Alan wake Review. Selnor

[d21lewis]

zzamaro said:

d21lewis said:

Killiana1a said:

Nice review and congratulations on getting your wife engaged in watching a video game.

I have not played Alan Wake, I am interested, but there are many and wide conflicting opinions on it. Here is a review from GameFaqs to counter your glowing Oscar nomination for Alan Wake:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox360/928006-alan-wake/reviews/review-141597

The author JezebelTruant sums up Alan Wake as an "insulting, empty experience." If you read she will describe it as "completely lacking in the most crucial element of any game. Interaction and immersion..." Further on JezebelTruant elaborates,

"To elaborate on the fatal lack of immersion, Alan Wake is nothing but a rail system behind of smoke and mirrors of burning cash. You cannot interact with anything in your environment. You can't examine things. Approach a door and it opens. With no prompt from the player. You cannot even choose to open a door. There are several NPCs in this game-- but you cannot interact with them. Instead, stand vaguely near them to perhaps initiate dialog. Stand around and wait 30 seconds to see if they are finished when they stop speaking, or if they have anything else to say."

As for the replayability, JezebelTruant explains,

"This is the most linear game I have encountered on the next gen systems. You can't explore-- and even if you were to try, there is no point. If you advance to far, narration kicks in at a trigger point and spins events out of order. There are NO items in this game save a ridiculous abundance of ammunition and batteries for your flashlight. No health items, no puzzle pieces, no memos. Just a few keys that are right next to their use point. To top it off, the items that do make an appearance double as product placement."

Even more insulting, "Speaking of enemies, there are about three of them. Total. A guy with a hat, a guy with ear muffs and poltergeist wheelbarrows. Defeating them requires the exact same strategy, which is no “strategy” at all. Aim a flashlight at them and shoot them in the face/haunted aluminum siding/trucker hat."

I was thinking about picking up Alan Wake until I encountered many similar reviews like JezebelTruant's Alan Wake review on both GameSpot and GameFaqs.

I find myself defending the 360 and it's games more and more in recent days.  I can usually overlook these things but I'm playing this game right now and what was stated in this review is flat out wrong.  It lies.

Interaction:  I've just finished chapter 2.  So far, I've been able to turn on several TV's and watch full episodes of some sort of "Twilight Zone show".  I've turned on various radios and listened to talk shows and music.  I've read various articles, poster, signs, and marquis.   When I need to examines something, I can just press L3.  I've even found cars and driven them "Grand Theft Auto" style.  I've knocked over various things in the background either on purpose or by accident, moved items with equipment to create bridges or used my weight to make a bridge out of an airplane.  I've used generators to power light switches.  And doors open because I pushed them open with the character!  If the door is locked, it won't open until I find a key or someone opens it for me.  What the hell ?  Are we playing two differentgames?

NPC Interaction:  Like FF13, they talk when you walk up to them.  They ask you to do specific things or tell you where you need to go.  I turned on the lights for some bum and pissed him off by turning them back off.  Me and some guy fought off a horde of "Taken".  How is this better or worse than what was done in Uncharted 2?

Being Linear:  You're given a goal.  The path varies and forks often.  There are hidden routes and items to find.  The puzzles aren't mandatory but they exist.  Again, what makes this bad here but fine for a game like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Uncharted, Final Fantasy, or any game that isn't open world?

No Items:  No health items, it's true.  But I've had to find keys, ammo, flares, different weapons and batteries.  No memos?  WHAT THE FUCK!  Part of the game is finding the manuscript pages scattered every where that tell you what to do, where to go, and what happens next (somehow without actually spoiling the event when it happens).

The enemies:  Like Resident Evil 5, the enemies are the residents of the town.  I've encountered guys with axes, sickles, chainsaws, and knives.  They've been big and they've been small.  Some have been aggressive and others tried killing me from a distance.  I also encountered a flock of killer birds.  No bears and no wolves but then I didn't encounter any beavers, either.  Just because I can imagine them doesn't mean that the developer has to put them into the game for the game to be good.  I haven't even encountered the big boss fights that have been reported or the possessed inanimate objects.  I was inside of a house that got destroyed while I was in it, though.  That was pretty cool.

