

Fair enough. At least it's short.

 

[Malpercio]

Why would anyone play Anal Wake when they can play Deadly Premonition instead?

 

[NotAGolfer]

Why would anyone play Anal Wake when they can play Deadly Premonition instead?

Well, completely missed that one. I'm pretty new to horror games, never played Alone in the Dark for long, my PC was too weak back then and later those early 3D graphics just annoyed me, somehow never got around to playing the Silent Hill games too, guess I have to catch up on those.
Hopefull other horror games out there don't rely on heavyhanded storytelling and too literal descriptions of the things that should scare me as "teh darkness, itz evul!" and mindless run for the quest marker gameplay. Darkness never scared me the slightest, I actually feel quite comfortable in it. So I guess Alan Wake just rubbed me wrong somehow, it just tried too hard and still didn't do jack shit for me. The more eccentric people like the lamp lady were kinda nice but they couldn't save that trainwreck. Fuck the "I'm in it for the mood" argument, that's just bs.
However, LPs of Deadly Premonition look like it's beyond awesome. This might be Twin Peaks the game done right. Maybe it will be too silly for its own good but will see about that. Bought it immediately and am downloading it right now. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Metro]

Both games suck.

 

[NotAGolfer]

The music in Deadly Premonition starts to grate on my nerves though, I give you that. It's still funny how inapt it is chosen, but if this was on purpose since the whole game is campy fun they overdid it on that front.

 

[TheGreatOne]

You shouldn't play Deadly Premonition before playing Silent Hill 2&3 (there are also numerous other horror games I'd prioritize over DP besides those two), that's like getting into horror movies by watching Troma films. Even if you're more interested in the Twin Peaks mood than just horror gameplay, the first 3/4 Silent Hill games are recommended since they do have some Lynch like elements to them.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I've never gotten past the menu screen in Deadly Premonition... Isn't it just a japanese ultra-consoletard ultra-derpy Alan Wake doppelganger? In any case... Neither of them seem to have anything to with horror.

 

[United Nations]

Worst...Hiking...Simulator...Ever!

 

[Zombra]

Is this game any good?

It won't change your life, but I liked it. Decent small-town setting with darkness monsters you fight with flashlights and a weird story about a writer who's going crazy. Warning, don't play it all at once, just do an episode at a time and let it sit in between, otherwise it gets real repetitive. Also, don't try to get all the collectibles or paint the maps, this plays much better if you just run through the woods trying to get to the next lamppost.