The weapons:  I started off with a pistol and a flashlight.  Since then, I've gotten shotguns, hunting rifles, flare guns, and hand held flares.  From the video I watched from Xbox Live, there's more stuff to come.  There's ammo to be found but, get this:  On the normal level, it's not exactly survival horror.  Like Resident Evil 4-5, the game is going to give you what you need.  If the game is hard for you, the game adjusts.  It gives you more weapons and weaker enemies.  For the REAL game, you have to play it on a harder difficulty (which I don't really want to do just yet because the game is scary enough).

Triggering cutscenes:  True.  Sometimes, going through a certain door or walking up to a particular person will trigger a cutscene.  That's it.  I can't figure out a scenario where something has played "out of order" or had the potential to do so.  As the game progresses, maybe I'll stumble accross this.  But if the potential is there, how linear can the game be?

 

The atmosphere so far has been second to none.  The locations and the graphics have been impressive, too.  I don't care if people like or dislike the game because I got my copy and I love it, so far (like I said, I just finished chapter 2).  What is pissing me off is that people are going out of their way to tell blatant lies.  If I wrote that there were no power ups in Super Mario or that there was only a couple of pistols in Uncharted 2.  It's just not true.

What is this? Capcom said Resident Evil 4 was no longer a survival-horror so stop that dumb response. 

Some Silent Hill games are open world, some final fantasy games are open world, most of the Resident Evil games are open world too.

What lies? Oh, yeah, developer's lies, they showed us a open world in Alan Wake years ago and all we got was a totally linear, they promised a revolutionary game and all we got was Alan Wake. Alan Wake is not revolutionary, it not open world, it's not a survival-horror, is not even scary and before you say something, yeah, I played it on night and alone.

What is really sad is this:

On the normal level, it's not exactly survival horror.  Like Resident Evil 4-5, the game is going to give you what you need.  If the game is hard for you, the game adjusts.  It gives you more weapons and weaker enemies.  For the REAL game, you have to play it on a harder difficulty (which I don't really want to do just yet because the game is scary enough).

So  wasted my time playing Alan Wake on the normal level just because is not the real game? No offense but are you a real gamer?

I only exist in your imagination.

*edit* I guess I'll reply to your post as well instead of just being a cheeky little monkey.*

I never said that Resident Evil WAS survival horror in that post and I didn't say that Alan Wake was, either.  I said "On the normal level, it's not exactly survival horror."  It's more like Uncharted (which is another game that I compared it to) mixed with Resident Evil 5 (hordes of enemies, gorgeous graphics), and Silent Hill 1-3 (incredibly moody and creepy atmosphere).

In the review posted in the inFamous 2 issue of Game Informer, the creator said, "On the normal difficulty setting, the game actually has an auto-adjusting difficulty setting, which means that for a casual gamer, the game is easy.  We really want everyone who's interested in the story to be able to play through and experience the story from beginning to end.  The game monitors how you are doing and tweaks the settings to help you out."  So, like I said, for the real game (perhaps I should have said "the real experience") you have to play it on a harder difficulty.

You said, "Most of the Resident Evil games are open world".  Okay.  Stop right there.  Think about what you posted. 

I'll let you get away with calling Silent Hill open world.  I own/beat each and every one of the Silent Hill games.  It takes place in a town that usually has only one way to proceed because all of the streets tend to be dead ends or totally destroyed.  Alan Wake is definitely not open world.  In that same interview, the developer talks about what open world elements remained.  It was never any secret that they focused on making a linear game like RESIDENT EVIL (again, I own/beat every single game in the regular series), Uncharted, or Silent Hill.  Sorry you didn't get the memo.

--And, maybe your idea of scary and my idea of scary differ.  It IS possible, isn't it?  But then, most of the reviewers seem to agree with me, don't they?

As for the lies, I think I pointed out exactly what wasn't true in my original post (what was it about my post that seems to have gotten you fired up, so much?).  Re-read it. 

I'm looking forward to any reply you may have, dude.